Los Angeles Times Interview : Barbara Griffin : Managing Yosemite’s Natural Wonders--and the Crush of Visitors

Every day this spring, hundreds of families stand in awe at Yosemite Falls--the nation’s tallest waterfall--which roars and sprays and mesmerizes. Soon the numbers of visitors gazing at El Capitan and Half Dome, stamped on the national consciousness in Ansel Adams’ photographs, will swell as prime vacation time arrives in the oldest national park in the United States. For the last two years, more than 4 million people, the vast majority from California, visited Yosemite annually. Some think that’s far too many.

It’s Barbara J. Griffin’s assignment as superintendent not only to make sure visitors have a safe, memorable experience but also--and here’s the controversial part--finally to arrive at some solutions to ease the traffic crunch and better protect the park. Griffin knows from previous duty as assistant superintendent at Yosemite that everyone--visitors, environmentalists, business people, members of Congress--has strong personal feelings about the park.

“We all agree this is the biggest problem facing Yosemite and that we need some change. What we all don’t agree on is the form that change should take and that’s what we’ll be looking at in the fall,” she said about the valley implementation plan.

Griffin (known as B.J.), 54, started her park career as a clerk in Richmond, Va., in the 1960s. A decade later, she applied for a budget analyst’s job. “That was my first opportunity to break into something that was more high profile. The budget issues in the park encompass everything. Every problem and every issue somehow has money attached, so in getting into the budget field I really broadened my knowledge of how the park service works.” Administration, not serving as a ranger, became her career track.

In 1984, she headed her first park, the Spanish fort Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, Fla. After her first tour at Yosemite, she became associate western regional director, then mid-Atlantic regional director. She returned to Yosemite as superintendent in February 1995, the first woman to head a major national park.

Amid dealing with budgets and conferring with environmental and business groups, Griffin says she tries to stay grounded on why she’s there, so she cross-country skis in the winter and hikes or rides horses in the summer. So far, she’s covered about 250 of Yosemite’s 800 miles of trails.

Traces of her Shreveport, La., childhood linger in her voice. Divorced, she lives in Yosemite with her springer spaniel, Petesy, who has taken some of those hikes with her, though not in the wilderness. That’s not allowed. In recent years, Griffin has taken her parents for their first glimpse of the Grand Canyon and her son and daughter-in-law, who live in Atlanta, for their first glimpse of the Grand Tetons.

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Question: Did photographs of rangers locking the gates when the government was shut down put any pressure on Congress not to cut the National Park Service budget?

Answer: It certainly focused public attention on the fact that they don’t want to lose access to their national parks. It wasn’t only Yosemite but across the nation that that was fairly well demonstrated. When the Congress passed the continuing resolution for this year, almost everything was passed until some date in March--but the National Park Service was passed for the rest of the fiscal year. That’s a clear demonstration of people sending the message that [closing parks] wasn’t what they meant.

Q: What stamp would you like your superintendency to put on the park?

A: I want to change the status quo for Yosemite. Yosemite’s dignity demands that it have the level of visitation that is respectful. Visitors deserve an experience that isn’t crowded and rushed. They need a contemplative, intimate experience with the park.

So I want to try to deal once and for all with the decisions on how Yosemite is going to be accessed and people are going to be moved around within it. It’s a long, lingering question--it’s 20 years old--and it’s time to make some decisions. I won’t probably see very many changes--because it takes money and time--but just to get the decision made is what I would consider a success.

Another thing I want to do is get us to a day-use reservation system. We’re not adding any more overnight accommodations. In fact, we’re reducing those. So the growth in our visitation is all the people who’re coming in to use the park for the day. There’ll be a day--hopefully in the not-too-distant future--when instead of stopping at the gate and saying, “I’m sorry, there’s too many people in here right now, you have to come back later,” that people will have a reservation to get in and they can make that plan before they ever leave home.

Q: How much of the general management plan has been implemented?

A: Starting from 15 years ago, when the plan was approved, the first thing the park service did was take out a lot of parking. There’s been a lot of riparian restoration, of black oak woodland restoration, meadow restoration. Housing for employees is being built in El Portal.

The warehouse and maintenance complex represents the first big money infusion toward implementing the plan. When that complex is completed, it will be a $42 million investment, which is phenomenal for one park out of 360 that compete for about $100 million a year in capital money. We’ve already moved our warehouse--supplies and materials deliveries. That keeps a lot of traffic out of the park.

Q: How much have you been able to reduce driving in the valley and what else needs to be done?

A: It’s strictly been voluntary--the shuttle bus. The shuttle bus is a great success. Every one of them is just packed in the summertime. People are really utilizing that system. If we could place services and assign shuttle bus stops a little better, maybe we could cut down even more.

Q: What will be proposed this fall?

A: The valley implementation plan. The whole idea of the general management plan in 1980 was to move nonessential facilities out of the valley. This plan essentially says, “What are you going to do with the valley once everything is taken out? Your parking doesn’t make sense. Your road system doesn’t make sense. You need to get your campgrounds off the river.” There’s a lot of reorganization that needs to happen here. That’s what this will address.

The valley implementation plan options, probably two-thirds of them, will assume that day-use cars aren’t penetrating the valley this far. It’s that element of the plan that meets with the most controversy. Basically, you’re looking at three options: a parking lot at the western end of the valley where you would capture all the automobiles and transfer people to shuttle buses for their trip into the valley; then there’s two ideas for remote parking lots--

Q: In the valley?

A: No. Farther out. Once you get past the convergence of the entrance roads to the park, you have to provide three of everything--because of your three main roads--or four, when you consider the east side. So you might have four parking lots at the park boundaries. There’s another option to look at a regional solution--you might take these staging areas to gateway communities or even Merced, Fresno, places like that.

Q: Will this propose no cars at all in Yosemite Valley?

A: At the moment we’re talking about day users only.

Q: So people who have lodging reservations would be able to drive in?

A: Would be able to bring their car and park at their room or at their campsite and then leave the car.

The idea of the parking lot in the west end of the valley has already proven to be a controversial one. It’s not an elegant solution, but none is. Each of the proposed solutions have their negative sides as well as their positive sides. The idea for me is not to accept the status quo. We’ve got to do something about the situation.

Q: Is Yosemite’s new concessionaire now paying more to the government?

A: You wouldn’t even recognize the contract now compared to what we had before. The old contract was with the Curry Co. The franchise fee was three-quarters of one per cent of the gross and that went into the Treasury of the United States. It wasn’t kept in the park. The beauty of this contract is in benefits and services to the government. You’re dealing with 15% or 20%, depending on how you want to characterize it. They put 4-1/2% of their gross into a capital improvement fund that stays right here in the park and goes to implement the general management plan, improve the visitor facilities. That fund has in it at the moment about $8 million. We’re starting on the first big project right now--which is a complete re-do of Glacier Point.

Q: In terms of plants or animals or water purity, what’s the most threatened area of the park?

A: Our wildlife is in very good shape. We are all concerned about air quality and water quality, but I don’t think there’s any one area where we have a problem. We keep on top of it.

Research and work on peregrine falcons has brought back the peregrines. We’re having active nesting every year. We, all of a sudden, have mountain lions. When I was here before, no one I knew had ever seen one. There were 80 sightings in the valley alone last year. That’s 80 people, not 80 lions--maybe three lions. We’ve got a project by the Yosemite Fund that will look at why the lions are here, what is the interaction with humans and how should that be managed.

We’ve reintroduced big-horn sheep on the northwest corner of the park and although we had built our herd up to about 90 sheep over the past eight years, this past winter took about a quarter to a third of them. But I think we’ve built the herd up now to where we have a viable population, so they’ll replenish themselves. They’re just magnificent.

Bears continually take up a tremendous amount of staff work. We’ve tried to install bear-proof food lockers at every campsite--anywhere that food is stored that would tempt them. We’ve started an active program of bear-proof food canisters that can be carried in backpacks. You can rent them or buy them anytime you’re going into the back country. Still, our most difficult wildlife problem is trying to keep bears from becoming habituated to human food.

Q: Are there any problems that you weren’t a ranger in managing the rangers?

A: No. In an organization this large--and this is probably one of the largest staffs of a national park--you have a chief ranger over visitor and resource protection that is the best in the service at what he does. The branches under him are extremely experienced people. They’ve worked several parks. Then in resources management you usually have people that are physical scientists and are the best at what they do. So my job becomes budget, personnel, dealing with the Congress, dealing with environmental groups, long-range planning. The rangers have their expertise and they don’t need me to be second-guessing them.

Q: Your job has been described as one of the best and yet one of the toughest in the park service. Why?

A: No. 1: Yosemite’s visitors have been coming here for years; 70% of our visitors are from California. These are people from the Bay Area and L.A. that have been brought here as kids to camp. Some of their fondest memories and things that shaped their values happened right here, and they’ve been coming back and having those experiences again and again. They feel very passionately about it.

The birth of the Sierra Club with John Muir happened right here in this park. So the whole idea of national parks and preservation that’s now been carried throughout the world has a genesis right here in this park. That makes it very high profile.

Then it’s so recognizable as a dramatic landscape. How many things of beauty can you put in one place?

It brings a spotlight. It brings differing opinions as to how it should work. It’s working through these opinions and trying to come to something that most can agree on that makes it pretty difficult.

Q: What’s your favorite single memory of Yosemite? Seeing it the first time?

A: No, it would be a night of a full moon on El Capitan. I had been here about two months [in 1987]. This had to have been about October when you had the big harvest moon. It was misty and magical and it was surreal. It was such an emotional experience. It almost said to me, “What’s really important in this world?” I might have been worrying about who knows what, and it just melted away.*