Funding a legacy

”He who plants a tree, plants a hope,” wrote Lucy Larcom at the beginning of her poem “Plant a Tree.” Her words continue to resonate today, especially for those traveling to national parks this summer. However, it is difficult to appreciate the joy or the peace of wilderness areas when access is difficult due to weather-damaged roads, lodging is uncomfortable due to leaking lodge roofs and sparking electrical systems, and non-wilderness scents are overpowering due to broken water-filtration systems and off-line waste-water treatment plants.

Such problems have long festered in the nation’s 388 national park areas (ranging from pristine areas like Michigan’s Isle Royale to historic sites like Philadelphia’s Independence Hall), which this summer will host up to 1.1 million visitors each day. They have worsened with time, to the point that there is now a nearly $5 billion repair backlog. So, in a speech on Friday, President Bush called upon Congress to fix the deteriorating situation by providing adequate funds for his National Parks Legacy Project.

It was a renewed call for park infrastructure stewardship, since Mr. Bush announced the initiative more than two years ago at Sequoia National Park, where he promised to make a “major investment in our national parks to preserve the legacy of protection for future generations.” Since then, Congress has allocated about $1.8 billion for the project. This year, Mr. Bush has asked for $1.1 billion more.

That money has been used for both evaluating the extent of the backlog, prioritizing needs and making repairs. As Assistant Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett said in an interview, this is the first time such a systemic assessment has been done. She compared it to taking an inventory of the maintenance needs of a small city, with roads, buildings and trails all in different levels of disrepair.

Some examples: About $6 million is being spent on the development of a new wastewater treatment plant at Yellowstone; $64,000 has been allocated to repair the severely eroded self-guided trail at Joshua Tree National Park; and $32,000 has been spent removing asbestos from the public auditorium of the Manzanar National Historic Site, a preserved Japanese relocation camp. Some 900 such projects have been completed since Mr. Bush announced the Parks Legacy Initiative, and about 900 more are scheduled for the next two years.

It is critical that headway be made on the backlog. As Ms. Scarlett pointed out, stewardship is much more than simply setting aside land. It is protecting and preserving what is already there. While extreme environmentalists would shut off all access to parks and wilderness refuges, true stewardship starts with the vision of individuals, generation after generation, finding veneration, solace and even wisdom in the wild places.

Maintaining park infrastructure is not as poetic as planting trees, but it is just as essential to wilderness appreciation. Mr. Bush deserves credit for pursuing his National Parks Legacy Project. Congress should honor that commitment by appropriating the dollars when it returns in the fall.