Yosemite Passes the Hat

After visiting Mammoth Cave National Park last July 12, President Reagan talked glowingly about the nation’s parklands at a meeting of the National Campers and Hikers Assn. Reagan said that his five-year program to improve park facilities was a great success, adding: “From Independence Hall in Philadelphia to the redwood forest in California, our great national parks are getting the treatment they deserve.”

The parks were getting the treatment all right, but not in the way the President implied. That the Administration had saved the parks from degradation was the deception that James G. Watt had peddled to Reagan, and the deception that Reagan then attempted to pass on to the people. But the sham has been exposed by the revelation that in some areas the parks are in such bad shape that private organizations feel they must come to the rescue with their own fund-raising efforts.

The 64-year-old nonprofit Yosemite Natural History Assn. has announced that it is soliciting $5.2 million annually over the next decade to help the National Park Service restore its foot-worn meadows, tattered trails and decimated ranger corps. For most of its history the association has devoted its efforts to research and the publication and sale of natural-history and scientific material to promote understanding of the park. Its work was meant to augment the fine interpretive programs of the Park Service. But the Park Service’s Yosemite budget has been squeezed so much that the association has launched its new program to save portions of the park itself from overuse and inadequate maintenance.

Some of the money would revive meadows and trails. Some would help restore the ranks of seasonal rangers who handle the interpretive work like campfire lectures that makes the park more meaningful and enjoyable to visitors. As staff writer Ronald B. Taylor has detailed in The Times, for $4,000 a donor can support the “adopt-a-ranger” program, providing the financing needed for one ranger-naturalist for a summer. Generous givers will get their names, or the names of their firms, etched on park plaques. They will be given “access” to the park superintendent, presumably the way big campaign givers win access to congressmen and senators.

The association is to be commended for its efforts, and cannot be faulted for promising names on plaques or a special seat in the superintendent’s lobby as enticement for contributions. But the nation should be ashamed and outraged that it is necessary for someone else to come to the rescue because the federal government is not caring for one of America’s natural treasures in accordance with the Park Service’s congressional charter.

Can you imagine a fast-food chain being asked to contribute money to buy paint for the White House? An airline to fix up the Lincoln Memorial? Or an insurance company to shore up the foundation of the Capitol?

Maybe there should be little signs by the trails or meadows: “This trail is made possible by a grant from the ABC Corporation.” “El Capitan is brought to you courtesy of Ajax Widgets.” An adopted ranger could wear a corporate logo on his or her cap.

The best way to bring the association’s campaign to a successful conclusion is for the President to propose, and for Congress to approve, the funds needed to maintain the nation’s natural temples the way they should be maintained: of the people, for the people, by the people.