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Show AN INTERVIEW WITH JERRY BANTA The new superintendent speaks candidly about the future of national parks in SE Utah On May 15, Jerry Banta, the new superintendent of Canyonlands National Park was interviewed permanent salaries and things like this. by Jim Stiles. The interview has been edited for clarity and length. Stiles: As long as we're on the subject of spending money, Owen has a question about the fee demo program: ‘Hikers have to pay a fee to hike near the Fiery Furnace without any direct benefit from the fee. Why single out one group of visitors?’ I think he’s talking about the fact that beyond just the Fiery Furnace guided walk, if you want to walk in that section of the park, even if it’s outside of that trail, there's a fee attached to it. Banta: To hike into the Fiery Furnace you need a permit, the basic reason for that permit is resource protection; we want to limit the numberof people and impact of people and to see that they get educated before they get in there. Why that particular area gets a fee charge and others don’t, relates to the amount of work it takes to manage that permit Stiles: You were here with the Park Service in the early 1970s. What is your take on the parks 25 or 30 years later? It’s a slightly different place... Banta: In terms of the parks, there are a number of big changes; when I worked at Needles, we had, I think, maybe a little more than 10 thousand people a year showed up. You could have a personal contact with everybody. At Arches I think there were maybe a couple of hundred thousand and now we're at 900 thousand, approaching a million. So, the numbers of people. have changed a lot. The resources are kind of interesting; just visibly, the first thing that hit me when I got here was the great increase in tamarisk. Alien plants. We used to hike around Salt Creek and do things down at the Needles and not see much of it. Some parts in Arches are tremendously impacted by that. It’s visuallyI think the biggest change system. To be quite frank, we've what I consider to be the highest that should be something that is the best. “Right now, it is a part had some discussion since I’ve gotten here about whether quality interpretive program at Arches National Park, why charged a fee for and that’s where we put out our message of the fee demo program--that’s what it keeps it going. on the landscape. There are some positive things. When I worked here 20-30 years ago we Stiles: Is there the possibility that someday you would also feel that you needed a fee to still had grazing in substantial parts of Needles and in Arches. hike the Devil's Garden Trail or Delicate Arch? In some areas, they look much better in terms of recovering and things like that. The changes have been both ways. Stiles: I was at Arches for 10 years, from the mid-70s to mid 80s, and I think in the 10 years that I was there visitation increased from 300,000 to 400,000; 13 years later and, as you said, it’s pushing a million. I guess that’s really the challenge-what do you do? How do you maintain the kind of park experience that people had then with a visitation that continues to increase? Banta: Interesting, well, that’s sort of the same kind of question we were asking 30 years ago. As you remember, we thought we were crowded then. I think there are two parts to that question--Arches has a windshield side and a backcountry side. I have always thought one of the critical things we have to do is really fight to preserve the experience for the people who want to get outside of their car and do some looking at the heart of the park. . The other side of the question deals with the car itself; we critically need to do some transportation planning and we’re doing everything kind of backwards. Probably over the next couple of years, we're going to change the entrance station, but that’s just going to get more people through the gate faster. We really need to get funding to basically look at all the transportation issues in the park, to see if there are alternatives, if there are other things T have always thought one of the critical things we have to do is really fight to preserve the experience for the people who want to get outside of their cars and do some looking at the heart of the park. we could to invest in, road-wise, to better distribute people. Stiles: I remember a couple of years ago Congress approved a park expansion at Arches into Lost Spring Canyon. At the time your predecessor talked about promoting this area as the jewel of the backcountry at Arches and possibly even establishing a back-country campground. It seems like the Park Service will acquire land and then promote its use. Or | sometimes it attempts to disperse use into seldom-visited places and creates new impacts. Why can’t the Park Service just preserve an area by not talking about it? Banta: Or at least not promoting the development. Well, I think that’s a good point. Of course, whenever you get to talking about new parks or expanding parks or whatever, it is a lot of different drivers in the process. Lost Spring Canyon--one of the things we need to do is look at how that fits into wilderness land at Arches because right now it’s not included. It obviously has a high potential for that kind of experience in the parks. I don’t think we'll be doing campgrounds in there unless it turns out to be absolutely necessary for resource protection. Stiles: With all the people we have coming here, do you think you're making the best use of your staff in terms of their accessibility to the visitor? Twenty years ago, the administrative staff all fit into a small eaiitiag on2 Main Street. Isn‘t the ratio of staff to field rangers weighted toward staff? Banta: I think if you actually looked at the numbers the big difference would be with the seasonal employees. When I worked at Needles there were three of us, now there's four times that many or so. At Arches there were two permanent rangers when I worked at Arches and that includes interpretive and protection staff. So, the field staffs have actually increased proportionally more than the central office staff in terms of permanent employees. But the fact is when budgets get tight, seasonal employees who are the people that normally do the professional job of guided walks and those kinds of things, pretty much get eliminated and we're forced to use volunteers. I haven’t had time to assess the whole operation here but times have changed so much in terms of the expertise you need, the compliance procedures that we deal with the resource specialists. Back in my day most rangers had some kind of natural resources background. You did most of the resource management yourself. The paperwork process just for payroll is intense. It’s a difficult situation, but every position that we fill, we look at where the need is the most. Stiles: One of the things that seems like it hasn't changed in 25 years is that when we talk about available funds for parks, the seasonal staff are always at the low pole. I can remember there was always money for heavy equipment, road capital improvements, but money for seasonal interpretation was always is. For example, I know there was a need for trail repairs at Arches, but end of the and trail tight. And when I go totem crews, it still to the Windows and see this incredibly expensive trail system with rock stairways, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, it seems a poor use of NPS funds. I just have to wonder, Banta: I hope not. I think one of the dangers of the fee demo program, not just here, but across the country, is this thing of getting nickeled and dimed for everything. Theoretically, | you'd like to pay an entrance fee and have most of the things accessible to you, unless | they're particular things that aren’t available to anybody else like special users. That’s one of the big concerns we have is that the plethora of different types of fees are going to doom the whole program. Having to pay a fee every time you turn around. Stiles: You’oe mentioned the possibility of building a new visitors’ center at Arches and Owen was wondering if you plan on tearing the old one down; his thought was the fewer structures in a National Park the better. Why not tear it down and move those offices into town, But his thinking is, if you're going to have offices why have them right on the edge of the National Park itself? Banta: The answer to the first question is yes, we not only plan on--and it’s not designed yet so you can’t talk too specifically about it—but the scenario would be that you not only replace the existing visitors’ center but that you remove some of the other buildings out there at the same time. As you're aware, Jim, the visual appearance of the entrance to Arches has always been kind of a haphazard thing. What we want to do in the course of that process is not only look at removing a few of the buildings that are there but also seeing how we can visually improve some of the ones that are. There are some offices that have to be there—fee collectors, toll ranger service and some of those kinds of things, but probably it won’t house any more folks than are directly to those operations. Stiles: What about the maintenance area, will that pretty much stay the way it is? Banta: Well, we don’t know yet, but one of the planning things that we’re hoping to do if ‘ we get a little bit of money to do planning is to look at the maintenance area. If we can’t ’ do anything with it, certainly it.can screened much better than it is. Stiles: Balanced Rock is one of the centerpieces of Arches National Park, but if you go up that adjacent gravel road about 200 yards, you'll find the park gravel pit, just 100 yards from the picnic area. It has been an eyesore for as long as I can remember, with heavy equipment parked up there, diesel oil in the wash. And a lot of junk. Any chance of moving that? Banta: It’s been reduced somewhat significantly, in fact, when I was here there were two of them. There was that one and another you could actually see from Canyon Rim Point does the park have the opportunity to say, we'd rather have that money spent in other ways? And if you don't have that opportunity and this has been going on for so long, when are all these superintendents going to rise up against Washington and try to make some just before you dropped down from Salt Valley. It was an incredible eyesore from one of the major viewpoints of the park. That one somehow over the years got removed. I hope we can do a better job with the one that’s here changes? Banta: I think there will be some changes. I personally am not sure the extent to which we built trails in the Windows was necessary, although there needed to be some trail improvements up there. Most of that is raised from the fee demonstration program. The next time Congress looks at the fee demonstration program, it needs to look at whether the use of that money can’t be broadened. As you would expect with a new program there’s ! Stiles: Along with the fee demo, which was in response to increased visitation and impacts in the park, there are obviously a lot more restrictions than there used to be 20 years. If you wanted a backcountry permit to go to the Maze, you went out there, showed up and got a free permit and went. That's all changed; how do you see that evolving? Is it going to get even more restrictive in the future and do you support all the restrictions that are in place now? For instance, closing Salt Wash to vehicles limited the number of people that Angel Arch to just a handful. How do, you se ig and expanding? real interest in-making’ t projects that are _done.are highlypvisible, that they are things tinge repo for the program. A lot ofthe directio nie been focusing on maintenance backlog pefully the fee demo program /will be made,permanent or at least restructured so that we can use it for a broad Harige fo f activities to put it into interpretation, to put it into resource management. Everybody is talking about that; it is retty hard to do these things without for instance being able to spend the money on _ Banta: If we have restrictions, the should be either elated to impacts on resources or the opportunity for experience. I really‘dfon‘t see much‘more-in terms of,restrictions. It seems me that we'll be visiting the baéKcouritry platiniitg’ for ‘Cifiyonlands in probably two or three years. The Salt Creek thing is a different issue. The Salt Creek case is the basis of a whole new section of national policies in the National Park Service. The circuit court of |
