37-Year Veteran Senior Park Service Resigns Over Wilderness Policy

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WASHINGTON, DC, February 4, 2004 (ENS) - "A regional wilderness program coordinator has resigned in frustration from the National Park Service, leaving the agency with just one full time wilderness manager. Jim Walters, a 37 year employee, retired as wilderness program coordinator for the eight state Intermountain Region, with a letter to National Park Service Director Fran Mainella that says the service has "accomplished relatively little in implementing either the letter or the spirit of the Wilderness Act."

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The NPS is "vulnerable to growing criticism from the environmental community," Walters writes, that "the agency has failed to properly identify and protect its wilderness resources," and that "senior level managers continue to demonstrate either a lack of concern and/or an open hostility to the Service's wilderness responsibilities" and in addition, "park managers continuously attempt to ignore or circumvent the instructions of the Wilderness Act and NPS wilderness policies in carrying out their other duties."

Completing wilderness management plans has been an NPS policy requirement for nearly two decades, but today of the 75 park areas containing wilderness, less than 20 percent - 14 parks - currently have a wilderness management plan, Walters writes. "Of these, approximately half are badly outdated and do not meet the basic requirements for a wilderness plan as required by current NPS policies."

"There is no Service-wide initiative for wilderness parks to complete their required plans," Walters writes. "As a result, after nearly 40 years, less than one fifth of the NPS wilderness parks have a plan which explains to managers, and the public, exactly how the wilderness is supposed to be managed and preserved."

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http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=29035