Nasty Fight Over Yosemite Park

Just 10 years ago, the National Park Service adopted a visionary master plan for Yosemite National Park that looked to a future in which visitors could step into Yosemite “and find nature uncluttered by piecemeal stumbling blocks of commercialism, machines and fragments of suburbia.” Major progress in reaching this goal, particularly in Yosemite Valley, was to be achieved by 1990, the park’s centennial year.

Today, Yosemite Valley is a better place--but only somewhat--for the improvements that have been made. But the progress toward the goal of the 1980 master plan has been achieved in agonizingly small increments. What the Yosemite master plan needs now is a great leap forward. In particular, the park must have a truly adequate public transportation system in place of all the private autos that often jam the 1-by-7-mile valley floor.

The master plan proposes that visitors and employees park their cars outside the valley and ride in by some form of shuttle. Cost is a problem. But the transit portion of the plan is so critical to so vital a part of the nation’s park system that the Bush Administration or Congress should consider a special appropriation to make it possible.

The issue has arisen again because the Park Service released in August a review of steps taken so far to implement and plan, and an assessment of likely future progress. Alas, this document is entirely too gloomy about the prospects for progress. Its tone, in fact, has touched off a new controversy over the prospects for moving non-essential buildings and operations--such as visitor accommodations, park headquarters and major concessionaire facilities--out of the valley and into less-congested areas of the park.

The fight between conservation groups on one hand and the Yosemite Park and Curry Co., the concessionaire, has assumed, unhappily, a rather nasty tone. The timing of the fuss also is unfortunate, coming just as new park Supt. Michael Finley is getting his feet on the ground in Yosemite. Also, the Park Service and the Curry Co. soon will begin negotiating a new concessions contract.

The disputants should mute their anger and give Finley a chance to take control of the master plan review process. Then, the Park Service should make implementation of the plan an integral part of the Curry Co. contract negotiations. Yosemite is too valuable to use for activities that do not contribute directly to a quality park experience.