Babbitt Says Gop Using Cuts As Way To Close National Parks

Republicans are using budget cuts as a “side-door attempt” to close national parks, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said.

Babbitt said the 36 percent budget cut recommended for the National Park Service by the House Budget Committee would leave him no choice but to “pull rangers off the landscape, close many parks and limit access to others.”

This is part of a strategy Western conservatives are using in their “ideological war” against the National Park Service and other federal land agencies.

“They’ve got their park-closing bill, but they’re saying that just in case we don’t strike a solid, eviscerating blow there, we’ll go after the budget,” said Babbitt in a telephone interview with The Salt Lake Tribune and several other Western newspapers.

Rep. Enid Waldholtz, R-Utah, said, “The recommendations the Budget Committee made for the Department of Interior would not close a single park. They would not require restricted access to a single park.”

Waldholtz said the cuts were specifically designed only to reduce administrative overhead, stop the acquisition of new land and reduce construction.

“If Secretary Babbitt closes parks, it’s because he’s unwilling to reform his bureaucracy,” she said.

Threats of park closure are so common that members of Congress have a special name for it, said Steve Hodapp, an aide to Utah Rep. Jim Hansen.

“They call it the ‘Washington Monument Syndrome,”’ said Hodapp. “It started back in the 1960s when Congress was proposing across-the-board budget cuts. The response from the park service was it was going to close the Washington Monument. They always hold up the most politically sensitive projects they can think of and say this is what they really must do.”

Hansen is head of the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands. He supports legislation establishing an independent commission to decide whether to close some national parks to help balance the budget.

Babbitt said the House Budget Committee has proposed to slash the National Park Service budget by 25 percent and hold it at that level for five years. Assuming a moderate level of inflation, the real reduction would amount to 36 percent, he said.

If these budget figures are approved, Babbitt said he will be forced to begin imposing seasonal closures of parks and restricting the number of visitors.

“This is not gamesmanship,” he said.