AMERICA'S NATIONAL PARK SERVICE.

POLITICIANS, particularly at the national level, are increasingly viewed with disdain by a significant percentage of the American public. Ordinary men and women are wearied and disgusted by their political representatives. They feel powerless before, and distant from, self-serving, non-responsive legislators. Poll after poll attests to this widespread cynicism.

Yet despite this pervasive public perception of career functionaries responsible for government incompetence and gridlock, at least one federal activity enjoys broad, genuine acclaim, even affection, from the American people. The National Park Service shines like a lighthouse on a night-blackened shoreline.

An act of Congress, signed by President Woodrow Wilson, created the National Park Service (NPS) in August 1916 as a Bureau of the Department of the Interior. Today NPS manages and operates 383 individual areas covering more than 83 million acres in 49 states. Only Delaware, the smallest geographic state in the union, is without a single NPS area. It also oversees activities in the District of Columbia and the U.S.-affiliated territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands.

As explorers and then settlers moved westward across the American continent they reported rapturously the grandeur of many landscapes encountered. President Grant had the foresight to create America's, and the world's, first national park, Yellowstone, in 1872 in the then Wyoming territory. Between that year and the establishment of the NPS, another 34 parks and monuments were designated for protection as federal properties. Primarily because of their distance from population centres, until 1916 these areas were placed under the care of the U.S. Army. (Grant, of course, had been a celebrated general.)

There are 19 different categories of managed areas. Among the more numerous of these are the national historic sites, monuments, parks, historical parks, and recreation areas. The area comprising the largest acreage is Wrangell-St. Elias NP in Alaska with 13.2 million; the smallest is the Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with less than one quarter acre, which commemorates the life and work of a Polish patriot and hero of the American Revolution.

The NPS had a fiscal year 2000 budget of $1.4 billion compared with approximately $300 billion for the Department of Defence. It operates with some 14,100 permanent employees reinforced by 9,400 temporary and seasonal salaried staff. About 85,000 volunteers (predominantly retirees) work in the parks during the most active summer school vacation months (June, July, August). Some volunteers get room and board, and a few receive a modest stipend, but the majority devote their time and energy without pay.

No less than 651 concessionaires, varying from small, family-owned businesses to large corporations, provide visitors with lodging, transportation, food, shops and other services. Gross sales totaled $772.1 million in 1998, the latest full year available. These concessions pay back to the U.S. Treasury about 5 per cent of sales either in the form of renovation or construction of facilities they occupy or as cash for use within the NPS.

The diversity of the 19 area categories is reflected in the variety of their titles. They are as varied as the Statue of Liberty National Monument at the mouth of the Hudson River across from New York's Manhattan Island; the Ford Theater National Historic Site in Washington D.C., scene of President Lincoln's assassination; the U.S. Arizona Memorial which lies submerged in Pearl Harbor, the eternal tomb of more than 1,500 sailors, when the Japanese bombed Oahu Island on 7 December 1941.

One 1999 addition to the inventory is the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, a U.S. Air Force former long-range ballistic missile silo and control bunker in South Dakota. A permanent reminder of the costly Cold War. A poignant future park will be the World War II Home Front National Historical Park to be opened in 2003. Located at Marina Bay, on the San Francisco Bay, in Richmond, California, it will be testament to NPS's efforts to record the contribution of ordinary people to some of America's finest hours. This park will be dedicated to the more than two million women who laboured hard in America's incredibly productive war industries. Their singular efforts helped shorten that war.

In the first year of its existence, national parks recorded a total of 358,006 visitors. By 1999 the figure rose to 287.1 million. NPS forecasts 2000 will close recording an attendance increase to 289.1 million.

Except for the WWII years (1942-45), annual attendance has climbed steadily, with only an occasional slight circumstantial downturn from the previous year. Even during the worst five Depression years (1929-33), just two registered modest declines.

The three most visited parks in 1999 were Great Smoky Mountains, North Carolina/Tennessee (10.3 m); Grand Canyon, Arizona (4.6 m); and Yosemite, California (3.5 m). Interestingly, Alaska, which contains most of America's remaining pristine natural resources, boasts a 70 per cent share of NPS's current total acres. Visitors to Alaska's parks in 1999 were just over 2.1 million, attesting to their remote locations.

Convincing as these facts and figures are, it is when one visits an area that the true worth of the NPS is revealed. Founded to... 'conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein...and to leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations...', the NPS performs its awesome mission with impressive effectiveness. A visit is a pleasurable, satisfying, and wholesome experience.

The NPS is the trustee for a great amount of the nation's most spectacular and sublime scenery. The national parks, from Acadia in Maine to Death Valley in California, and from the Olympic in Washington State to the Everglades in Florida, preserve wonders of incomparable beauty and biologic diversity. American's NPS has been described as the greatest set of outdoor classrooms the world has ever seen.

Park Rangers are professional, interested, knowledgeable, competent and friendly. Aside from administering and protecting the nation's treasured natural and cultural properties, the staff interprets the areas and educates visitors through lectures, films, exhibitions, tours, and organized campfires.

'Interpreting' historical sites can be controversial. Some Afro-American groups are trying to force NPS guides at Civil War battlefields, such as Gettysburg or Vicksburg, to insert political messages into their explanations of military history.

Reasonable entrance fees are currently charged at 136 parks. They help defray operating costs. Educational/interpretive events are mostly included in entrance prices. Exhibitions are authoritative and aesthetic. The small museums provided in many areas present and interpret their authentic collections in exciting layouts.

Accommodation and dining facilities offer quality, are well managed, and run efficiently. There are more than 25,700 campgrounds at 97 NPS areas. The NPS concession charges are competitive with those of similar establishments in the surrounding region.

Such has been the success of the NPS that some parks are now being 'loved to death'. Visitors have reached such crushing levels that the NPS is considering ways to control automobile access into several parks. It wants to find the best and fairest way to insure it fulfills one of its primary missions of conservation and preservation. Experimental controls are being weighed for Yosemite and Grand Canyon. When perfected, they will be implemented at the most popular parks to protect these natural resources.

It is said that people are more and more dissatisfied with a life that separates them from nature. The NPS offers many marvellous sites where people can make a stimulating and enjoyable reconnection. What is more, people really do seem to relax, let down their urban defences, and become more friendly toward their fellow men, once inside the boundaries of an NPS activity.

It is also a refreshing opportunity personally to see and know a U.S. government activity doing something of supreme value, and doing it well, for our small globe. It is appropriate to end with the wise words of George B. Hartzog, Jr., a dedicated and dynamic former NPS Director '...perhaps second only to liberty itself, the national park idea is the finest contribution of the United States to world culture'.