Yosemite--a Plea for Public Funds : Group Hopes to Raise $52 Million to Restore Park’s Shine

A private group has launched an ambitious campaign to raise $52 million in public donations over the next decade to augment the federal budget for operating and maintaining Yosemite.

The money would be used to restore meadows, cut trails, build museums and hire more employees in this popular park, which drew an estimated 2.8 million visitors last year.

National Park Service officials welcome the drive, which has raised $183,000 in donations and pledges its first few weeks and which, if successful, could be copied at other national parks and monuments.

Some environmentalists, however, view the program as an unwelcome precedent.

“We oppose this kind of fund raising. The maintenance and operation of the national parks is the responsibility of the government, not private fund raisers,” said Karen Kress, vice president of the National Parks and Conservation Assn., an old-line conservation group dedicated “to protecting and defending the national park system.”

“Our concern is that the park service will lose control over where and how such money is to be spent,” added Clay Peters, a spokesman for the Wilderness Society.

The nonprofit Yosemite Natural History Assn., a private support group for the park, is soliciting private companies, foundations and individuals to donate $5.2 million a year for the next decade to restore “this magnificent national treasure” before it “is beyond reclaim.” The association hired David Rice, a Walnut Creek fund-raising consultant, to design the drive.

“The combined impact of millions of visitors on the park and the lack of sufficient (federal) funding have created the need for direct action,” explained Henry Berrey, executive director of the 1,800-member association, which was created in 1921 to help the park staff develop visitor education and interpretive programs.

The $5.2 million would be a substantial augmentation to the park’s annual operating budget, which stands at $9.5 million this year.

Plans call for the names of major donors to be displayed on plaques located in visitor centers, museums or elsewhere in the park, much like donors who sponsor public television programs.

Despite the protests by environmentalists, Yosemite Park Supt. Robert O. Binnewies welcomes the effort. “We need this fund raiser to protect our resources,” he said. Binnewies said that while visitor use is on the rise (up 10% last year), the park budgets have lagged. When inflation is taken into account, budgets have dropped 20% over the last decade, Binnewies said, and he expects more deep cuts this year.

“Yosemite will not go out of business, but we’re no longer able to make the park shine,” he added.

Hardest hit by funding cuts have been the interpretive programs put on by ranger-naturalists. A decade ago, 138 of these specialists worked in Yosemite during the summer; last season the number had been reduced to 58 and less than half of them were trained, full-time professionals, according to Binnewies.

Faced with similar fiscal constraints, superintendents in some other parks have tried to make ends meet by issuing “gift catalogues,” a low-key effort that sought donations for such items as a road or a parking lot or some new equipment.

Until Yosemite announced its fund-raising effort this winter, however, no park administration or natural history association had hired a professional fund raiser and set out to augment its federal appropriations on such a large scale.

“The Yosemite campaign is unique and ambitious. Most of the other natural history associations are watching closely to see how it goes,” said James Murfin, a spokesman for the National Park Service who coordinated the work of these “cooperative associations” for several years until his recent retirement.

Normally the work of natural history associations has been limited to the sale of natural science and history publications. Last year the 64 associations raised a total of $3.2 million to help provide educational, scientific and research services in the nation’s parks and monuments, just over half the amount the Yosemite association hopes to raise each year.

“Yosemite’s plan steps out in a new direction,” Murfin said.

The Yosemite association has begun a direct-mail campaign using lists purchased from the Sierra Club, the Diners Club, Field & Stream magazine and a dozen other sources.

San Diego was the first community targeted, and the direct mailing was followed up by telephone solicitation. Berrey said Los Angeles and San Francisco mailings are planned, and a special committee headed by Binnewies is contacting the heads of private companies and foundations, asking for contributions.

The first major donor, the FCA/American Savings & Loan Charitable Foundation, has pledged $150,000 over the next four years and already has delivered $75,000. The Stockton-based foundation is jointly operated by the American Savings & Loan Assn. and its 6,000 employees. The company is a subsidiary of the Financial Corp. of America.

Individual contributions thus far total about $33,000, Berrey reported.

The campaign’s slick black-and-white brochures feature photographs by the late Ansel Adams and boldly warn: “Yosemite’s perfection has been allowed to erode at an alarming rate in recent years. . . . (This) campaign will raise the funds needed to restore Yosemite’s perfection.”

Donations of up to $99 will put the givers’ names on the visitor center wall and enroll them in the honorary “Yosemite Club.” A gift of up to $999 makes the donor a member of the “El Capitan Club” and the donation of $100,000 or more is rewarded by special access to the superintendent and inscription of the donor’s name on a “Benefactor” plaque.

Some of the projects to be funded by donations include the $50,000 rehabilitation of the badly denuded landscape around Mirror Lake in Yosemite Valley and the restoration of meadows in the valley and the high country, at costs ranging up to $100,000. The renovation of the Pacific Crest Trail will cost another $100,000.

Big-ticket items listed by the fund-raising committee include construction of a 16-mile bike trail through Yosemite Valley ($960,000) and the construction of two museums ($3 million).

An “adopt-a-ranger” program is being touted, encouraging prospective contributors to defray the salary and support expenses for seasonal ranger-naturalists. It costs $4,000 to “adopt” and outfit one ranger for a summer.

The list of needs is long. “We want the interpretive signs up, want the naturalists programs to be excellent, we want to get rid of old buildings and improve the trampled meadows,” Binnewies said.

Then he added: “We are not going hat in hand, begging, we are just trying to provide the funding this park deserves.”