National Parks tragedy: Don’t crowd out nature with food trucks and Amazon deliveries

Just as the Indiana Dunes finally has achieved national park status, Washington insiders are trying to cash in on the natural treasure and other parks, too.

By CST Editorial Board

An overall view of the sand dunes at Mt. Baldy at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan City, Indiana. — The Indiana Dunes, formerly designated a national lakeshore, became a national park in February.

Just as the Indiana Dunes finally has achieved national park status, Washington insiders are trying to cash in on all the parks by commercializing them to the max.

Their noxious notions include opening the parks to food trucks, expanded WiFi, mobile camp stores and even Amazon deliveries to campsites.

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Please make this wretched scheme go away.

When we go to the Indiana Dunes, we want peaceful windswept shores and tranquil forest paths, not a tailgate party. When we go to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina, we want the spray of a waterfall and a quiet campfire.

We get all the crowding and clamor we want — or can stand — in our daily lives.

Evidently, the people on the Trump administration’s Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee disagree. Rather than unspoiled wilderness, they favor something akin to Navy Pier.

In a new proposal, the committee, which is a part of the Department of the Interior, argues for making way for those food trucks, Amazon deliveries and other amenities more appropriate to daily city life.

Nobody should be surprised.

The committee has been lambasted since it was formed early last year, by former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, as nothing but a shill for commercial interests. The committee largely is made up of representatives from the tourism, manufacturing, hospitality and recreation industries.

Last year, the Washington Post obtained documents showing that private industry pushed for the creation of the committee for the sole purpose of getting a foothold in the parks.

The mountains come alive with a rainbow of hues. | Great Smoky Mtns NP Photo

The Great Smoky Mountains | NP Photo

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The Grand Canyon | Sun-Times/Thomas Frisbie

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The Ironwood Forest National Monument in Marana, Ariz. | Greg Bryan/Arizona Daily Star via AP, file

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Many_Glacier___Early_Morning_Yawn_credit_NPS_Tim_Rains.jpg

Of the 25 glaciers that remain in Glacier National Park – in 1850, there were 150 glaciers in the park – one of guests’ favorites is Many Glacier, considered to be the heart of the park. | National Park Service, Tim Rains

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A portion of the beach at Acadia National Park near Bar Harbor, Maine, is shown on the east side of Mount Desert Island in this October 2002 photo. | AP Photo/Christina Hinke

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The granite monolith El Capitan, is shown in Yosemite National Park in California. | AP

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The committee’s priorities fit like a glove with those of the Trump administration and new Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who in September gave the go-ahead to electric-powered bicycles on formerly quiet nature trails.

This kind of commercialization — to the fattest wallet goes the spoils — could price some Americans right out of the parks. To jack up revenue, for example, the committee has proposed eliminating senior discounts during the peak summer camping season.

Our national parks, which have suffered big budget cuts, attract huge numbers of visitors every year. It’s hard to buy the committee’s argument that the parks are “underused” — one of Bernhardt’s favorite words — when there were 318 million visits last year and a record-high 330,882,751 visits the year before.

“I have a room all to myself,” Henry David Thoreau once wrote. “It is nature.”

Leave the national parks alone.