(2 February 2006) -- Today the George Wright Society submitted comments on the proposed revisions to the National Park Service's Management Policies, the current edition of which dates from 2001. Last summer the U.S. Department of the Interior began a process to revise the National Park Service Management Policies. The proposed revisions are extensive, and have been quite controversial.

At its meeting in November 2005 the Society's Board of Directors decided that the GWS needed to weigh in with comments on the proposed revisions. In accordance with the GWS mission, our goal has been to provide a nonpartisan, professional, park-resource-focused review of the proposed revisions.

Because of the importance of the Management Policies, and the gravity of the proposed revisions, we undertook an exhaustive critical analysis that runs to more than 40 pages. It begins with an explanation of the GWS position on resource protection and preservation in the U.S. national parks, and continues with specific comments, keyed to line and page number. The document ends with the following Conclusion and Recommendations:

"In summary, there is no doubt that Congress' intent in establishing the National Park Service, individual park units, and the overall national park system has always been that resource preservation and protection is paramount and that any uses allowed in the parks must never under any circumstances jeopardize the enduring resource values that are the very basis for America's national park idea. We feel safe in asserting that a large majority of the American people have always endorsed, and continue to endorse, this vision of the national parks. Any revision of the NPS Management Policies, now and in the future, must be based on this foundational commitment to resource protection and preservation. Dozens of the proposed revisions to the 2001 Management Policies unnecessarily obscure, and not infrequently violate, this commitment. There are a number of good things in the 2006 revisions, but they are far outweighed by revisions that are detrimental to proper management of the parks. The 2006 proposed revisions consistently change wording so as to emphasize the permissibility of park uses rather than the protection and preservation of resources and resource values. The unmistakable impression is that the 2006 revisions are a systematic attempt to weaken the 2001 Policies.

"We are also concerned that the process of revising the policies was based on a presumption, unsupported by consultation with Congress and the public, that changes to the 2001 Policies needed to be made. Rightly or wrongly, this calls into question the legitimacy of the revisions because of the perception that the public was left out of the process at the beginning.

"We therefore recommend that the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service discard the current proposed revisions and begin the process afresh by holding a national public scoping process to determine, in the first place, whether revisions to the 2001 Management Policies are truly necessary after only five years. If such a scoping process determines that major changes in circumstances (e.g., post-9/11 national security concerns) warrant a new edition, then collectively we will be starting the revision process from a much firmer and more transparent position. We will be better able to determine exactly what needs to be added to or altered in the 2001 policies to address these changed circumstances and whether, in addition to that, the language of core sections of the policies needs to be sharpened to bring the protection and preservation mission of NPS into perfectly clear focus. As noted throughout this document, the GWS supports revisions to the NPS Management Policies that consistently and unequivocally endorse this fundamental mission."