Keep Pros Who Love Parks

In a memo to her bosses at the Department of the Interior, National Park Service Director Fran Mainella said the administrative costs of a plan to contract out some Park Service jobs to private companies could seriously cut the already rock-bottom level of visitor services and seasonal operations. Unfortunately, that would be only a piece of the damage.

Jobs targeted for possible outsourcing -- as many as 4% of the Park Service total -- include firefighters, with 40 positions at risk in California alone. Others such as fee collectors and maintenance workers don’t sound so bad as candidates for contracting out, though visitors do turn to the collectors for advice as they enter the park.

However, the list also covers Park Service scientists and specialists such as archeologists, museum curators, historians and cartographers. Where will they find competent private experts who will work for the salaries of the current Park Service employees, or less?

This terrible idea already has demoralized scientists throughout the agency, which has a tradition of service and esprit that is often likened to that of the Marine Corps. “Morale is at the bottom of the barrel,” a Park Service archeologist told The Times’ Julie Cart.

These scientists are passionate about protecting park resources from the effects of development, whereas the Bush administration often has sided with economic interests.

High-level Interior Department officials -- up to and including Secretary Gale A. Norton -- repeatedly have trashed the scientific work underlying such sound decisions as the 2000 Park Service ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park. The ban is being reversed in response to objections from tourist businesses in the region.

Similarly, Yosemite-area businesses are campaigning for more parking and reconstruction of campgrounds along the Merced River in Yosemite Valley that were flooded out in 1997. They want to sell the additional campers beer, groceries and gasoline. Naturalists correctly argue that the campsites should not be there -- that the riverbank should be restored to its natural beauty. The region’s congressman, siding with business, is pushing for their return.

The nation’s most important natural and historic sites deserve to be protected by workers with expertise, experience and dedication to the parks. They are there now, in the proud green uniform of the National Park Service. There they should stay.