National parks don’t need food trucks to make them more appealing | Editorial

The Trump administration should be doing all it can to preserve our country’s national parks. Instead, it appears bent on plundering America’s greatest treasures for the benefit of a select few.

It’s an effort that must be stopped.

Advisors for the U.S. Department of Interior have suggested privatizing national parks and adding more commercial attractions such as food trucks and deliveries from Amazon — a horrible idea.

They also recommend eliminating senior discounts at park campgrounds during peak holiday and vacation times. Adding to the controversy is Trump’s 2020 budget that proposes cuts of nearly $500 million to the National Park Service. This, despite there being a nearly $12 billion park maintenance backlog.

What is particularly troubling is that the recommendations for modernizing the parks come from the “Made in America” Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee, a questionable group comprised of corporate donors and business executives who have ties to the hospitality and recreation industries.

Who is not on the committee? Conservationists and those who believe national parks must be protected — not used for profit.

The committee was created under former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in 2017, and it is being used to promote Trump’s privatization agenda.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the Trump administration wants to create more tourist amenities in some of the “most valuable and vulnerable land” in the country.

This is unnecessary. The point of visiting a national park is to spend time appreciating mountains, canyons, waterfalls, amazing geologic formations and beautiful scenery.

People visit the national parks to escape the electronic demands of the modern world. Adding urban comforts would take away from that experience.

While we understand national park visitors need places to stay and places to eat, there must be a balance.

And that balance should be protected by the federal government. Turning that responsibility over to private business would be a huge mistake because profits would start to matter more than access, and we must be cautious about proposals that lead in that direction.

Another reason to be worried is that the Los Angeles Times reports the advisory committee wants to “sidestep environmental impact reviews for campground expansion and development.”

Such a drastic idea cannot be accepted. Public land should not be treated with so little regard, and it definitely should not be used for private gain.

Critics of the committee’s recommendations are already in an uproar. They say Trump’s plan to cut the park service budget is a tactic to delay park maintenance even longer in order to bolster the argument for privatization

In a statement, Joel Pannell, associate director of Sierra Club Outdoors, said, “Turning our national parks into profit centers for a select few vendors would rob our public lands of just what makes them special … We will not allow the embattled Trump administration to turn our national parks into playgrounds for the wealthy and privileged, or permit companies that financially support the Trump campaign to profit from privatization of our public lands.”

Pannell’s sentiments are spot on, and we encourage our federal representatives to pay attention to this issue and do what they can to protect our parks from private interests.

The National Park Service is over 100 years old, and places like Mount Rainier, Yosemite National Park and Crater Lake don’t need food trucks to make them more appealing.