State and Federal Parks: Two Battles Over Different Visions of the Future : Hodel and Mott Locked in a Struggle Over U.S. Policies

Like two jousting knights, Secretary of the Interior Donald P. Hodel and National Parks Director William Penn Mott Jr. are locked in a struggle that could affect the way federal parks such as Yosemite and the Grand Canyon are run for years to come.

Technically, the secretary is responsible for all of the agencies within the Interior Department, including the National Park Service, but traditionally the professional park rangers appointed to the directorship have been given a relatively free hand in running the agency. That is changing under the Reagan Administration.

Within the last two years, Hodel’s staff has taken unprecedented steps to wrest control of the Park Service away from the director, according to senior park officials, who say that the secretary’s pro-development philosophy favors increased use of these areas and less protection of the natural and cultural resources.

‘Clone in a 3-Piece Suit’

“Hodel is a (James G.) Watt clone in a three-piece suit,” one senior park official said, referring to the controversial former secretary of the interior who resigned in 1983. Hodel was Watt’s deputy for a time. Asking not to be named, the ranger contended, “Ideologically, they are absolutely aligned, but Hodel is smoother.”

Where Watt was publicly critical of environmentalists and advocated mining, oil and gas exploration adjacent to park lands, Hodel keeps a much lower profile, but he too says that the Park Service has been overly protective of its domain and has not kept up with changing times and increased public demands for recreation areas.

Critics who oppose the Watt-Hodel involvement in park management say that while the park ranger corps was able to withstand Watt’s efforts to change the Park Service, Hodel has succeeded in controlling park management policies like no other secretary, an allegation that Hodel denies.

Points of Contention

Park Service and Interior Department documents and interviews with dozens of professional rangers across the country reveal that:

- Hodel and a top assistant took a direct hand in Mott’s attempts to reorganize and streamline the Park Service’s top management. When Mott disagreed “with most of the suggested modifications,” made by the Interior officials, Hodel overrode many of Mott’s objections. In the process, Hodel approved the appointment of two managers from outside the Park Service to associate director positions, jobs normally held by senior Park Service rangers.

- Mott’s ability to set parks policy was diminished by the removal of the senior policy-making division from his office. This position is now controlled by one of the two new associate directors who were selected by Hodel’s staff from the ranks of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

- After air tour operators complained directly to Hodel about proposed regulation of flights over the Grand Canyon, the secretary countermanded Mott’s intent to restrict canyon flights and ordered the director to turn over the matter to the Federal Aviation Administration.

- Testifying before Congress this spring, Mott opposed a bill that would establish the same kinds of Grand Canyon overflight regulations as the Park Service proposed. Mott’s statement--and identical testimony by his deputy director, Dennis P. Galvin, before a second committee--were written by Interior Department officials and, Mott said, did not reflect his own views.

Struggle Became Public

The struggle between Hodel and an assistant secretary, William P. Horn, on the one side and Mott on the other was waged largely behind the scenes in Washington until Horn involved himself directly in 1986 year-end personnel evaluations. Horn changed several of Mott’s recommendations and word of the struggle broke into view when a top park official complained publicly about the changes.

Howard Chapman, a ranger for 40 years and the Western regional director until he retired early to protest Hodel’s and Horn’s actions, had been given a favorable evaluation by Mott. Horn changed this to an unfavorable recommendation and recommended Chapman’s “immediate reassignment,” records show. Chapman told the press that he was being punished for opposing Hodel on issues such as flights over the Grand Canyon and Yosemite National Park.

Mott, in a December letter to Horn, strongly protested Horn’s involvement in the running of the parks, saying, “You are aware of my dismay over the handling of the performance appraisal process. I find it incomprehensible that the changes of bonuses, rating and the assignment of conditional ratings would occur without consultation with me.”

In the same letter, he opposed Horn’s involvement in the reorganizational effort, saying: “I disagree with most of the suggested modifications. . . . They do not strengthen the park programs, are of no management utility and add to the cost of operating the Washington office.”

Headed California Parks

Mott, 77, is a peppery, silver-haired Republican and one-time director of the California state parks system while Ronald Reagan was governor. He contends that he has successfully fended off Interior Department interference and says, “I am running the show,” not Hodel.

Publicly, Hodel agreed, saying, “Bill Mott is driving the Park Service in the direction of a renewed commitment to its mission.”

However, recent interviews with both men reveal that there are areas of sharp disagreement between them over how the National Park Service should be managed, and by whom. And leaders in environmental groups that supported Mott’s appointment are skeptical about any claims that the director is running the parks.

Destry Jarvis, director of the National Parks and Conservation Assn., said it would be a mistake to say that Mott was in charge, given the Interior Department’s continuing efforts to “harass, sabotage and politicize the park service.”

Mott has spoken out on such issues as the need to curtail the use of aircraft, snowmobiles, dune buggies and other vehicles in the nation’s parks, seashores and recreation areas where they pose a threat to natural or cultural resources. Noise, he contends, is a destructive intrusion on the solitude of a park.

Favors Allowing Flights

Hodel, 52, has a different view, saying, “As times change, as uses change, we’ve got to keep up with the changes.” He favors continuing the popular Grand Canyon air tours pretty much as is, saying that neither airplanes flying low over the canyon nor snowmobiling in Yellowstone harm these parks. The secretary said such urban noises do not bother the wild animals in Yellowstone, for example. Deer and bear “are used to these noisy, smelly” snowmobiles but run away at the sight of cross-country skiers, Hodel said, claiming that it is the skiers who are “putting more burden on wildlife.”

Mott disagreed, saying: “The cross-country skier has less detrimental effect. . . . We’ve got to bring the snowmobile program under control in Yellowstone.”

The key questions separating Hodel and Mott focus on who should be managing the 344 units in the national park system. Should it be political appointees selected by the President, such as the interior secretary, or the professional rangers who see protection of the natural and cultural resources as their primary goal, with public use and visitor services ranking second?

From Cape Cod National Seashore, where off-road vehicle enthusiasts want more access to the sand dunes, to Utah’s Bryce and Zion national parks, where energy companies propose strip mines and huge open pits adjacent to park boundaries, the positions taken by park managers can have a long-lasting impact on lands and ecosystems set aside by Congress.

Frequently at Odds

Since 1981, the professional park rangers managing the nation’s parks in these areas, and others, say they have frequently found themselves at odds with top Interior Department officials and have been muzzled. Pointing to Chapman’s troubles with Horn, they spoke only on the condition that their names not be revealed.

Hodel, in an interview, defended the reorganization of the Park Service management, contending that the long history of management by park rangers without outside influence has resulted in a park system that is insulated like a “cocoon” and saying that some of its management practices need to be “revitalized” by bringing in outside professional managers from other agencies.

Seeming to ignore Mott’s December letter to Horn, Hodel praised Mott and contended that the director’s views and opinions have prevailed in the reorganization. He said Mott was not appointed to “simply restore the cocoon that was the Park Service. . . . Mott came in to try and encourage the Park Service to think new thoughts, to be aggressive, to take into account the changing demography of this nation and figure out how we are going to protect and maintain what we have and acquire what we need.”

Mott disagrees with Hodel’s contention that managers from outside the Park Service are needed to pump new life in the agency. The director contends that such outsiders are not qualified to meet the special management needs of the national parks because they lack special training and field experience.

Mott said he has now won permission to fill two other associate directorships from within the Park Service ranks. And thanks to some help from a key U.S. senator, he said, he is likely to regain direct control of the policy division. Language inserted by Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) in an appropriations bill would cut off Horn’s salary if the policy office is not returned to Mott’s control.

Claims ‘Covert Operation’

During appropriation hearings, Byrd accused Horn of running a “covert operation” in an effort to curb Park Service managers who “were too inclined to emphasize certain park protection values . . . at the expense of the park user.”

Nowhere are the disagreements between Hodel and Mott more pronounced than at the Grand Canyon, where air tour operators fly 40,000 trips a year, carrying an estimated 450,000 people over and through the canyon.

Park records show that 85,000 people walk or ride mules into the bottom of the canyon each year and another 250,000 hike at least a short way below the rim on canyon trails. Sizable numbers of these visitors are disturbed by the noisy air tours that disrupt the canyon’s natural solitude, according to the park’s environmental impact report. Rangers had already begun studying the impact of air tour noise last June when a charter helicopter and plane collided there, killing 28 people.

It was this report that caused air tour operators to complain directly to Hodel in March, 1986, claiming that the document was full of factual errors and misleading. Hodel had not yet seen the Park Service report or recommendations when the secretary ordered the department’s inspector general to investigate the air tour operator’s claims, Mott said.

The inspector general’s investigation found that “some statistical data was inaccurately presented” by the Park Service, but concluded that “despite the factual errors and misstatements” the Park Service study substantiated the claims that the flights were causing “significant, adverse effect on the natural quiet and experience of the park.”

Cites ‘Misrepresentations’

Zeroing in on the inspector general’s report of inaccuracies, Hodel fired off a memo to Mott accusing the Park Service staff of making “egregious misrepresentations.” He demanded that the environmental impact report be “redone honestly” and “unless the (National Park Service) can rebut the (inspector general’s) conclusions” the rangers who prepared the study should be “appropriately censured.”

In its rebuttal, the Park Service contended that the inspector general’s staff had erred in interpreting the Park Service data. Mott said he is standing by the park rangers, saying: “I think our people did a good, professional job. . . . I do not intend to censure anybody.”

Mott said he believes that the quiet solitude in a park “is as important as the trees and the animals,” adding with a shrug, “I don’t think they (Hodel and Horn) recognize that silence or the lack of noise is a factor in the national park system.”

Hodel instructed Horn to turn the matter over to the FAA with the suggestion that the agency deal with the safety issues. Horn’s letter to the FAA also suggested as a secondary matter that the two agencies jointly study the noise problem.

The FAA has issued regulations restricting general aviation flights over the canyon, requiring pilots to fly several thousand feet above the canyon rim. However, the air tour operators are being permited to fly designated routes that dip from 500 feet to 1,000 feet below the rim in some places, FAA officials explained. These routes are approximately the same as had been flown before the regulations were implemented, they said.

‘The Classic Example’

Asked about the Grand Canyon issue, Hodel said: “What we have here is the classic example of continuing competition for use in the park. . . . What I hate to see is the meat-ax approach where you would . . . ban all overflights without further consideration.

“The battle isn’t over destroying the park, it is over whether or not the 30,000 or 40,000 (canyon hikers) . . . are bothered or inconvenienced in their use of the park by the 400,000 people who view the park from the air,” he said, asking rhetorically if the majority should be barred to accommodate the minority.

“It seems to me our obligation is to protect (the parks) and pass them along to the next generation . . . as living museums. We also have an obligation to try to find a way to permit the people of today to enjoy them without damaging or destroying them,” Hodel said.