Monday, June 11, 2018

More National Park Disruption Expected After Yellowstone Shakeup

Defenders of America's national parks are sounding the alarm after last week's dismissaYellowstone National Park Superintendent Dan Wenk, and they warn more dominoes are likely to fall as Secretary Ryan Zinke's Interior Department roots out staff members who are committed to conservation. Phil Francis, who chairs the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, says the nation's parks and visitors will end up paying the biggest price, as more staff members are either forced out or choose to leave on their own. "And when they leave the service, they take with them an enormous amount of experience, an enormous amount of institutional memory,” Francis states.. “These parks are complex. These parks are difficult to manage, in many cases." In an e-mail, an agency representative noted moves are made to better serve the department, adding that senior executives signed up knowing they could be called upon to work in different positions at any time. Francis says transferring senior staff for no reason isn't good management, and he worries the moves will have a chilling effect – a signal that if staff members don't go along with Zinke's political agenda, their jobs could be at risk...MORE

This particular piece has it all.

Note those who support Wenk are "defenders of America's national parks", while those who seeks a change in leadership are trying to "root out" those who are "committed to conservation." The bias is right there in the first sentence.

“These parks are complex. These parks are difficult to manage, in many cases."

Are they tough to manage because of the mix of resources present or the geographical location? Or is it because of the myriad of laws, regulations, policy prescriptions and field manuals the manager must deal with? I would suggest that in most cases it is the later, many of which are requirements the park service has heaped on themselves.

"And when they leave the service, they take with them an enormous amount of experience, an enormous amount of institutional memory,”

Those are exactly the types we need to leave. Its that "institutional memory" that prevents innovation and new approaches.

...he worries the moves will have a chilling effect – a signal that if staff members don't go along with Zinke's political agenda, their jobs could be at risk

A federal employee who fails to carry out an order by the President could lose their job? 

Let's look at how this works. The voters elect a politician to be President. The President then appoints or nominates other political officials to run the agencies. These political appointees set the policies and budgets for the agencies, to carry out the wishes of the President. So it is all political. This system seemed to work well when Obama was President. Now that Trump is in, the same system is deemed unprofessional and too political. Its okay to fill the agencies with lefties and enviros, but if the same system appoints industry reps, then the system is corrupt? 

If you want federal lands, then management prescriptions will be set by federal politicians.  Those who try to tell us different are spreading pure USDA, Grade A, bullshit.



2 comments:

Dave Skinner said...

Grade A? How about PRIME? As in Public News Service being a left wing nonprofit that brags also that it is a B corporation, just like Ben and Jerry's, and Patagonia. Credible source, that.

soapweed said...

The truth.... hitting on all eight cylinders...