Mott’s Grand Design

The scuttlebutt out of Washington is that feisty William Penn Mott, the director of the National Park Service, has survived a bitter political fight with ideologues of the Reagan Administration’s Interior Department over control of the direction of the service. If so, that is good news for the parks and for the people of this country. The unique success of the nation’s park system has rested with its professional stature, free and independent of political and ideological meddling.

It appears that control of the Park Service’s senior policy-making division will be returned to Mott’s office, along with his authority over personnel decisions. If the Park Service is to maintain its traditional independence, the director must have full control over the appointment of regional directors and park superintendents.

The struggle has involved the basic mission of the Park Service. For seven years Interior officials have emphasized the parks primarily as places of public recreation. Mott has struggled to return the Park Service to its more traditional role of preservation of the natural parkland environment, balanced with public use and combined with enhanced scientific, cultural and historic interpretation of the parks.

The extent of this victory will be known soon, when the Park Service proposes a revised rule restricting sightseeing flights within Grand Canyon National Park. If Interior Department officials support a tough rule, as they should--or at least do not thwart one--then it will be clear that America’s national park policy is back on the right trail.

Regardless, during a visit to Los Angeles last week the 77-year-old Mott was bubbling with excitement about a bright new future for the national park system. He talked of the need for buffering existing parks and historic areas from encroaching development, for creating new parks in the California desert and in the tall-grass prairie of Oklahoma, and for setting aside now some new areas for future park designation.

Mott wants a historic site that tells the story of slavery in America and facilities that will educate Americans about the peoples who inhabited the land before European settlement. He wants to tell the story of the effect of steam power on national development, tying in a railroad with a coal mine and a steel mill. He is scouring the country for remnants of the nation’s culture and history to preserve before they are obliterated. Examples include the earliest motels and the first rocket-launching site. In Florida, park officials had tried to buy out the operation of the last sponge hunter so that he would leave the park area. Rather, Mott said, parks should showcase such people and their dying crafts. They should be universities, he said.

Will these ambitious and innovative plans have the support of the Interior Department superiors with whom he has done battle? Well, he responded, no one has told him “no” so far. No grass grows beneath Bill Mott’s hiking boots. No cobwebs clutter the imagination of this dedicated visionary.

Let your thousand ideas bloom, Bill Mott. Worry not whether Interior Department officials are with you, for the people surely will be.