Parks Should Be Treated As Sacred For Restrictions We Can’t Keep Loving Our Parks To Death.

Early in this century, a few areas in our country were recognized as very special places that needed protection, and our national parks system was born. Decades later, the national parks still are the crown jewels of our public lands.

But we are loving them to death, smothering them with flyovers and drive-throughs. Grand Canyon records more than 50,000 overflights each year and 5 million visitors. Each year, more than 4 million people clog Yosemite National Park; more than 2 million drive through Yellowstone and Glacier parks.

The result: traffic jams, vehicle exhaust, garbage, crowds, noise and thousands of feet trampling the wildflowers. These aren’t theme parks we can repair in the off-season. Some parts of the fragile ecosystems, once damaged, may never recover. Is this the wilderness experience we so carefully have protected?

Public review of a draft management plan for protecting Glacier National Park is under way. Naysayers would change nothing at this Montana gem. They’d let traffic jams continue to choke the 50-mile Going to the Sun Highway, the only corridor through the park.

The proposal outlines three alternatives for better accommodating the growing crowds at Glacier, ranging from closing some campgrounds to removing some motels and clearing the lakes of tour boats.

The most controversial alternative would close the Going to the Sun Highway to private vehicles. Under Alternative 3, visitors would park at either end of the highway (at Lake McDonald and at St. Mary) and board a transit system vehicle. It would stop at all trailheads and turnouts and at Logan Pass, providing shuttle service for hikers and a relaxed experience for sightseers. Anyone who has driven this narrow, winding road over Logan Pass can attest to how very little of the scenery he or she has seen.

No one who now has access to the interior of Glacier National Park would have any less access. Parks should provide access to the wilderness and be preserved for future generations. Alternative 3 of the draft management plan would accomplish both.

This is a way to love Glacier National Park more gently. Native American tribes in Montana considered the area that’s now the park to be sacred, an area they visited for vision quests and spiritual retreat. We, too, ought to treat Glacier National Park like the sacred treasure it is.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view, see “Glacier restriction plan favors elitists”

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