Some people think the National Park Service needs to take a chill pill.
D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and other local congressional leaders are supporting an effort that would require the NPS to take another look at its policy of applying the same rules and regulations to all its parks, regardless of local circumstances.
The NPS owns most of D.C.’s parkland (the National Mall, the Ellipse, Rock Creek Park, for example) but this particular effort in the form of a study stems from the NPS’ “refusal to allow the Capital Bikeshare program on or near the Mall,” Norton’s office said in a press release. Leaders are also ticked at agency’s “insistence on operating the District’s three golf courses as concessions, where there is no incentive for capital investment.”
They would rather see the NPS enter into a public-private partnership “to attract the private capital needed for capital-intensive upkeep and renovation.”
Although the NPS-owned neighborhood parks in D.C. serve a different function than Yellowstone National Park, for example, NPS applies the same rules and regulations to all of its parks.
“D.C residents, perhaps more than Americans in other jurisdictions in our country, have often been frustrated by NPS’s inflexibility in meeting the needs of local communities,” Norton said. ” Even within the necessary unified national park system, one size does not fit all parks all the time uniformity.”
Norton’s effort is backed by Reps. Michael K. Simpson, R-Idaho, and Jim Moran, D-Virginia, respectively the chairman and the ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies.
