National Park Safety, Serenity in Conflict

It was a sunny spring day in Yellowstone National Park, and tourist Judy Brendalen paused for a midday snack at a roadside picnic table. Close at hand in her purse was her cellphone -- just in case.

“I think for emergency purposes, you need it,” Brendalen, of Clearbrook, Minn., said as she relaxed, not even noticing a cellphone antenna tower on a nearby ridge.

Cellphones have long been virtually unavoidable on city streets and in shopping malls. But now they are showing up in some of the very places people go to escape such things: national parks.

For park managers, this is a challenge. Officials say they want to ensure public safety and meet the needs of visitors. But they also must protect park resources and the visitor experience. There is no set policy on how to strike this balance, on what role cellphones and the antenna towers they require should play in parks.

Some conservationists worry that parks run the risk of becoming too civilized, even scarred by development.

“You have to keep in mind what the purpose of a park is,” said Laura Loomis, government affairs director with the National Parks Conservation Assn. “There’s visitor enjoyment, but it shouldn’t be at the sacrifice of the resource. And the resource includes the landscape.”

At least 15 national park units have one or more cell towers within their boundaries, according to regional Park Service offices.

Also, many parks may receive cell coverage in some areas from towers outside their boundaries. Park Service officials say that, on a national level, they do not track the number of cellphone towers in the parks.

Permitting telecommunications sites is done at the local park level, where officials are supposed to study the potential effects a proposal may have on such things as the environment and view and provide an opportunity for public comment, said Lee Dickinson, special park uses program manager with the Park Service.

“It’s important to keep the evaluation on the park level because they understand the park resource,” she said.

Some groups have questioned the process through which such sites are approved and say they would like to see more open discussion.

One Yellowstone tower, near Old Faithful, has been criticized as an eyesore by groups such as the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

Among the concerns raised by the group about such development is the potential it sees for the “death of solitude in national parks.”

“It’s possible you could come to a trail in Yellowstone and see someone yacking on the phone to their stockbroker,” said Dennis McKinney, development director for the employee group.

For Michael Scott, that kind of scene detracts from everyone else’s enjoyment of the park.

“Providing for the safety and enjoyment of national parks is necessary to address,” said Scott, executive director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. “But the concern on the other side of that is, if you take your family to Old Faithful to enjoy it ... is it appropriate to have people talking on their cellphone?”

Lane Baker, Yellowstone’s deputy chief ranger, said that many people expect to be able to use cellphones and that officials can’t dictate how tourists use them.

“We can’t control what people do on their cellphones,” she said. “You can’t control what they do at Old Faithful like you can’t control what they do in downtown New York.”

And Baker said cellphones in the park have a definite positive side, making a difference in the way officials can receive and respond to calls.

“As an emergency responder, I wouldn’t want to do my job without one,” Baker said.

Yellowstone is developing an “antenna management plan” that would look at such things as the park’s needs and help with long-term planning, spokeswoman Cheryl Matthews said. The park has five cell towers, including two that were built on existing equipment, and all are in developed areas within the park, she said.

“We felt, with the requests we were getting, that it was appropriate to move forward with this,” she said.

Matthews said she couldn’t estimate how much of the park receives cell coverage, but noted that only about 2% of Yellowstone is developed.

The issue isn’t just at Yellowstone.

At Grand Teton National Park, there are cell towers within and just outside the boundaries. Some backcountry areas have cell coverage, and that may create a false sense of security for tourists, said Joan Anzelmo, a park spokeswoman.

“With that access, people think, ‘With my cellphone, I can be rescued.’ That’s not a good attitude to have,” she said. “When you head out to the backcountry, you need to be knowledgeable and prepared” to deal with hazards without help.

But cellphones have saved lives.

Last July, a desperate cellphone call from 13,000 feet on the Grand Teton in Wyoming alerted rescuers that lightning had struck a party of 13 climbers near the summit. Rangers flew to the mountain by helicopter, and were able to pluck the most badly injured from the mountain before nightfall. One climber was killed by the lightning strike, but the others survived.

But on the other side of the equation, Yosemite spokeswoman Deb Schweizer said the park also has gotten calls from hikers who are simply pooped and want a lift out. They get a polite refusal.

“Just because you’re tired doesn’t mean we’re going to send someone out,” she said.

Roxanne Dey, a spokeswoman at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, said she wasn’t even aware of the location of towers in that unit until they were pointed out to her recently. She said that about 10% of the park had coverage with the three towers within its borders and that she felt safer, particularly when she was with her kids, having her cellphone along.

“I wouldn’t want a cell tower next to the Washington Monument or in the most popular hiking area at Lake Mead,” she said. “But I think you can strike a balance.”