Storm clouds over Bryce Canyon National Park/Rebecca Latson

Politics has taken the voice away from the National Park Service. Instead of relying on the expertise of its biologists, archaeologists, botanists and others, the agency has deferred to administration partisans in the Interior Department with intentions not always in the best interests of the national parks.

Some of those who have lost their voices are doing so out of self-preservation. They like to be gainfully employed in their chosen profession.

"I don’t hear much about anyone who is stepping up, even in a subtle way, to talk about what is 'right' rather than what 'is,'" Bill Wade, who grew up in a national park and then spent his professional career with he Park Service, told me. ”Doesn’t help when everyone sees what happened to Wenk when he tried to stand up to a wrong-headed decision."

"Wenk," of course, is Dan Wenk, who is retiring this week after more than four decades with the agency rather than move across the country to oversee the National Capital Region of the Park Service for a few years. A member of the Senior Executive Service, Wenk's position with the Park Service is at the will of the agency's director. And when he and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke got cross-wise over how Yellowstone's bison herds should be managed, Wenk was told to either head to Washington or retire. He chose retirement, a terrible decision for the Park Service but one its political elements forced him into.

Wenk's dedication to the National Park Service Organic Act, which directs the Park Service "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations," and not political pressures was indirectly recognized this week when a U.S. District Court judge in Montana vetoed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to remove Endangered Species Act protections from grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Part of Judge Dana Christensen's ruling mirrored concerns voiced two years ago by Wenk, who at the time was the only voice on the Yellowstone Ecosystem Subcommittee of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee opposing the conservation strategy that was to be used once the bears lost their ESA protections.

Wenk at the time told the Traveler he was concerned about the "ambiguity" of the conservation strategy's intent to continue to base grizzly bear populations on the so-called Chao2 estimator. That estimator factors in numbers of grizzly sows not observed by researchers working on estimates. While the conservation strategy said the Chao2 methodology would be used for the "foreseeable future," Superintendent Wenk wanted greater assurance that Chao2 would remain in the plan. That assurance was not forthcoming.

Seemingly channeling the superintendent, Judge Christensen wrote that by not ensuring consistency in population estimates, "the Service illegally negotiated away its obligation to apply the best available science in order to reach an accommodation with the states of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana."

Secretary Ryan Zinke's desire to allow hunters in the state of Alaska kill more wolves and bears in national preserves the Park Service manages in that state has been met by acquiescence by the Park Service, which in 2015 banned the following practices in the preserves:

* Taking any black bear, including cubs and sows with cubs, with artificial light at den sites

* Harvesting brown bears over bait

* Taking wolves and coyotes (including pups) during the denning season (between May 1 and August 9)

* Taking swimming caribou

* Taking caribou from motorboats under power

* Taking black bears over bait Using dogs to hunt black bears

In its environmental assessment on the changes, Park Service staff relied on state of Alaska assurances that increased hunting of the predators would not have an overall impact on their populations. (They did acknowledgement the rule changes would reduce opportunities for wildlife viewing and degrade wilderness character in the preserves).

Today the Park Service is being forced, some would say, into positions it wouldn’t normally take if it closely followed both the National Park Service Organic Act and the 2006 Management Policies that are the guidelines superintendents are supposed to refer to when coming to decisions.



Most recently, Secretary Zinke ordered the Park Service and other bureaus under him to relax their wildlife/fisheries management plans to mesh with state plans. As University of Utah law Professor Robert Keiter pointed out, Zinke lacks the authority to do so. When Park Service staff at their Washington headquarters were asked about that, it took a week to come up with a response, in part because it had to be approved by Interior Department staff. While that response stated that any changes would be made consistent with the Organic Act and other federal laws and regulations, they added that recommendations also will be "in accord with policies established by the Director of the National Park Service and the Secretary of the Interior."

But will those "policies established by the Director of the National Park Service and the Secretary of the Interior" be in the best interests of the national parks and their wildlife? Judge Christensen's ruling this week made it clear that the Trump administration's Fish and Wildlife Service was not operating in the best interests of grizzlies.

Years ago, Mike Finley, then superintendent of Yosemite National Park, was so concerned with overcrowding of the Yosemite Valley that he actually restricted access at times to limit visitors and gain Congress’s attention. Today such a move would be anathema.

"You are asking important questions for which there are no good answers," Rick Smith, another long-tenured Park Service veteran, replied when I asked whether the current Park Service staff is being trampled by politics, not best decisions. "There have been 'pushbacks' in NPS history, something that Wade calls 'selective disobedience.' But I suspect the tolerance for that is at an all-time low in the NPS in the current political climate. That is why the Coalition (to Protect America's National Parks) is now more important than ever. Someone with NPS experience has to speak for wolf pups and bear cubs. It certainly won’t be any of those running the DOI."

Administrations in Washington come and go. The Park Service Organic Act has been around for more than a century, and was reaffirmed by Congress in 1978 when it passed the Redwoods Act. In crafting the Redwoods Act, which expanded Redwoods National and State Parks, Congress specifically included this language:

"...the promotion and regulation of the various areas of the National Park system ... shall be consistent with and founded in the purpose established by the first section of the Act of August 25, 1916, to the common benefit of all the people of the United States. The authorization of activities shall be construed and the protection, management, and administration of these areas shall be conducted in light of the high public value and integrity of the National Park System and shall not be exercised in derogation of the values and purposes for which these various areas have been established, except as may have been or shall be directed and specifically provided by Congress." (emphasis added)

Courts have repeatedly upheld that approach to managing the national parks.

The National Park System belongs to the American people, not a political persuasion, and should be managed as such.