Yosemite ‘Remodeling Project’ Controversial

The hum of chainsaws and clank of steel on steel have replaced the chattering crowds of summer in this lush sub-alpine meadow as officials push forward the largest effort to transform Yosemite National Park since its creation in 1890.

“It’s kind of like remodeling your house. We’re not building a new house. We’re just fixing what we’ve got to make it better,” said Michael Tollefson, Yosemite National Park superintendent.

Development continues to encroach on park boundaries, bringing new housing projects and commercial construction -- and thousands more people.

The newly opened Chukchansi Casino, one of the state’s largest, is 30 miles down the road, advertising with billboards throughout the region: “Now, Yosemite has a night life.”

And with the recently approved SilverTip Resort Village, a 47-acre commercial and residential complex slated to go up in the tiny park border town of Fish Camp, many area residents fear an onslaught of traffic and tourists and a scar on the scenic surroundings.

With development and a boost in domestic travel after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, visits to the park are increasing and changing direction. The park has 3.5 million visitors annually. Thirty years ago, 80% of Yosemite’s visitors were overnighters; now, it’s 80% day-use.

And vehicle traffic has increased about 30% over the last decade. Seven bears were killed by cars on park roads in 2003.

Park managers say they are forced to make changes to protect natural resources and accommodate a fluid demographic.

The controversial $441-million Yosemite Valley Plan, part of which is under way, aims to “reduce the human footprint,” pruning parking spaces, moving campsites and roads, rebuilding housing destroyed in the 1997 flood and improving a shuttle bus system, among many other things.

Tollefson calls it a restoration project.

“Some do tend to look at it as new development. But in reality, what we’re doing is taking facilities that often look very tired and making them more user- and visitor-friendly, but at the same time providing better protection of the resources,” he said.

Wooden walkways are being installed over wetland meadows, buildings are being moved from the flood plain and an 85-year-old dam that once provided electricity for valley homes is being demolished, allowing 81 miles of the scenic Merced River to flow freely through the park.

But Yosemite’s back-to-nature scheme is not without critics.

“The thrust and the balance of the plan is development, and the singular intent is more development,” said Greg Adair, co-director of Friends of Yosemite Valley.

“The park does foresee more visitors and an increasing population in California, and if it is their claim that they can accommodate that with the plan, it is probably true,” he added. “But it will cost the environment. It will also cost visitors their freedom.”

Writers, artists and photographers spread the fame of Yosemite throughout the world during the early to mid-1800s, attracting a steady increase of visitors and, ultimately, imposing drastic changes on nature’s landscape.

On June 30, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill granting Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, a stand of some of the world’s largest trees, to the state of California as a public trust, marking the first time that the federal government set aside scenic lands simply for protection of natural resources.

Yosemite became a national park in 1890. Since then, it has struggled to find a balance between preservation and access.

The Yosemite Valley Plan will bring just that compromise, supporters say.

“The plan strikes an elegant balance between visitor needs and protecting wildlife and natural habitat in the valley,” said Diane Boyd of the National Parks Conservation Assn.’s Pacific West regional office.

Adair disagreed, calling it the urbanization of a natural wonder that will allow easier access for visitors to concessionaires, but limit visitor freedom. “There’s upward of 70 archeological sites destroyed or impaired in the Yosemite Valley under the plan,” Adair said. He argues that the plan will also bring pricier hotel rooms and less affordable campsites for families on budgets.

“What if I told you that 20 years from now, nobody who wasn’t a white-collar professional would be able to afford to stay in Yosemite Valley? What if I told you that in 30 years, the only people that would be allowed into the park would be forced to ride some form of transit system and pay lots of money?” Adair said. “It’s an elitist plan.”

Six lawsuits have been filed against the park since the Yosemite Valley Plan was first unveiled by then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in 2000. A passionate group of Yosemite lovers has often been at odds with park management policies.

“I’ve come to understand you’re a cantankerous, eccentric, passionate, irrational, idealistic, quarrelsome, impossible crowd of people,” Babbitt said at the time.

Park Ranger Scott Gediman sounds like a modern-day urban planner when he describes the future of Yosemite Valley.

“The ultimate goal is to have somebody drive into the valley and park their car and leave it, and get around by walking, bicycling or shuttle bus,” he said.

Sweeping his hand across an asphalt parking lot at the base of Lower Yosemite Falls, a site that attracts at least a million visitors a year, Gediman summed up much of his vision of the plan’s goal with one sentence: “This will all just be converted back to nature.”