My kid spent the summer doing a survey of the salmon population in Prince William Sound Alaska. Nice office, don't you think?

It's rough work, but somebody has to do it!

Prince William Sound is one of the most beautiful places in the universe as we know it.

The salmon must be awfully big if they need shotguns. Oh, wait..Could it be be that humans aren't the only creatures conducting a "survey of the salmon population" in the region?

It certainly is a beautiful - almost as good as the Channel Islands....

The thing one always has to keep in mind in Alaska is that we humans are not necessarily at the very top of the food chain!

I'm highly skeptical of the last part of your statement. However, I have not had the opportunity to visit the Channel Islands, so I will reserve final judgement on your claim.

For that matter,I have never been in Prince William Sound, although it may have been fly over country on my one trip to Anchorage. And possibly my attitude is just a wee bit provincial - "my mind is made up, don't confuse me with facts...."

Ha, I'll be there in about a month -- if work lets me take off long enough to take a boat and hike around in all that beauty! Maybe I'll even see some whales on the way there. It will be fun to be somewhere relatively warm in December.

Very likely there will be whales - extensive pods of dolphins are almost a certainty. We may be getting winter storms by then, but the very best weather comes in the winter, in between the storm fronts.

But the islands aren't very civilized.....

There are lots of beautiful places left in the world, but eventually they will get ruined by tourism and corruption of the resources these places have. Hopefully Prince William Sound will remain spectacularly beautiful simply because of the inhospitable weather and difficult access.

I have a soft spot for Cyprus,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CxIPyriX9U

But over the years the island has catered too much for tourism and the corrupt property speculators.

A few miles away from where I live for example.

http://www.thesidlaws.co.uk/fields-and-countryside.html

Creative landscape photography will only bring the scourge of the tourist when published on the Internet.



BTW thats where the Romans built their pontoon bridge during the 3rd Roman Invasion to cross the River Tay. Otherwise known as the arse hole of the World in the film 'Centurion'

That is why we have national parks and comparable preserves. Competently planned and administered (key phrase), they withstand the ravages of unbridled tourism quite well. Difficult access helps a lot, as well.

Not to stray too far into that cess pool that starts with "P" and ends with "olitics", but even the parks and preserves are often under intense pressure. You say "difficult access", and someone else will say "we need to build a new road".

I've mostly poked some very gentle humor at the "civilization" discussion on another thread. But getting serious for a moment, I think one mark of a modern civilized society is the preservation of a few scraps of beautiful and wild areas. Enough of the population of a civilized society needs to agree that leaving some wildlands are important for future generations, or else Am_Fear_Liath Mor's comment that "eventually they will get ruined by tourism and corruption of the resources these places have" will come true for every place. I hope people think about that.

Now I will get off my soap box, and return you to your regular programing.

What's the point of setting it aside if it's too difficult for most people to see it? The one in particular that comes to mind it Chaco Canyon. It's shortest access route is 13 miles of BAD dirt road. Note that's bad for dirt road. The park's website advises that the roads can be impassable after inclement weather.

Only thirteen miles of dirt road? Things have improved since I worked there in the late 60s (that's 1960s). As I recall, it was more like thirty miles or so of not always well maintained road, heading either north or south.

Things like dirt roads,or actually having to hike, rather than driving up to the attraction, tend to weed out casual visitors or those just making use of the restrooms (not that there is anything wrong with using restrooms). Those folks will always have Mesa Verde, with its paved road and developed facilities - basically more civilized than Chaco. Working the information desk at Mesa Verde, I had a visitor who said they had fifteen minutes to see Mesa Verde, what was available. I advised them to go have a quick cup of coffee and maybe a fast tour through the museum.

Actually if you want to see the best preserved cliff dwelling, in the most scenic situation, in all the National Parks, you want to visit Keet Seel. Be prepared for an overnight stay after a minimum eight mile hike.

There is a perpetual tension between preservation and development, and in my biased opinion, the National Park Service mostly gets it right. But the proper amount of development is always up for discussion - there are those who would build chair lifts to the summit of Denali, if they could.

"What's the point of setting it aside if it's too difficult for most people to see it?"
What's the point of letting floods of people in to ruin it? Yellowstone National Park can be so crowded in the summer it resembles a New York City park.

And what is wrong with keeping a few areas which are difficult and challenging to reach? You mention "one in particular that comes to mind". So there is one that is a pain to get to. Bummer! Yet as hikermor so well puts it there are numerous others which are accesable by everyone. Must we make every inch of every park accessable by road? And, as others have noted, if too many people trample an area, it tends to destroy the very things that attract us to those areas.

There are plenty of parks, preserves, and other areas of all sorts that anyone who is still breathing can reach. I strongly believe that there should be at least some areas which are left as much as possible in their wild state. I agree with hikermor that the NPS, USFS, and various other agencies generally do a pretty good job of striking a balance between keeping areas that are accessable to all, and keeping a few areas which are left alone and remote. Looking at the big picture, the amount of true wilderness in the US is actually quite small (and it gets smaller every year). Let's keep the few scraps of wilderness we have left! The people that don't want to make any effort to get there have numerous areas they can visit easily.

Absolutely not. Having a trail within the park rated extreme? Dandy. I know my limits. Same thing to reach the valley/clearing/old settlement where they are repopulating the Smokeys with elk. IIRC it's several miles of one lane gravel road. I'm not referring to a particular area (i.e. a peak, trail, valley, etc.) That is just to get to the visitor's center of the park. It's been several years since I was there but what I'm remembering is that the roads after the visitor's center are either good gravel or paved.

Thirteen is the shortest (northern). The other two (southern) are 20 & 30 miles. The maintenance has apparently gotten worse since then. Their description of the southern routes is now "Both routes can vary from very rough to impassable."

I don't have a problem with protecting sites with isolation. Isolating the entire park including visitor's center is another matter. I can easily see isolating parts of Chaco Canyon, especially the petroglyphs. I can see some joker deciding to add to them if they didn't.

One interesting thing about this is that Chaco itself is under the management of the NPS, while the roads leading to the park are the responsibility of the state of New Mexico. The roads inside the park are paved. Why the state would not improve the roads leading to a tourist attraction in a region where tourism is a major industry is a good question. Note that surrounding population is mostly Navajo. Back in the sixties, the word was that the local trader just outside Chaco opposed improving the roads, making the locals dependent upon him for goods and services. The gentleman is question was one of the most despicable individuals I have ever encountered.

BTW,if you think the roads at Chaco are bad,wait until you see the roads at Channel Islands. They in turn are far easier than what people drive on inside Canyon de Chelly (I hesitate to call them "roads."). And we haven't even reached Alaska yet. The Superintendent at Gates of the Arctic NP told me there are areas within that park that no human in recorded history has ever visited. Definitely uncivilized, even barbaric!

I would like to point out that these decisions are not made in secret by faceless guv'ment burrowcrats. Nowadays there is a fairly elaborate public meeting and review process, so if you have an interest in an area orin the general concept, participate, either by submitting written comments or attending and appearing at a public meeting.

This is on my mind, because I am planning to attend such a meeting dealing with the management plan and wilderness status for Channel Islands National Park early next month. I expect the meetings will be well attended and that everyone will get a chance to express themselves.

Personally,I am a bit conflicted. I am a fan of wilderness, and wilderness is where I prefer to taketrips. Proposed wilderness boundaries in the park will close some of the roads that have provided access to important research areas, so that will mean tougher access...So be it!

True, but a lot of times you are stuck with decisions that were made years or decades ago and haven't been revisited. If it were a park that is a lot closer to me it would get commented on long and loud.



Will the roads be maintained for park service and firefighting? Push for some sort of research exemption. If you are doing research that the park service could benefit from they should have no problem writing you a waiver for access.

Might be in part to preserve them through isolation. With the current condition of the roads only someone that WANTS to see it will make the trip.

Sounds like road conditions are largely a matter of what you are used to. The worst you generally find around here are gravel or forest service fire roads. The road into Chaco Canyon reminded me of a stretch in West Virginia after passing a sign that read "state maintenance ends."

At what time of the year were you there? Especially when wet after summer thunderstorms, the roads get torn up rather quickly by the relatively heavy traffic. The roads are wet during the winter during warm spells, but traffic is lighter and often everything is frozen solid.

Somehow I doubt that New Mexico worries very much about preserving ruins managed by another outfit. Having worked there, I can assure you I would prefer to see at least a light duty paved road (getting groceries is much easier). When traffic gets heavy enough, pavement is less environmentally impacting than a graded dirt or gravel road.

deleted to move to right place in thread

Dead of summer about the fourth of July.

One other point that hasn't been mentioned aside from who is responsible (state or NPS) for road maintenence, is the basic issue of chronic underfunding of the National Park System. I don't have the figures immediately at hand, but for quite a few years now there has been very inadequate maintenence funds for the NPS. Many (most?) park units have a big backlog of defered maintenence of roads and other visitor facilities. And this was the case before sequestration. There is the old saying that "you get what you pay for". I find it ironic that when I visit parks such as Denali, I sometimes hear visitors grumbling and complaining about the inadequacy of this or that service or facility. Yet when it comes time to cut budgets, parks (local, state, and federal), are often amoung the first targets.

Big +1

Great Smokey Mountains NP just repaved the Cades Cove loop road that probably sees more traffic every year than some entire parks. I don't recall it ever getting more than patched before this in the last 20 years. There were areas where half the road had deteriorated to where it would be considered gravel sub-grade (potholes got bigger and deeper every year). They might have been able to continue patching it IF they could have stayed on top of it. Budget and unexpected higher priority emergency repairs probably prevented that.

I agree with AKSAR about cuts in maintenance, although I am clearly biased. When it is time to cut the budget, routine maintenance is often first on the chopping block. You can get away with that game for a little while, but it will eventually come back to bite you. Responsibility for highway maintenance varies with each park - sometimes it is the park itself, and sometimes it is the state or county, etc.

One thing to keep in mind about money spent to run and maintain National Parks, is that many parks generate work and jobs in the surrounding area. Several states offered to provide the money to run several parks during the recent shutdown. They weren't being philanthropic - it was just good business.