Parks Plan Pushback

The National Park Service's plan to overhaul its guidelines for managing the parks took a bipartisan beating on Capitol Hill yesterday. Here's Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Idaho, who heads the Energy and Natural Resources' national parks subcommittee: "It's very controversial and [the Park Service] put the wrong emphasis on it." Here's Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.: "There's no reason to do this when you're going to diminish what's in the parks." And, finally, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.: "Strikes me this is a slippery slope and a very major change."

Here's the response of Park Service Deputy Director Steve Martin: "This is a draft, and if we have inadvertently dropped a sentence that is that important, we can have a discussion and put it back in."

Sounds to me like the senators are looking for more than the reinstatement of a few dropped sentences.