I just finished entering online comments into a Glacier National Park survey about how to do things better in managing the park. If you’ve visited Glacier recently, you know that all roads in the park are controlled by a reservation system that dictates when you can drive from one place to another. I can understand why the plan was tried, but I think it made everything worse.

I believe that the first duty of the National Park Service is to protect the land along with its flora and fauna. Overcrowded parks–such as Glacier–tell me that the NPS’ focus has gotten skewed to (1) providing unlimited access to everyone, (2) managing overcrowding rather than preventing it, and (3) Choosing recreation over the preservation of a pristine area.

I do not think the NPS should create chaos in overcrowded parks by instituting reservation systems about who can use which roads and when. This accentuates the overcrowding and ruins the visitors’ experience rather than improving it.

Since nothing else seems to work, I proposed banning private vehicles on park roads and using a shuttle service, raising prices on overcrowded parks and lowering them on underutilized parks, and not changing the roads/trails to accommodate the most invasive species (man) at the expense of the landforms and natural cycles of the area.

The first duty is protecting the land within the park. Allowing people into it is way down on the list of priorities.

–Malcolm