Wilderness Hanging In Balance At Big Cypress National Preserve

Fewer than 100 miles separate Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida from Biscayne National Park, yet when it comes to views on preservation the two parks appear light-years apart. It's a conundrum that shouldn't exist within an agency -- the National Park Service -- that has operated under a unique, and specific, charter handed it in 1916. That charter, the National Park Service Organic Act, clearly placed preservation above all else as the Park Service's mission, a position federal courts time and again have upheld. That mission was further buttressed in 1978 when Congress expanded Redwoods National Park and attached to the legislation an amendment that stated that all units of the National Park System should be managed and protected "in light of the high public value and integrity of the national park system." That seems to be the goal being pursued at Biscayne, where the Park Service recently released a plan, championed by Superintendent Brian Carlstrom and approved by agency Director Jon Jarvis, to create a marine reserve zone to improve the health of its fisheries and help recover and protect a key part the Florida Reef, the only living coral barrier reef in the United States. While the zone -- which some members of Florida's congressional delegation are trying to block -- would ban fishing on 6 percent of the 172,924-acre park, the designation would not stand in the way for snorkelers, scuba divers, or glass-bottom boats to experience and enjoy the reserve. But at Big Cypress, the agency seems to be turning a blind eye on preservation as it works to develop a backcountry access plan in conjunction with a formal wilderness designation plan. The puzzler is that, at present, it appears the Preserve staff wants to roll back court-upheld limits on where off-road vehicles can travel in Big Cypress. How the National Park Service has approached wilderness eligibility and designation at Big Cypress, as well as ORV access, have been contentious issues almost from the time the preserve was established in the mid-1970s. Since an off-road vehicle plan was approved in 2000, the issue of ORV use has led to a regular parade to courts by organizations that think too much of Big Cypress is being given over to motorized recreation...more