Lake Roosevelt Gets New Ranger Agency Hopes Replacement Will Help Resolve Squabbles

A ranger who helped ease tension between angry Alaskans and the National Park Service will try to do the same in northeastern Washington.

Vaughn Baker will become superintendent at Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area, parks officials announced Wednesday.

He replaces Gerry Tays, who was reassigned last month amid long-standing squabbles with property rights advocates, Indian tribes and officials from the counties that border the Columbia River reservoir.

Baker, 43, is assistant superintendant at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. He served at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in southeastern Alaska from 1986 until 1989.

Part of Baker’s job there was explaining the do’s and don’ts to people who live inside the park boundaries, or who hunt, fish or cut timber there. Those activities are allowed in Alaska but with restrictions many people don’t like, Baker said.

“There was a lot of animosity and hard feelings over the establishment of the park” in 1979, he said.

“I found that as long as you’re truthful with people, you can establish relationships over time. They may not always agree with you.”

Baker will need those reconciliation skills at Lake Roosevelt. Some people who own property adjacent to the recreation area say Tays was too dictatorial in enforcing its regulations.

Baker takes over June 10, and by the end of the summer will oversee the removal of some private docks that have been built on park property since the 1940s. There are 40 private docks on the lake, and all of them must be gone by 2001.

Property owners and business leaders would like to keep those docks, and build more tourist facilities. Many parks advocates oppose new development.

Bill Walters, deputy regional director for the park service, said shoreline management regulations that call for dock removal will not be eased.

“We’re trying not to be heavy handed and at the same time we are going to enforce” the regulation, he said.

Baker said he has “a cursory knowledge” of the conflicts.

In addition to Wrangell and Shenandoah national parks, Baker has served at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. He spent a year on the staff for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and a year working at park service headquarters in Washington, D.C.

A native of Billings, Mont., Baker graduated from Montana State University with a degree in earth sciences.

Walters would not say where Tays is being reassigned. Tays will be “actively involved in resource issues” but will have no influence on Lake Roosevelt issues.

“We’re still working on the details,” Walters said. “But he’s excited about (the changes) and we’re excited about it.”

Tays, who did not want to change jobs, told a reporter last month that his actions at Lake Roosevelt were those of “a good foot soldier” following orders from above.

, DataTimes