Progress in the Parks

n October 1991, in the picturesque Rocky Mountain town of Vail, Colo., National Park Service managers, environmentalists, scholars and other park enthusiasts gathered for an airing of the agency's woes. The goal of this 75th anniversary symposium was to reach consensus on the most pressing management problems facing the agency. What they came up with-and what's come to be known as the Vail Agenda-outlined problems with everything from natural resource protection to financial management. The "agency is beset by controversy, concern, weakened morale and declining effectiveness," the group concluded. "There is a wide and discouraging gap between the service's potential and its current state."

These were not new observations. Several reports released over the last 40 years have decried, for example, the fact that the Park Service rarely has based natural resource decisions on adequate scientific evidence. Although the Vail Agenda didn't break new ground, when viewed alongside other more recent reports, new laws and policy changes, the document appears to have launched the agency on a credible course of reform. Observers, who have seen other reform attempts tried and abandoned over the years, aren't celebrating yet. But as Phil Voorhees, senior director of park funding and management at the National Parks and Conservation Association, says, "A lot of things are in play that all lead in the same direction. They all point to a much tighter style of management across the National Park Service."

In structure, the Park Service is one of the most complex federal agencies. Its 378 units are divided into 20 separate categories, including national parks, national preserves, national rivers, national seashores and national monuments. The sites are spread over 83 million acres in every state except Delaware, and also in the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. The agency has 23,000 employees to maintain and protect these areas and serve the more than 285 million visitors they receive annually.

Many parks have seen staggering increases in visitation in recent years, straining their natural environments-air, water and wildlife-and further complicating the job of managing the sites. At the same time, with laws such as the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act, as well as park-specific reforms included in the 1998 National Parks Omnibus Management Act, managers in the $1.8 billion agency today face extensive planning and budgeting responsibilities. "The demands placed on administrative staff have far outpaced our ability to deliver," says Park Service Controller Bruce Sheaffer. "It's very hard to keep up."

Nevertheless, many park managers are surprisingly accepting of their additional responsibilities. True, they feel overwhelmed at times by the demands, especially since a 1994 reorganization pushed many administrative duties from the regional level down to the parks. But overall, they see the value in holding park managers accountable for achieving results. "I think it's the reality of effective management," says Dave Mihalic, superintendent of Yosemite National Park. "There's more to operating a national park than putting the flag up and taking it down. If we were doing an adequate job, we wouldn't have these [law and policy] thrusts. The facts speak for themselves."

Rejuvenating Resources

One of the most significant changes under way at the Park Service is a shift toward a more science-based approach to decision making. The latest efforts were spurred largely by a 1997 book by Park Service historian Richard West Sellars called Preserving Nature and the National Parks: A History (Yale University Press). Sellers documented the agency's historical reluctance to seriously attempt science-based management. Both environmentalists and many Park Service employees embraced his conclusions.

Environmentalists have complained for years about the dearth of data on natural resources in the parks. "Scientific information is critical to effective management of park resources," noted a 1997 study, Reclaiming Our Heritage: What We Need to Do to Preserve America's National Parks, conducted by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "Without it, the Park Service cannot adequately assess the damage being done to park resources, let alone take the necessary steps to stop it. .... Many of the resources...are deteriorating and, in some cases, disappearing without anyone's knowledge."

"Most [Park Service] management practices seem to emphasize recreational pursuits over natural resource protection," argues Rose Fennell, director of the Wilderness Society's National Park Service program. For example, sand boarding-similar to surf boarding-is allowed at Great Sand Dunes National Monument in Mosca, Colo., she says. The Wilderness Society believes sand boarding may cause long-term damage to the dunes.

To be fair, since the creation of the Park Service, the agency has a dual mandate: to protect its natural resources but also to "provide for the enjoyment" of them. Back in 1916, the agency's first director, Steven Mather, considered attracting people to the parks critical for developing a national appreciation for them. For the most part, his recreation-focused philosophy has governed Park Service management ever since. Congress has reinforced this focus by directing its attention to visitor services, which are, after all, the most publicly visible-and therefore politically pertinent-elements of Park Service management. But this appears to be changing.

Last August, Park Service Director Robert Stanton committed the agency to a Natural Resource Challenge. "Throughout its history, the National Park Service has spent money on serving the people who visit the parks, resulting in excellence in visitor service," the challenge report notes. "The same level of excellence is now needed in natural resource management. . . . Decisions must now respond to the deteriorating state of our natural resources and our serious need for information and staffing."

Specifically, the plan promises to do such things as inventory natural resources, monitor air and water quality, protect the habitats of endangered and native species, remove non-native species, collaborate with outside natural resource experts and use parks as scientific laboratories and classrooms. Park Service officials also are planning an aggressive recruiting strategy to attract qualified people into the agency's natural resource management workforce.

Congress, too, has weighed in on the science-based management issue. The 1998 reform law requires the agency to establish baseline data and a system for monitoring natural resources. Under the law, the trend in resource conditions now will be a "significant factor" in the annual performance evaluations of each park superintendent. Destry Jarvis, assistant director of the Park Service, calls this a "wonderful" provision. "It's not just how many visitors you get and whether you get your [periodic] management plan done on time," he says. "It's the condition of your resources. That's a big deal."

The statute also sets up a procedure for establishing new park units, which must be created by Congress. Historically, decisions to create new units often have been based more on local politics than on a real need for a given site to become part of the national park system. Each new park puts more pressure on agency resources, and sometimes it makes more sense for a site to be managed by a state or local government or a private organization. Now, before Congress can establish a new unit, the Park Service must conduct a scientific review of the proposed action. Congress still has the ultimate say, but now legislators are supposed to base their decisions on science rather than politics. "This is attempting to add a little discipline to the process," Jarvis says.

Science and Management

The reform law and the natural resources initiative have the potential to transform how the agency manages its natural and cultural resources, says David Harmon, executive director of the George Wright Society, a professional association dedicated to the protection, preservation and management of cultural and natural parks through research and education. At least now there's an explicit mandate for the agency to base decisions on science, Harmon says. "Now there are arrows in the quiver. This thing is on the books." Stanton's resource challenge, he adds, is a sign that top agency officials are committed to implementing its new mandate.

Harmon's group is named after George Melendez Wright, the first chief of the Park Service's wildlife division, who was one of the agency's staunchest supporters of science-based conservation and management. He died in 1936 at the age of 32. Some argue that Wright's era was the last time the Park Service gave natural resource management serious attention.

Some park managers, however, have long understood the importance of effective resource management. For example, Marc Koenings, superintendent of Assateague National Seashore in Maryland, is a biologist by training and views environmental stewardship as a critical role for Park Service managers. "You need good practical science" to fulfill the agency's mission to protect resources for the benefit of future generations, he notes. Having that science and applying it to management decisions injects integrity into the process, he says.

A major hurdle to instilling this attitude agencywide has been the fact that relatively few of the highest ranked park managers have scientific backgrounds. But that, too, appears to be changing. Increasingly, the agency is acquiring the scientific skills it needs, says Charles Clusen, senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Fund. People with science backgrounds, he adds, are gradually rising up the ranks and becoming park superintendents, indicating that the agency eventually may fully adopt the new management philosophy.

Harmon agrees. The generation of employees that came of age during the environmental movement of the late 1960s is now reaching superintendent-level positions. A resource-management philosophy is "second nature to them," Harmon says. "You could see a generational flip-flop." Both Clusen and Harmon have seen the agency abandon promising reform drives in the past, however, so they are reserving their praise. But if officials follow through on their intentions, the agency may significantly improve its natural resource management practices in the next decade, they say.

Fiscal Frustrations

Park Service officials also are taking a serious stab at improving their budget process. Individual parks generally have been able to produce budgets useful at the local level. But because each park has its own way of documenting and justifying budgetary requirements, it's been difficult to get an accurate picture of servicewide needs, agency controller Sheaffer says. In addition, the agency simply hasn't had the financial management skills on staff to fully address the matter.

Agency officials and observers-including Congress, which has been highly critical of Park Service financial management practices-are cautiously optimistic that a business planning initiative launched in 1997 may yield improvements. In 1999, 12 parks participated in the initiative, which is still in the pilot stage. The effort is a joint project of the Park Service, the National Parks and Conservation Association and private foundations. Private funding has enabled graduate business students to spend summers at parks developing business and budgeting plans.

The goal is to create a process that will document in one place each park's financial activity-past, present and future-so it can account for every dollar spent. "It's a documentation process that says where they've been, where they're going and where they're going to be," Sheaffer says. Although it could take several years to fully refine the system, agency officials hope to create a prototype plan that other parks can use as a model, ultimately allowing the agency to collect uniform information nationwide.

This effort is important because tracking agency budget numbers has become more complex as the number of funding streams has increased. Not so long ago, parks were funded almost entirely by annual congressional appropriations. But now they're receiving increasing amounts from private foundations and citizens groups, and thanks to a special program authorized by Congress in 1996, many parks now keep most of the fees they collect from visitors. In the past, that money went directly to the Treasury.

To determine how useful the business planning initiative will be, agency officials will have to answer the question "Is this worth the price?" says Doug Morris, superintendent of Shenandoah National Park, who has participated in the pilot. Even with the help of the business students, managers need to devote a great deal of time and energy to the plans.

Some park superintendents question whether one prototype realistically can be applied to the varied inventory of Park Service sites, each of which has unique needs. The key to the initiative's success will be finding the right balance between a document that is useful to park managers and one that meets the needs of headquarters staff and Congress, says Yosemite's Mihalic. Park staff must be able to use the plans to better manage their own daily operations to give them the incentive to generate the credible numbers Congress wants, he says.

Also expected to improve financial management practices is a provision of the 1998 park reform law mandating more openness in the budget process. Now each park must publish its budget every January so that the public can see exactly how money is being spent. The agency welcomed the requirement, believing that more openness will be good for financial accountability, Jarvis says.

Burgeoning Backlog

Park Service progress appears to be considerably slower in the capital asset management realm. The 378 park units are home to more than 16,000 permanent structures, such as visitors centers; 8,000 miles of roads; 1,500 bridges and tunnels; 5,000 housing units; 1,500 water and waste systems; 200 radio systems; more than 400 dams; and more than 200 solid waste operations, all of which are valued at more than $35 billion. But funding shortfalls have made it impossible for the agency to keep the inventory in good shape, leading to a huge backlog of maintenance and construction projects.

Congress has grown increasingly frustrated with the situation. In 1985, after the General Accounting Office found that the Park Service had no means to centrally document and monitor maintenance, legislators ordered the agency to develop a comprehensive, standardized maintenance management system. The computerized system was to track maintenance needs on a regional basis and help with prioritizing projects. But the effort "failed miserably," as one park manager puts it. Indeed, a March 1998 review by the Interior Department inspector general review concluded that many park superintendents had abandoned the system because of inadequate technical support, system failures and inaccurate system-generated reports. Having handed over $6 million to create the system, Congress was none too happy.

As the Park Service struggled to get a handle on its maintenance needs, the problem only worsened. In 1987, the agency estimated it had a $1.9 billion backlog. Since then, estimates have exceeded $5 billion. Although they agree that the backlog is too high, legislators don't trust these numbers, for in 1998, GAO faulted the agency for basing backlog estimates on unreliable data that, like the budget numbers, are collected differently at each park.

There is "no common definition as to what items should be included in an estimate of the maintenance backlog," Barry Hill, GAO associate director for energy, resources and science issues told a House Appropriations subcommittee in February 1998. "The Park Service compiles its maintenance backlog estimates on an ad hoc basis in response to requests from the Congress or others; it does not have a routine, systematic process for determining its maintenance backlog."

GAO also criticized the agency for lumping construction needs into its maintenance estimates. More than 90 percent of the backlog estimate is actually for construction, Hill noted, adding, "Including these types of projects in the maintenance backlog contributes to confusion about the actual maintenance needs of the national park system."

During hearings on the agency's fiscal 2000 appropriations, Hill reiterated GAO's concerns. He credited the Interior Department with providing guidance to its agencies on using uniform definitions for maintenance data and on developing priority maintenance plans, but said the Park Service "still does not have accurate information on its maintenance needs."

Encouraging Signs

Park Service officials have a different view. Since 1995, they've been using a prioritization process called Choosing by Advantages, which carefully weighs a potential construction project's value on a point scale by considering how much it will contribute to the agency's goals and objectives, says Park Service Deputy Director Denis Galvin. The process yields a five-year priority list. A new Project Management Information System, created two years ago, holds data on each park's construction and maintenance needs. "It's better than previous systems in that it attempts to capture all the projects in one place," Galvin says.

Galvin gets frustrated when he hears strong criticism from congressional staff and GAO that seems to ignore these efforts. "It gets me damned mad," he says. With Congress only willing to invest about $125 million a year in construction projects, getting on top of the backlog is nearly impossible. Galvin can quickly list off a number of needed projects in Washington, D.C., alone that would cost well over $50 million. And with Congress adding an average of five units to the park system each year, the problem is likely to worsen.

Nevertheless, Rep. Ralph Regula, chairman of the House Appropriations Interior Subcommittee, says he's optimistic about the agency's efforts. "I've seen some encouraging signs," he says. For starters, there's more money available for maintenance now. During its first two years of operation, the recreational fee program brought an extra $182 million, much of which has been earmarked for maintenance. "That's helped a lot," agrees Galvin. In addition, the 1998 Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century more than doubled the money available each year for park road repair.

Regula also is pleased with changes made at the agency's Denver Service Center, which traditionally was responsible for designing and supervising new building projects. Congress ordered drastic cuts at the center in 1998, after learning of excessive-and irresponsible, some thought-spending. Among the headline-grabbing projects triggering the reforms was a two-hole outhouse without running water at the Delaware Water Gap in Pennsylvania that cost several hundred thousand dollars to build. Park Service officials also were chastised for spending nearly than $600,000 to build single-family homes for staff in Yosemite National Park, considerably more than the average local home costs.

The National Academy of Public Administration published a review of Park Service construction policies in June 1998 that recommended ways to control costs. Based on those findings and congressional hearings on the topic, later that year legislators ordered that the center's staff be slashed in half and that 90 percent of design work now be contracted out to the private sector. Saving money on design and construction means the agency can spend more on maintenance, Regula says.

Building Relations

In the view of many Park Service managers, effective long-term management ultimately depends on more than just good internal systems. Building a stronger connection with the public, they say, is critical. To do this, the agency is embarking on what officials call a "messaging project." Using focus groups, they are assessing what the public knows about the Park Service, what people expect from their parks and how best to communicate with constituents. These efforts will help the agency better understand its future needs, as well as educate the public about the importance of natural resource stewardship, says Marie Rust, the Park Service's northeast regional director.

The agency needs to constantly inform people about the state of their parks, says Shenandoah Superintendent Morris. "The future of the Park Service depends on an engaged public," he says. "An engaged public engages elected officials." The nation's parks will forever need a concerned constituency, Morris adds. "The threats against parks never go away. It's not a job you do and it's over."

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