<DOC>
[109th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:28170.wais]
NATIONAL PARKS OF FLORIDA
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,
DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JANUARY 11, 2006
__________
Serial No. 109-149
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
28-170 WASHINGTON : 2006
_____________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512ÿ091800
Fax: (202) 512ÿ092250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402ÿ090001
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
DAN BURTON, Indiana TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
CHRIS CANNON, Utah WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee DIANE E. WATSON, California
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
DARRELL E. ISSA, California LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JON C. PORTER, Nevada C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina Columbia
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania ------
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio (Independent)
------ ------
Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director
David Marin, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian/Senior Counsel
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman
PATRICK T. McHenry, North Carolina ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DAN BURTON, Indiana BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JOHN L. MICA, Florida DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota DIANE E. WATSON, California
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
CHRIS CANNON, Utah C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina Columbia
Ex Officio
TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
J. Marc Wheat, Staff Director
Mark Pfundstein, Professional Staff Member
Malia Holst, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on January 11, 2006................................. 1
Statement of:
Fields, Sherri, Chief, Natural Resources Division, Southeast
Region, National Park Service.............................. 8
Reed, Nathaniel, member of National Council, National Parks
Conservation Association; and Dexter Lehtinen, senior
member, South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force..... 35
Lehtinen, Dexter......................................... 62
Reed, Nathaniel.......................................... 35
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Fields, Sherri, Chief, Natural Resources Division, Southeast
Region, National Park Service, prepared statement of....... 12
Lehtinen, Dexter, senior member, South Florida Ecosystem
Restoration Task Force , prepared statement of............. 69
Reed, Nathaniel, member of National Council, National Parks
Conservation Association, prepared statement of............ 41
Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana, prepared statement of.................... 5
NATIONAL PARKS OF FLORIDA
----------
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11, 2006
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and
Human Resources,
Committee on Government Reform,
Miami, FL.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:05 p.m., at
Miami City Hall in Coconut Grove, Miami, FL, Hon. Mark E.
Souder (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Souder and Ros-Lehtinen.
Staff present: Marc Wheat, staff director; Jim Kaiser,
counsel; Mark Pfundstein, professional staff member; and Malia
Holst, clerk.
Mr. Souder. If we could have order, I'm going to go ahead
and start the hearing.
Good afternoon, the subcommittee will come to order.
Thank you for joining us today. This is the eighth in a
series of hearings focusing on the critical issues facing the
National Park Service. I would like to welcome the Members of
Congress who have joined us today, my wonderful colleague from
the State of Florida, and those who care deeply about the
national parks.
Thus far, we've not only had a Washington hearing, we've
had field hearings in Gettysburg, Boston, Seattle, San
Francisco, Honolulu, Grand Canyon, Flagstaff, we have one
scheduled in February for Atlanta. We'll have one in Anchorage
in August, and we don't have the date set yet for the Indiana
Dunes and the Chicago area, and we may do one in the Rockies.
The point here is to try to do them regionally around the
country, see what things are different in each region, and
which things are the same. This is, by far, the most
comprehensive series of hearings that has ever been done in the
National Park Service. There are, obviously, the Resources
Committee and the National Parks Subcommittee, of which I spent
probably about, I think, the last 6 years up until this year
when I took leave to go back to education, actually, in 2005.
We do occasional oversight, but there you are dealing with the
day-to-day alterations to land, new heritage areas, different
debates, and once in a while you may do a thing on
demonstration fees or that, but you don't do a comprehensive
oversight and analysis. And, that's really the purpose of the
Government Reform Committee, which existed actually before the
authorizing committees.
Historically, Congress always had appropriations committees
and the next group was the oversight, and then the third thing
was the authorizing. It was a somewhat rocky start to get these
hearings done, because the Government Reform Committee has
never done anything before in the parks and resources area. So,
everybody who thought it was solely their jurisdiction was not
thrilled with these hearings. The administration thought that
this would be a constant push for more money. The different
subcommittees were concerned about jurisdiction, but as we
worked through, basically, hey, that's what we do in Government
Reform. Last year we were probably most famous for Mark McGuire
saying to our committee that he didn't want to talk about the
past, which, of course, in an oversight committee that's what
we do, is we talk about the past to try to set up about the
future, where if you look at the process, Congress spends the
money. If you look at it, say, in education, Education
Committee would set the policy and the authorizing, fund it
through the Appropriations Education Subcommittee, and then the
Government Reform from Education would do oversight.
So, every cycle our committee predominantly focuses,
because we do authorizing and oversight, on narcotics, and have
spent much of this week in Florida on that issue. But because
we have a broad range, and we can't ever do complete oversight
over anything, the chairman has wide discretion working with
the ranking member to choose what areas that you want to do
oversight on.
For example, the departments that we have oversight over
would be anything with narcotics, which overlaps heavily into
homeland security, because we are the primary border
subcommittee, but we also have Health and Human Services, HHS,
Education, HUD, Justice, and we one other one, it's basically
70 percent of the budget that--and then I traded Commerce to
get Park Service. In addition, we have the White House
Oversight on Faith-Based and other White House operations, so
it's wide ranging. And, I chose this cycle that I wanted to
focus on the Park Service. I think with the 100th birthday
coming up that it's important that we look at this like we did
Mission 66 prior to 1966 for the 50th birthday, and say where
is the Park Service headed? What do we do? What do we want it
to look like in the 100th birthday, and what do we want it to
look like for future generations after the 100th birthday. And,
whenever you have these huge timing periods, like the
anniversaries, it's a time when you do reanalysis to look at
this.
This hearing will focus on the parks of Florida. In most of
these we highlight one, like the Grand Canyon, but then do that
region. Last year, millions of Americans visited the State of
Florida and millions more live here. Many of these people visit
any of the 10 National Park Service units located here. These
sites are historic, cultural, and natural, and all make unique
contributions to the Park Service.
Florida is the home of the first permanent European
settlement in the continental United States. This story is
preserved at the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, which
I visited earlier this week.
Perhaps the best known of the Florida's units is Everglades
National Park. This park protects unique ecosystems, endangered
species, and water quality in south Florida. Importantly, the
Everglades are in a state of renewal and restoration. This
restoration has been controversial and expensive, but can teach
us much about preservation, environmental impairment, and
restoration.
When the Republicans took over in 1994, the year that I
came in, due to the leadership of the south Florida delegation
they got, basically, Speaker Gingrich became interested in this
and really initiated kind of an awareness more than had ever
been in the U.S. Congress, broad-based, that we needed to
address this whole question of population growth and the
uniqueness of water.
West of the Mississippi in the Resources Committee that is
what you debate all the time, is water; basically, who gets
what percentage of the Colorado River, and how can they move
it, and can they steal some of the Great Lakes water because
they don't have enough out of the Colorado River. That's,
basically, what the Resources Committee does. If they are not
talking about forest fires, they are talking about water.
But, east of the Mississippi we don't talk about it as
much, except down here in Florida where this is a kind of where
you took a whole State that used to be wet, and now have built
it heavily, and what does that do to the ecosystem of the State
of Florida, and how does Florida resolve this.
A critical part of the parks of south Florida is
environmental preservation. Of particular importance is the
conservation of unique coral formations. These reefs provide
homes, not only to unique wildlife, but also support human
existence through water purification and protection from the
ocean's fury.
The National Park Service is facing many challenges and
problems. Management and funding are of constant concern to all
park units. Underneath these problems are problems special to
each park unit. In Florida, environmental degradation is of
particular concern.
As we have frequently seen over the last few years, Florida
sits directly in the path of hurricanes. These storms disrupt
the day-to-day living of Florida's citizens and the balance of
nature. Although hurricanes are themselves natural phenomena,
they can and do destroy nature's delicate balance. They also
damage Park Service assets which conserve the ecology of
Florida and facilitate visits to these exceptional areas.
Restoration and rehabilitation of park facilities in the face
of recurring hurricanes is certainly a daunting task that will
not end, but perhaps can be improved as we learn more about
nature and hurricanes.
I would like to welcome Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
to this hearing. Although she is not a member of this
subcommittee, she is a member of the full Committee on
Government Reform, and one of the more senior members. I think
we are probably two of the five or six most senior members on
the committee, she more senior than I. Congresswoman Ros-
Lehtinen is a strong advocate for Florida and for the national
parks.
On our first panel, I'd like welcome to Sherri Fields,
chief of the Natural Resources Division of the Southeast Region
of the National Park Service. She will be joined during the
question time by Superintendents Karen Gustin of Big Cypress
National Preserve, Dan Kimball from the Everglades National
Park, and Mark Lewis from the Biscayne National Park.
Our second panel will be Nathaniel Reed with the National
Park Conversation Association and also Dexter Lehtinen with the
South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force.
I also want to point out that you don't see that many field
hearings working without the minority member, but we have a
very bipartisan approach, which a lot of times people think all
we do in Congress is fight, but, in fact, we work together on a
number of issues. And Elijah Cummings is the ranking member on
this subcommittee, and almost everything we do on narcotics,
everything we do on parks, has been bipartisan, and it requires
the minority and the majority to be working together to be able
to do these type of field hearings, which we've done around the
country, and we've been able to do that even in the continued
and difficult atmosphere in Washington. But it's very important
in the legacy of the National Park Service that we try to
maintain as much as possible a bipartisan support base, so that
the Park Service survives no matter which party takes control,
and no matter which branch of which party takes control, it has
to be something that can survive through multiple generations
and changes in the political system.
With that, I'd like to yield to my friend and colleague,
Ms. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.043
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.044
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mark, and I thank you
and your wonderful hard work down here. The Park Service is a
very important part of our daily life in all of Florida, and
especially south Florida, and not just for tourists, but native
Miamians enjoy the beauty of our parks as well. And, I'm so
delighted that you've asked the superintendents and the
different officials from the National Park Services to testify
today, Sherri Fields, Karen Gustin, Dan Kimball, Mark Lewis,
representing Everglades National Park, Biscayne National Park,
etc.
And, this hearing is very important, because we've had a
very difficult hurricane season. As you pointed out, it's a
natural phenomenon, but it's had a devastating impact, and no
area of south Florida has been immune from the impact,
certainly not the parks themselves.
I'm blessed to have Biscayne National Park and Dry Tortugas
National Parks in my congressional district, and my colleague,
Mario Diaz, is blessed to have Everglades National Park in his
congressional district. So, a lot of us share the common
problems that the parks are facing with continued use and
making sure that we can keep our natural resources for the
enjoyment of mankind, as well as for the beauty that it has for
the tourists who come down here.
I've got, almost 70 miles west of Key West lies a cluster
of seven islands composed of coral reefs and sand called the
Dry Tortugas, and I know that you will be visiting this area
shortly, along with the surrounding shoals and waters they make
up what is called the Dry Tortugas National Park. The area is
known for its famous birds and marine life, and this is
certainly a pristine national park. It's got exquisite reefs,
abundant sea life, and impressive numbers of birds, and it's
one of our greatest natural treasures, but it needs mankind to
make sure that we can keep these areas as pristine as possible,
yet allow folks to use these treasures as well. I don't think
that park should be run like by a librarian who hates it when
somebody comes into the library to take a book off the shelf,
because then it disturbs the order of the books on the shelf.
National parks are to be enjoyed by all of us as well, and
we've got to find that balance so that they can be open and
enjoyed by everyone.
And, as we know, and you pointed out, Mr. Chairman, in your
opening statement, the National Park Service had its founding
in 1916. It's grown substantially, and it's caused an
escalation and a demand of its resources, and we need to work
together to determine how we can best address the needs of the
National Park Service, especially here in south Florida. Our
national parks in our area are facing many challenges, the
hurricane season that I mentioned had an especially devastating
impact on our parks. For example, in Everglades National Park
one of the world's greatest natural resources, it draws
thousands of visitors annually, it's critical that visitors
have access to all areas of the park. The Flamingo Lodge
suffered great damage from our hurricanes, and I hope that the
National Park Service plans to rebuild the Flamingo Lodge so
that it can be used by our community and visitors alike.
The Everglades is one of the most precious and abundant
fish and wildlife preserves in the United States, and
protection of this unique habitat has been a national priority,
and we take great pride being in south Florida saying that
we've got this beautiful treasure right in our backyard.
So, I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
timely hearing, for coming down here and being able to
experience it yourself, for examining the crucial issues that
we are facing, such as the preservation, and the maintenance,
and the law enforcement, and homeland security aspects of
national parks as well, and I look forward to the testimony of
the superintendents and the distinguished panel of witnesses,
and welcome the opportunity to work together with you, Mr.
Chairman, and your staff, and other members of the subcommittee
to ensure that our national parks are properly preserved and
maintained so that we can enjoy them for my daughter's
generation.
Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much.
Before we hear testimony, we need to take care of some
procedural matters. First, I ask unanimous consent that all
Members have 5 legislative days to submit written statements
and questions for the hearing record, that the answers to
written questions provided by the witnesses also be included in
the record.
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Second, I ask unanimous consent that all exhibits,
documents and other materials referred to by Members and
witnesses may be included in the hearing record, and that all
Members be permitted to revise and extend their remarks.
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Finally, I ask unanimous consent that all Members present
be permitted to participate in the hearing.
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Our first panel, if you would come forward, is Sherri
Fields, Chief of Natural Resources Division, Southeast Region
of the National Park Service. She will be accompanied by Karen
Gustin, superintendent of Big Cypress National Preserve, Dan
Kimball, superintendent of Everglades National Park, and Mark
Lewis, superintendent of Biscayne National Park.
And, if you could all come up, I'll actually need to swear
you in. Normally, this isn't a big deal, but we do this as an
oversight committee, Raphael Palmeiro found it can be a big
deal, hopefully, we won't have to do any of that. If you'd
raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that each of the witnesses
responded in the affirmative, and I understand that Sherri will
be giving--Ms. Fields will be giving the testimony, and then
the others will be available for questions.
The rest of you can sit now, if you want, during the
testimony, and then as we get into questioning we'll do that.
Ms. Fields.
STATEMENT OF SHERRI FIELDS, CHIEF, NATURAL RESOURCES DIVISION,
SOUTHEAST REGION, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Ms. Fields. Great, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really
appreciate this opportunity to appear before you today, to
discuss some key issues facing the national parks here in
Florida, with particular focus on the cost of restoring natural
landscapes.
I will take the next few minutes to present a few short
remarks, while providing a more complete written testimony for
the record.
First, on behalf of the National Park Service, I would like
to acknowledge and thank Congress for its continuing support of
our parks and programs in the Southeast Region, as well as the
entire National Park System.
With me today are Karen Gustin, superintendent of Big
Cypress National Preserve, Dan Kimball, superintendent of
Everglades National Park and Dry Tortugas National Park, and
Mark Lewis, superintendent of Biscayne National Park. They will
be happy to answer any specific questions about their parks at
the conclusion of my testimony.
The State of Florida is home to 11 units of the National
Park System, including Fort Caroline and DeSoto National
Memorials, Canaveral and Gov Island National Seashores,
Castillo de San Marcos and Fort Matanzas National Monuments,
and the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve.
Here in south Florida, we manage the three largest, and
arguably most ecologically significant areas in the State.
Everglades National Park, the largest remaining sub-tropical
wilderness in the United States, Biscayne National Park, the
largest marine park in the National Park System, and Big
Cypress National Preserve, the first national preserve in the
National Park System. Approximately 70 miles west of Key West,
FL is Dry Tortugas, a cluster of seven islands surrounding
shoals and waters, and which includes Fort Jefferson, one of
the largest coastal forts ever built.
In 2004, Park Service units in Florida welcomed more than 9
million visitors, who generated millions of dollars in economic
benefits to surrounding communities. The Park Service respects
the responsibilities entrusted to us by the American people,
and our focus remains fixed on protecting these places for the
enjoyment of present and future generations.
As is the case throughout the National Park System, parks
in Florida are funded from several different sources, to help
carry out their important missions. Congress appropriated more
than $31.5 million for the operation of the national parks of
Florida in fiscal year 2005. This is an increase of 6 percent
from 2004.
In addition to these base funds, many units receive cyclic
maintenance funds, and some construction and land acquisition
funds designated for individual parks in annual appropriations
bills. Parks also collect concession fees, transportation fees
and recreation fees. For fiscal year 2005, Florida parks
received over $3.3 million from the 80 percent portion of the
recreation fees that individual parks retain, which were used
for projects that benefit visitors.
In addition, Florida parks receive a great deal of
financial and in-kind support from cooperating associations,
fringe groups and other partnership entities.
I would now like to touch on some significant initiatives
and issues of great importance to our parks here in south
Florida.
The Everglades National Park Protection and Expansion Act
of 1989 authorized the addition of over 109,000 acres of the
northeast Shark River slew to the park. The act directed the
Army Corps of Engineers to improve water deliveries to
Everglades National Park and to the extent practicable take
steps to restore the natural hydrologic conditions and the
biological abundance and diversity of the park.
Through fiscal year 2005, the project received $191 million
in Park Service construction funds and $100 million from the
Land and Water Conservation Fund, for the purpose of acquiring
the East Everglades addition to Everglades National Park, and
to implement the Modified Water Deliveries Project. All but 500
acres have been acquired, and several components of the project
have been completed.
For fiscal year 2006, the Congress appropriated an
additional $60 million to the Park Service and the Corps to
carry out the modified Water Deliveries Project.
In 2000, Congress passed the Comprehensive Everglades
Restoration Plan [CERP], a State and Federal partnership that
is estimated to cost $12 billion and take several decades to
complete. The six to eight project components comprising CERP
are intended to provide benefits for the natural eco system,
while also providing for urban and agricultural uses.
To date, the State and Federal Governments have established
the legal assurances in the form of a binding and enforceable
agreement, as well as programmatic regulations to ensure that
appropriate quantities of water that are produced by CERP are
set aside by the State of Florida and dedicated and managed for
the restoration of the Everglades Natural System.
Last year, the State of Florida announced its initiative to
accelerate elements of the CERP and commit the funding
necessary to plan, design and construct these projects. This
evidence of the State's commitment of more than $1.5 billion
provides the opportunity to jump start the restoration plan
agenda and is a major boost for Everglades restoration.
While south Florida eco system restoration will provide for
long-term benefits to the quantity, timing and quality of water
flowing through the system, shorter term efforts are also
underway to address the single greatest threat to native plant
communities at our parks, non-native, invasive plants. For
example, at Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National
Preserve there are approximately 1,000 plant species recorded.
Of these, more than 200 species are exotic invasives. With the
generous funds appropriated by Congress for our Exotic Plant
Management Teams, we have been able to forge an attack on
species such as melaluca, old world climbing fern, resilient
pepper, and Australian pine.
Recognizing that invasive species cross geographic and
jurisdictional boundaries, collaborative efforts among Federal,
Tribal, State and local entities, and willing private
landowners, can be highly effective in managing a shared
problem. The partnership between the Park Service and the State
Department of Environmental Protection is an example of how
collaboration and leveraging of funds can result in significant
strides toward addressing this issue.
From 2000 to 2005, the State has nearly matched dollar for
dollar Park Service funds to treat invasive plants and over
398,000 acres of park lands.
There are a number of other natural resource challenges
facing our parks, which I do not have time to address, but they
include the restoration of seagrass beds and coral reefs
damaged by vessel groundings at Biscayne, protecting wetlands
and managing for off-road vehicle use at Big Cypress, and
managing the recently implemented research natural area at Dry
Tortugas.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, it is apparent that the devastation
caused by the two most destructive hurricane seasons in recent
memory has been imprinted in the minds of millions of
Americans. The national parks of Florida were also severely
impacted by those storms. The high winds and storm surge
resulted in damage to piers, historic structures, park
facilities, staff residences, lodges, cabins, vegetation,
trails, wildlife species and coral reefs.
Though the parks are actively working to address damages
from the hurricanes, we are still undergoing natural resource
damage assessments. In some cases, the full and cumulative
extent of damage and needed restoration costs will not be known
until the additional damage assessments are completed.
In conclusion, we are deeply committed to protecting the
places in our care and ensuring quality visitor experiences for
present and future generations. We deeply appreciate the
support parks have received from you and from Congress. Thank
you for the opportunity to be here today. We will be happy to
respond to any questions you or other Members may have.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Fields follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.045
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.046
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.047
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.048
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.049
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.050
Mr. Souder. First, what I would like to do is start with
some general--and we may followup with staff as far as
particular dates so we can have some comparison between the
regions, but if you could give us, by park in your zone, the
full-time equivalent, the FTEs of the employees you had in, I
will say, 2000, 2003, 2005, but the ideal thing will be to
match up with what I've requested at other hearings, so we may
change those dates slightly.
Part of our challenge here is, Congress, basically, is
making the fundamental decision of how much we fund the Park
Service, along with each administration. But, we need to know
what tradeoffs we are making, and one of those things is to get
a handle on what's happening in the staffing question.
A second part of that is, if you could show us the--I don't
know how else to say this, but we can work with staff and your
office, the regular dollars you receive in the budget, in other
words, what is southeast, what are your 10 parks getting, is it
increasing, declining, going with inflation? We are roughly
doing 3 percent on the Park Service, they are getting around 3,
not counting the plus up for the Everglades Project. And, we'll
have to figure out how we put something like that back in,
because clearly it's coming into your zone, but one of the
fundamentals is, is it coming into your zone, and how much of
that comes out of your regular budget, how much of that was
actually new money, and the only way for us to tell that is to
get some kind of, what's your baseline operations, and then
what do we put in when we add a unit? Because one of the things
we do all the time in Congress is we vote for a new heritage
area, we vote for a new park, we vote for an extension for a
park, without calculating or being told, quite frankly, what
that means in tradeoffs if we are not increasing the dollars by
an equivalent amount when we do that.
And, the only way we can do that for our report is get some
of the baseline data, so that then we can try to analyze and
try to tell region by region what tradeoffs we are making,
because clearly we have to make tradeoffs. We are making
tradeoffs in Medicare. We are making tradeoffs in Social
Security, and child abuse support we are making tradeoffs, and
what type of things, weapon systems and everything else,
there's some of that in the Park Service too, but the goal of
this report is to kind of document some of that tradeoff that
we don't really--we haven't really done an oversight study on
before. The tradeoffs have been done inside the administration.
Another broad question, have you had agents transferred out
of your parks for homeland security purposes, or do you tend to
get agents transferred to your zone?
Maybe each of the superintendents could come up, and if you
don't have a district wide, maybe you could each say about your
three parks at least. Have you had--when homeland security
pressures became kind of greatest after September 11th, and
then in not counting--I'm going to ask separate hurricane
questions, if you could start maybe with the Everglades.
Mr. Kimball. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I'm very pleased
to be here today, thank you for holding this hearing.
My understanding is that your different, Code Orange, Code
Red, whatever, that actually Everglades National Park, we did
not permanently transfer any rangers to homeland security or
any other Federal entity.
That being said, we did send rangers from Everglades to
various locations around the country to provide enhanced levels
of security.
Mr. Souder. Is that happening on a regular, ongoing basis,
or that just happened right after September 11th?
Mr. Kimball. I think--that was before I got to Everglades,
but as far as I know there were certain--I would presume if we
went to an elevated code, a threat level, that, in fact, they
would draw upon Everglades law enforcement, fully commissioned
law enforcement rangers, who would, in fact, then go to
Washington or other locations with the Park Service or other
locations.
Mr. Lewis. All of the parks were asked to provide law
enforcement protection rangers, commissioned rangers, that were
sent to dams, to icon parks, to places both within and without
of the National Park Service, and that lasted over a period of
about a year and a half or 2 years.
During that time, it was not uncommon for a park that, just
say as an example, may have had eight or nine law enforcement
commission rangers on staff, may have two of those rangers out
of the park for a month at a time.
Mr. Souder. And, that happened at Key Biscayne, too?
Mr. Lewis. I have been at Biscayne National Park for a
total of about 4 months, so I can't answer your question
directly. It did occur at the park that I was at prior to this.
Mr. Souder. Which was?
Mr. Lewis. Horseshoe Bend National Military Park, also in
the Southeast Region.
Ms. Gustin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I've been at Big Cypress for about 8 months, and so I don't
know exactly what the situation was at Big Cypress after
September 11th, but prior to that I was at Pictured Rocks
National Lakeshore up on Lake Superior, and we had law
enforcement commission rangers that would rotate out to these
icon parks, like the Archer, Independence Dam recreation areas
for a period of about 3 weeks, and that did last for about year
and a half to 2 years. And, we had probably one person gone on
a fairly regular basis during that time from our current--from
the staff that we had.
Mr. Souder. In any of your three parks, when we go to a
higher standard, are anything particular targets there that are
increased? Have you identified in your parks, yes, hydrology,
water systems are at risk and, therefore, you need to also put
ranger protection on those sites?
Mr. Kimball. I don't believe Everglades or Dry Tortugas
National Parks are identified as icon parks that would warrant
additional security measures, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Gustin. That would--same for Big Cypress.
Mr. Lewis. And, the same for Biscayne National Park.
Mr. Souder. And, if you could check, we'll let the record
stand that--what would be helpful, if you could each provide
for the record, so we can have a base here, how many law
enforcement rangers you have at your park, and if you can get
some idea on the standard how many were transferred, because
one of the key questions here, is how do we--should there be a
separate homeland security allocation given the icons and the
Park Service, much like we do with highways and the Park
Service, because of demands in the system that are put on the
system?
Also, presumably, maybe Mr. Kimball you could say, what
does the law enforcement ranger do at the Everglades National
Park?
Mr. Kimball. A wide range of activities, everything from
standard law enforcement to patrolling our park road, to
patrolling out on Florida Bay looking for resource violations,
in some cases dealing with resource issues, a full, wide range
of things, perhaps, meeting visitors and doing interpretation,
and possibly responding to an alert from a visitor that a
python has been cited.
So, it's fairly safe to say that while some things might be
able to be reduced in function, law enforcement rangers are not
something that's easily automated.
Mr. Souder. I'm sorry, easily automated?
Mr. Kimball. No.
Mr. Souder. In other words, as far as protecting panthers,
protecting whether people are poaching, protecting campers,
requires a person.
Mr. Kimball. Yeah, they provide a full range of services
for the Park Service, and they have extensive training, and
most of--a large number of our law enforcement rangers, because
of the distance from a hospital or emergency technicians, are
medical technicians, EMTs.
Mr. Souder. So, when you have refugees come in to the Dry
Tortugas, are those law enforcement rangers that would handle
that?
Mr. Kimball. Yes. We do work with the U.S. Coast Guard and
Homeland Security. When they land at the fort, it's really an
all-hands drill. I would be happy to explain the process, and
we can talk about that when we are going out to the fort on
Friday, but it is a security matter, it is a homeland security
matter when they arrive at the fort, dry foot, and at that
point we maintain security and either have the U.S. Coast Guard
come and pick them up, or we, in fact, bring our boat out some
time to take them back to authorities in Key West.
Mr. Souder. So, roughly, how many law enforcement rangers
do you have?
Mr. Kimball. We have five law enforcement rangers at Dry
Tortugas National Park, with a total staff of 13.
Mr. Souder. And, Everglades?
Mr. Kimball. Law enforcement?
Mr. Souder. Yes.
Mr. Kimball. We have a total of 28, and we have an
allocation of 33, so at this point we have five unfunded law
enforcement rangers.
Mr. Souder. So, you are already down five to six, and if
you had the two of nine ratio you conceivably could have had as
many as six gone at the highest levels of elevation after
September 11th from Everglades, and possibly another one from
Dry Tortugas.
Mr. Kimball. Possibly. We can go back and look to see how
many, in fact, what the draw was.
Mr. Souder. My question is that how--is it safe to say that
your pressures on law enforcement haven't decreased at
Everglades Park?
Mr. Kimball. Our law enforcement needs assessment and our V
wrap shows a requirement of 52 law enforcement rangers.
Obviously, we are not at that level. We are looking at a lot of
other ways of getting assistance, and I'd be happy to explain
some of those things that do provide assistance and additional
law enforcement rangers with some additional sources of
funding.
Mr. Souder. It would be very helpful if you could provide
that for the record.
Mr. Kimball. I'd be happy to.
Mr. Souder. So we would have that, because one of the
questions is, when you are multi-tasked to protect increasing--
in many cases increasing numbers of visitors, plus the
resources, plus the wildlife, which would be part of the
resources, and then rangers are taken away, and if the demand
is increasing, but the number of people are reducing, the
question is, what tradeoff are we making?
And, in fact, you know, what is the effect? Are visitors
less safe? Have you had a resource reduction, increase in
poaching? What, in fact, happens when we reduce that, or, in
fact, have we overestimated the number of rangers we need?
That's the tradeoff.
Do either of you have any comments on the rangers and on
your resources, that discussion? Would you say that your law
enforcement need has declined?
Mr. Lewis. Our need has declined?
Mr. Souder. Yeah.
Ms. Gustin. The need?
Mr. Lewis. I would not say that our need has declined. At
Biscayne National Park, the park covers 173,000 acres, most of
that is over water. And, if we were at full staff with our
protection staff we would have seven people.
When you consider people being on blue days, and people
being on, you know, vacations every now and then, and training,
that's pretty short staffed. Right now we've got five
positions, two of those that are filled, two of those positions
are not filled, and we are in the process of trying to fill
those now.
Mr. Souder. Are your positions law enforcement mostly
focused on protecting coral or wildlife, or on people who are
there?
Mr. Lewis. Quite honestly, we spend most of our time right
now dealing with people. We find it difficult to really get out
on the reefs, where we would like to be. One of the reasons
that the park was established, of course, was because of the
beautiful coral reefs which make up about 33 miles of the park.
We spend so much time dealing with people issues that we don't
get out and spend a lot of time on resource protection.
Now, we do have other staff members who are not
commissioned rangers, who do spend time doing resource
management programs, archeological programs, and things of that
nature, but to answer your question, we are not over staffed.
Mr. Souder. Ms. Gustin, we stopped coming across from the
west side at the visitor center on Big Cypress a few hours ago.
Ms. Gustin. Right, good.
Mr. Souder. Are those--that's comparatively new in the
system, visitor center?
Ms. Gustin. The Oasis Visitor Center?
Mr. Souder. Yes.
Ms. Gustin. No, that's been around for quite a while.
Mr. Souder. OK. Now, what about, have you expanded
facilities there? Are you getting more visitors? How is Big
Cypress evolving?
Ms. Gustin. Right. We have a permanent law enforcement
staff currently of about eight law enforcement rangers. That
includes our chief ranger who is the program manager for the
division. And then, we have three unfunded positions.
And, similar to Everglades and Biscayne, our rangers do a
wide variety of functions, from road patrol, to campground
patrol, to wildlife violations, and spend a lot of time dealing
with people, of course.
And, to answer your first question, I would not say our
need is decreasing. We get about a half a million visitors a
year into Big Cypress, and our total acres is 730,000 acres.
Out of those 730,000 acres, we have approximately 150,000 that
are part of a new part of the park called the Addition, that
was acquired in 1988, and that will offer us a new challenge as
far as managing from a resource protection and law enforcement
standpoint is concerned.
So, our needs are increasing, I think probably every park
would say the same.
Mr. Souder. OK.
Before following up with some more questions I'll yield to
my colleague.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, all of you, for being here today.
I had a few questions. Regarding the Coral Reef Restoration
Project at Biscayne National Park, Ms. Fields' testimony says,
``Although many different technologies for coral reef
restoration have been tried, success has been meager and
difficult to quantify. The inability to satisfactorily restore
damaged coral reefs is due in large part to limited
understanding of coral reef ecology.'' I wanted to get more
background about why we would have such limited understanding.
It seems that so much has been written, and explored and
studied about coral reef, our understanding of coral reef
ecology. What knowledge do we need that would----
Mr. Lewis. I am guessing Sherri wants me to field this one.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Do we need a Jacques Gusteau?
Mr. Lewis. An example, coral bleaching is an event that's
been taking place over the last 10 to 12 years at an increased
rate. We don't know why it occurs. We've got a lot of antidotal
evidence of some of the characteristics of the sea that are
occurring when coral bleaching occurs, but we honestly don't
know. It's probably some combination of related to temperature,
of ultra violet radiation, of, you know, a number of different
things, pollution.
We do know, and I know you are an avid water enthusiast,
you may have been in the water over the reefs in the park. You
can swim along and there will be reef sections that are
absolutely gorgeous, beautiful, and then right beside it there
will be a piece of reef that's just bleached out white. It
might have a shell sitting on top of a piece of brain coral and
you pick up that shell and what had been shielded from the
sunlight isn't bleached out.
There's just, to be honest with you, yeah, there has been a
lot of study going on over the last 50 years about reefs, but
there's just so much that we don't understand. Part of our
process, or one of our programs of revitalizing damaged reef
areas, includes going out when there's been a grounding and we
have reef damaged and destroyed, going out and actually picking
up pieces of reef that are very small, that probably would
never grow again, and we take them into a nursery and we're
trying to grow them so that we can actually use those pieces
once they've grown larger to restore other damaged areas.
So, we are doing a number of different things, but we have
not had a great deal of success, quite honestly.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you.
We have such a great educational facility in the University
of Miami Rosenstiel School. Does the Park Service partner with
any educational institutions to try to get that background,
because I know it is here in Ms. Fields' testimony about the
hurricane damage. She says, ``Our limited understanding of the
underwater environment forces us to rely on natural processes
for the vast majority of recovery processes within the reef
tracks.'' So again, that lack of understanding, there are great
educational facilities.
Mr. Lewis. We have a number of relationships with the
universities, with NOAA, their National Marine Fisheries
Section, with different Park Service units, with the Coral Reef
Task Force. We've got relationships with tons of people, we
truly do, and all of us are working together to try to come to
grips on this, and be able to be more effective in our Resource
Restoration Projects.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Lewis.
On the issue of hurricanes, and the impact that it's had on
so many of our parks, Biscayne National Park, Ms. Fields'
testimony said, ``Although trails have now been reopened, salt
spray from the storms has killed much of the leafy cover,
slowing recovery.'' When do you expect full recovery, if at
all, from this devastating season, and what can we expect from
the next hurricane season, and is there anything that the
National Park Service can do to protect these habitats from
future wreckage?
Mr. Lewis. One of the challenges that we face is finding
funding sources to do the type of monitoring that we want to do
and need to do to. I mean, we can go out to Elliott Key, you
can go out to Elliott Key tomorrow, and if you walk on our
ocean-side boardwalk, well, first of all, you won't be able to,
walk on the trail because the boardwalk is not there anymore
from the hurricane, but you'll see a great number, a great
percentage of the vegetation out on the island is turning
brown, and grey, and the leaves are going to drop. What the
degree of chill is going to be, we don't know, so we are in the
process of doing monitoring, but we are also in the process of
hunting for the funding to enable us to do that better.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, and just one more. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman, for the time. In Ms. Fields' testimony she says,
``Everglades' damage was most severe in the Flamingo area, the
lodge and cabins at Flamingo sustained significant damage and
are not in habitable condition. Efforts are underway to reopen
portions of Flamingo for day use visitor services and to allow
front and back cut-through camping this season.'' And, what are
these efforts, and what is in line to fully--what is the time
line to fully open the lodge?
Mr. Kimball. We are going on a step-by-step process at
Flamingo. You've read accounts, we got hit by Katrina in
August, and then on October 24th we got hit by Wilma, again,
with severe winds, and in the case of the first, with Katrina
we had a storm surge in the 3 to 4 foot range, and with Wilma
we not only had the winds, we also had a storm surge up to 6,
7, 8 feet in places, including a Florida Bay marl mud that
covered pretty much all of Flamingo.
We have, I understand from our facility manager that just
as of yesterday we've got full power back to Flamingo. Our
process there is to, as I said, go step by step. The first
order of business is getting day use operations in place. We've
had the White Water Bay open, where boats could launch and go
up the Buttonwood Canal and go to the north.
We have a problem with the Florida Bay Marina. We have an
area that at low tide is as little as 6 inches of water, so we
have scoped out a dredging project, which we have scoped out
and are ready to go ahead with. And, we are also working with
the concessionaire in terms of a day use operation to open up
the marina store, and also to provide fuel.
The pumps were inundated with Katrina. Luckily, we did not
replace them quickly, because they also got inundated with
Wilma, but they are going to have to be replaced, and it's a
very intricate permitting process to get pumps that are right
on a sea wall.
So, we are trying to get our day use operations up as soon
as possible, also open the camp ground.
Now, the question on Flamingo is a more complicated one.
I'm sure you've seen some of the articles in the paper. I want
to make it real clear, we have not made any decisions on
closing, and you probably saw statements from Fran Mainella,
our director, we are still going through the process. At this
point, we are going to be looking at a lot of different
alternatives. We have leadership coming from Washington and
Atlanta to visit the park in February to start to look at a
process to develop a plan for Flamingo.
Flamingo, at this point, is in our General Management Plan,
which is going to be completed in 2009. We've made a decision
to carefully look at pulling Flamingo out of the plan and doing
a fast track, a site plan, to evaluate exactly what Flamingo
should look like.
I think we all know that Flamingo, it is our only overnight
accommodations in Everglades National Park. I've heard others
say, and I'll use it here, it's part of the fabric of
Everglades National Park, so I think we'll proceed that way in
terms of looking at exactly what Flamingo should look like.
We are very concerned about reconstructing as is, because
the development is at grade. At points it's just 3 feet above
sea level. It does not comply with the Monroe County Code, and
as one of our employees said in a newspaper interview, ``It's
throwing good money after bad.'' We are thinking if we are
going to develop a facility down there it should be hurricane
resistant on the second floor type development, but as you
know, by developing things on a--building things on a second
floor are very expensive.
So, we are looking and exploring the opportunities to
possibly enter into a joint venture with a private interest,
and the National Park Service, and we've also gotten many, many
phone calls in the last month of private individuals in the
south Dade area, and also across the country, that are very
interested in contributing their own funds to rebuild Flamingo.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, just one last question. Thank you for your
time.
Out of Everglades National Park, Biscayne National Park,
Big Cypress, and Dry Tortugas National Park, what areas in
those parks are currently closed to the public; which areas
that are now closed will be open to the public; and are there
any areas that will not be opened to the public ever because of
the fragility of the area?
Mr. Kimball. Are you saying--asking because of the
hurricane?
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. No, just in general, just so that, I have
the philosophy, and I hope that the Park Service does too, that
parks are to be enjoyed by the public, and not be that fussy
librarian that doesn't want to get that book out of the shelf
and get it out of order.
Mr. Kimball. Right.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. And, I hope that you believe that the
parks should be enjoyed as well, and I'm wondering if that is
your philosophy, and are there any areas that are currently
closed that will be open? Are there some areas that because of
the nature of the ecology they would suffer as a result of
contact with man, and will remain closed to the public?
Mr. Kimball. If I might, we are dealing with a number of
these issues in our General Management Plan. There are some
very, very limited areas within Everglades National Park that
are closed, principally for protection of sensitive wildlife
species, particularly, on the Keys. There are certain areas in
Dry Tortugas National Park, because of the incredible bird
assemblage in the park, that are, in fact, closed to visitor
use, but they are basically sensitive wildlife areas.
Everglades is a very large place, 1.5 million acres, almost
1.4 million of that is wilderness area, but there are very few
areas that are closed. There are some areas right now, because
of the hurricanes, that we do not permit, day use is permitted,
but overnight use is not permitted, because we have lost porta-
potties, for example.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. That's not related to the hurricane, so
tell me that again.
Mr. Kimball. There are some keys, we'd be happy to get you
a list. We have--there are some keys in Florida bay, for
example, that are, in fact, closed because of sensitive
wildlife areas, and we'd be happy to get those to you.
In many cases, those have been closed for quite some time.
There is a new area, called Carl Ross Key, that was, in fact,
recently closed because of hurricanes and effects on the Rosset
Spoon Belt.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. Thanks.
I wanted to followup a little further on the Flamingo Lodge
area. Has it been hit by previous hurricanes? I mean, to get
hit twice here, is that extremely unusual, never before?
Mr. Kimball. There is a history of hurricanes at Flamingo.
I think the last major hurricane that hit there, and I'm pretty
new down here, I guess----
Mr. Souder. You can provide it for the record.
Mr. Kimball [continuing]. We'd be happy to do that, in 1960
Hurricane Donna hit it very hard and had a storm surge that I
think was as much as 10 feet.
Mr. Souder. Because it would be good to see the history of
this in kind of a risk assessment question.
Flamingo Lodge, having only been there a number of years
ago, is not kind of one of the--it's part of the fabric of the
system, and the only place you can stay, but it was not
necessarily the model of visitation services.
Mr. Kimball. Correct.
Mr. Souder. Maybe a model for the mosquito repellant
people.
And, it had, arguably, one of the worst visitor centers
I've ever visited in the entire National Park Service.
Now, there were already plans underway, 4 or 5 years ago,
to look at addressing the question of Flamingo Lodge and the
visitor center. Was there a timetable that's now been adjusted,
or where were we at in that process before these hurricanes
hit?
Mr. Kimball. Mr. Chairman, there was a site plan that was
developed in the late 1990's. The sense was that we, I guess 3
years ago, started a General Management Plan process, and
Flamingo would be considered in that General Management Plan,
and a lot of the issues that you just brought up were going to
be considered, in a general way, in the General Management
Plan, but then would be followed up with a development concept
plan and a site plan.
Mr. Souder. Did the hurricanes hit Big Cypress or Biscayne?
Did it do much damage in your parks as well?
Ms. Gustin. Yeah. One advantage I have is, I'm on the west
side of Florida, so I don't get hit quite as often as Biscayne
and Everglades do, but Wilma did do a number to Big Cypress.
And, the majority of our damage was done in the back
country. It was very widespread, and we had significant damage
to vegetation, with downed trees over hundreds of miles of
trails, that took about 6 to 8 weeks to actually clear and open
to the public.
And, we had roof damage to buildings, and utility systems
damaged, as well as communication problems, for a good 3 to 4
weeks after she hit us.
And so, it was very widespread, very spread out, so we
didn't have a focal point like Flamingo, fortunately, but we
had a lot of very widespread damage throughout the whole
preserve.
Mr. Lewis. And, Biscayne National Park, again, much more
fortunate than Everglades National Park, we did have extensive
damage to vegetation. We had parts of roofs that were lost. We
had screened rooms that were lost. We had damage to boardwalks.
We had damage to the boating docks where we tie up our
government boats.
All in all, we were somewhere in the neighborhood of $1
million worth of damages, which is a whole lot better than some
parks have been.
Mr. Souder. And, could you provide for the record if
there's any history in the past of how frequently this occurred
since 1960?
Mr. Lewis. Hurricane Andrew did a huge number, of course,
on the homestead, South Dade County, back in 1992, and did a
huge number on Biscayne National Park at the same time.
This year has been the first year of any real significance
since Andrew.
Mr. Souder. Let me ask Mr. Kimball, and it would also
relate somewhat to Big Cypress, in Louisiana there's been a
gradual change with the channeling and increase in brackish
water, and less protection for the city of New Orleans, and
this was an issue multiple years prior to Katrina. Is that
happening in the Everglades, do you see the sea water moving
into the system, and what is that doing in the hydrology mix in
the park, and how this might even relate directly to the
Flamingo area?
Mr. Kimball. We've been monitoring increases in sea level
in Florida Bay, and we've gone to the Rosenstiel School of
Marine Sciences and other places, and what the scientists tell
us is that we could be looking at as much as a foot of sea
level rise in Florida Bay over the next 100 years. Now, I
realize there are some projections that are above that, some
projections are below that, we are using that as a planning
number, and it really has an effect on kind of what kind of
infrastructure we are looking at, particularly, in the Flamingo
area.
Mr. Souder. Can you see that you are losing feet per year
now with the small rises, because in Louisiana they were
dredging and diking, and trying to preserve the bayous and the
fish and wildlife areas already, prior to Katrina.
Mr. Lewis. We are seeing some changes down there. I can't
say that it's directly related to this sea level rise that
we've been hearing about.
Mr. Souder. May I ask you about your boats. One thing
that's really apparent when you come across, it's one of the
constant questions we have, visitation, and then in-holdings,
and Native American groups, are most operations licensed? Can
you explain a little bit to me how Florida differs with--
clearly, many of them were Native American, both at Big
Cypress, I think more probably than Everglades, but between the
two of you could you deal with that question?
Ms. Gustin. I'll go.
Mr. Souder. Sure.
Ms. Gustin. We do have commercial air boat operations
outside of Big Cypress, predominantly, by the public. We are
currently going through what we call a Commercial Services Plan
to evaluate the need for commercial services at Big Cypress,
which could potentially include air boats.
Right now, we do not have any licensed or permitted
commercial air boat operations in Big Cypress. Now, we do have
private air boat operations, but not commercial.
We plan on having those commercial services----
Mr. Souder. What do you mean by the difference between
private and commercial?
Ms. Gustin. If you had an air boat and wanted to come to
Big Cypress, you could go do it.
Mr. Souder. It would be like horseback riding or something.
Ms. Gustin. Right.
If you had a business and wanted to conduct----
Mr. Souder. If you can horseback ride in Big Cypress.
Ms. Gustin. You can.
Mr. Souder. OK.
Ms. Gustin. If you had a commercial air boat service that
you wanted to charge people for, currently we do not have that
type of service in Big Cypress.
Mr. Souder. So, the ones that you see advertised along the
way----
Ms. Gustin. Those are all outside the boundary of Big
Cypress.
Mr. Souder [continuing]. At the east/west boundaries?
Ms. Gustin. Yes, the west boundary we have a couple of big
operators, and on the east side we have about four, well, we
don't, on the east side there are about four or five big
operators.
Mr. Souder. And, they can't go in to the National Preserve?
Ms. Gustin. On a commercial basis, no, but private
individuals can operate air boats in certain sections of Big
Cypress.
Mr. Kimball. In Everglades National Park, air boating is
permitted in one area, the area that Ms. Fields talked about,
the East Everglades, the 109,000 that was brought into the park
in 1989. There are two forms of--use can take two forms, one
are private air boaters, and the law says that private air
boaters who are, in fact, air boating in the East Everglades on
January 1, 1989 can continue for their lifetime. OK, it's a
life estate.
In terms of commercial air boat tour operations, the 1989
act says that if you had a commercial air boat tour operation
on that date, in January 1989, you can continue your operation,
and the Secretary of the Interior is authorized to enter into
concession contracts with those operators.
We are in the process, right now they are operating, our
best information is there's about 300,000 visitors that are
coming into Everglades National Park. They are operating, they
do own private land there, they are right along Tamiami Trail,
you've probably seen them, they are operating within the park.
They do not have any kind of incidental business use permit or
a commercial use authorization.
At this point, we are in the process of going through an
interim concession contract process. In fact, we are doing an
environmental assessment to get them under some form of
concession contract.
Now, that being said, we are also looking within our
General Management Plan about the appropriateness of commercial
air boat tour operations in the East Everglades area of
Everglades National Park within the GMP, and we'll be making a
decision about that 2008-2009 period.
Mr. Souder. Do any of your parks collect demonstration
fees?
Mr. Kimball. Yes.
Ms. Gustin. Yes.
Mr. Souder. And, how do you do that, at the Flamingo area
in Everglades?
Mr. Kimball. We collect fees at our entrance station, just
west of Homestead, and also at the Shark Valley, we have a tram
operation that collects fees there.
Mr. Lewis. At Biscayne National Park, the only fees we
collect are our camping fees at our two camp grounds.
Ms. Gustin. And, we have two camp grounds that we currently
collect fees for at Big Cypress.
Mr. Souder. And, at Everglades, what percentage of the
people would you say coming into the park pay a fee?
Mr. Kimball. That is hard for us to estimate at this point.
Our visitation is 1.2 million visitors. Actually, in the mid
1970's it was 1.7. It's gone down significantly. We are looking
at why that's happened.
We are in the process of figuring out exactly different
ways of counting visitors, for example, we get a considerable
amount of use on Florida Bay, we do not count operators or
visitors to Florida Bay.
I guess, Mr. Chairman, I can look into it and talk to some
of our staff, in terms of exactly what percentage that 1.2
million represents in terms of total visitation to Everglades
National Park.
Mr. Souder. 1.2 million are the number of people who paid
the fee?
Mr. Kimball. That's correct, the ones that come through our
entrance stations at Shark Valley and at our main entrance west
of Homestead.
Mr. Souder. Do you have an idea of how many of those are
regional within 100 miles?
Mr. Kimball. I don't know if we've done a survey of
visitors. I'd certainly be happy to look into that.
Mr. Souder. If you have any data on that, that would be
helpful, in either of your parks, too, because this is an
interesting question as we look at where the points on these
demonstration fees are, what usage mix, as we try to find a way
for low-income families to have it covered.
Mr. Kimball. We do have many, many foreign visitors to
Everglades National Park.
Mr. Souder. One thing I meant to ask on the hurricanes, you
were referring to the two that came up to Everglades, I believe
you said there have been eight that have hit Dry Tortugas?
Mr. Kimball. Uh-huh, some peripherally, some glancing
blows, others direct hits, like Charlie in 1984--2004, excuse
me.
Mr. Souder. Is that a typical pattern that as many as three
to four times as many will hit that park system?
Mr. Kimball. No, I think everything we see from the
National Hurricane Center is that we are going into a pattern
of increased frequency and possibly intensity of hurricanes,
and I think we are all watching Max Mayfield at the Hurricane
Center to see what he has to say about that, but he, basically
says we are moving into kind of a natural, the natural cycle of
increased, a pattern of increased frequency of hurricanes.
Mr. Souder. Ms. Fields, between you and Mr. Kimball, can
you--I know he's a hydrology expert, but could you talk to me a
little bit about water? You mentioned in your testimony the
amount of dollars that Congress has put in, the long-term plan
for billions. Where would you say we are on that plan? Does the
Park Service have a fixed amount that's dedicated to this in
your annual planning? Are we ahead or behind that schedule?
Obviously, I know there's been huge debates about whether
the original plan was the best plan, how it should be changed,
and those things have huge impacts on this, and there's a hot
political development issue in Florida as well. But, could you
kind of tell me from the Park Service perspective. Where do you
think we are on the restoration question and funding cycle?
Ms. Fields. Is this related to CERP?
Mr. Souder. Yes, basically.
Ms. Fields. Yeah, I will defer to Mr. Kimball on that.
Mr. Kimball. You just mentioned--I'm so glad you brought up
the issue of south Florida ecosystem restoration, because it's
so important to the health and vibrancy of Everglades National
Park.
The most important project for Everglades National Park is
the Modified Water Deliveries Project. It is not a CERP
project. It was authorized in 1989 by the same act that created
the east Everglades area of the park.
We have been working with the Corps of Engineers for some
16 years to get this project in place, and I think over the
last couple years we've made some great progress, in terms of
the 8\1/2\ square mile area, an area that was built to the west
of the protective levy, in terms of providing flood protection
to that area.
We've also worked hard with our partners, including the
State of Florida and the Corps of Engineers, in terms of
identifying exactly what should happen on Tamiami Trail. In
fact, there's a general reevaluation report and a final EIS
that's being considered by the Corps of Engineers right now in
Washington, in fact, this week. That is, as I said, the most
critical project to Everglades, the restoration of flows to
Everglades National Park.
Going to your question in terms of funding, the project now
has had quite a history. It is now a $400 million project, and
with funding in 2006, with an additional $60 million, we are
now--we funded, with the help of Congress, $250 million events,
so we still have $150 million to go, but I would say for the
record we have made incredible progress. We are zeroing in on a
project that we hope will be completed in 2009.
In terms of the other--there are a number of other
foundational projects for CERP, the C-111 project that's
advancing with the detention areas along the eastern boundary
of the park, to keep, as we bring water in from the north to
provide a hydrologic barrier to keep this water in the park.
There are also the 68 CERP projects, Comprehensive Everglades
Restoration Plan projects, and I think you probably know that
the State of Florida has advanced a number of projects that
they call Accelerate. I'm very supportive of those projects.
It's with State money, and they are moving forward with those
projects.
Everglades National Park was fortunate to get over, I think
the total is close to $9 million, to fund 40 positions in our
science program, to carefully look at those projects, to look
at assurances and performance measures.
We are also carefully looking at those Accelerate projects,
to make sure that they deliver the environmental benefits that
we expect in the park. So, I think we are making some great
headway. We have a long ways to go. You know this is a 35 year
effort, but I think we are making some wonderful progress.
Mr. Souder. Is Big Cypress at all involved in this?
Ms. Gustin. Yeah, we have a much smaller number of projects
going, between three and six different projects, that are
related to resource monitoring, specific to water quality and
vegetation, but we are involved in the process.
Mr. Lewis. As is, Biscayne National Park, a lot of people
don't realize just how essential the flow, the restoration of
fresh water flow into Biscayne Bay is. Biscayne Bay is very
dependent on an appropriate mix of fresh water and salt water,
and over the last 20 or 30 years there has been a greatly
reduced flow of fresh water into the bay. And, our hopes are
that the restoration project, when finished, will help restore
the Biscayne Bay to much more like it was 50 and 60 years ago.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Do you have any additional questions?
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Yes, thank you.
I wanted to get your comments about the publication put out
by the National Parks Conservation Association. I've been proud
to work with them for a number of years, and they point out,
``Additional rangers are needed in marine parks, such as Dry
Tortugas and Biscayne in Florida, to prevent illegal fishing
and coral poaching, and enforce boating safety and navigation
laws. In 2002, National Park Service Director Fran Mainella
told Congress that poaching, over fishing, improper fishing,
boating and diving practices were among the activities that
contribute to degradation of some of the fragile marine
ecosystems.''
How have you been working with the organizations like the
National Parks Conservation Association to make sure that the
illegal fishing and coral poaching is a little more under
control?
Mr. Lewis. I'll take a stab at this one.
We've been working pretty closely with National Parks and
Conservation--National Parks and Conservation----
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Association.
Mr. Lewis [continuing]. Association, thank you, in
analyzing the threat that the park faces and in posing
potential resolutions of those threats.
We've also been working pretty diligently with the State
Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in developing a
fisheries management plan that will help us both deal with
fishing pressures and with boating pressures.
We have worked with groups like the South Florida Trust,
which is an associate of the National Parks Foundation, in
publishing educational materials in different languages, in
Spanish, and Creole, as well as in English, on safe boating.
We are in the process, as we speak, of working on a mooring
buoy program, to expand, hopefully, we will expand the program
in the park.
So, we are working with a number of different agencies and
private organizations, in a variety of different ways to
protect the resources.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Yes, sir.
Mr. Kimball. We have been working with NPCA in really two
ways. One is, you may have seen it, they recently did a State
of Florida Bay Report, that I thought was an excellent report,
that laid out the challenges we face in Florida Bay, just not
only from a resource standpoint, but from an impact standpoint
in terms of making sure that boaters understand how complicated
and sensitive the resource is out there. So, we've really been
working with them on the State of Florida Bay Report, that I
think provides a great platform as we move forward.
A more tangible effort we've engaged in with NPCA, NPCA was
able to hook up with an anonymous donor, and they made a
donation to the park, a handsome donation I might add, where we
were able to hire a number of law enforcement rangers, also get
some better boats, and also some better educational material,
and also an education coordinator that will directly help us in
our management of Florida Bay.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you.
And, in reason No. 7 that the Association gives to invest
in our national parks, they talk about invasive species that
are overrunning our parks, and they cite the Everglades
National Park, in that park non-native boa constrictors and
Burmese pythons have invaded the waterways, invasive melaluca,
Australian pine, Brazilian pepper plants are overtaking native
mangroves in Cypress, while fishermen lament the decline of
native large mouth bass which are losing nesting habits to
exotic fish from Africa. How much headway have we made with
these invasive species that are overrunning the Park Service?
Mr. Kimball. If you think about Everglades ecosystem
restoration, I look at it is kind of three pillars. One pillar
is getting the water, with quantity, quality, time and
distribution. Another one is making sure the habitat is right,
to make sure that we take care of the exotics, whether they be
vegetation or aquatic species. And, the third pillar is
compatibility with the built environment, in other words, we
know we need to restore Everglades, but we need to make sure
that the Everglades restoration provides for necessary flood
protection and water supply for our neighbors, and that's a
very important part of it.
If I can go back to that second pillar, we have quite a
robust program within Everglades National Park, and as Ms.
Fields talked about in her introductory remarks, working with
the State of Florida, and with some exotic plant management
team that works within the region, to start to get a handle on
this problem. We worked very hard, in terms of Brazilian
pepper, and melaluca, and Australian pine, and we are making
good headway.
We also have a project in the park called Hole in the
Donut, that's 6,200 acres of Brazilian pepper, and we've been
working with Miami Dade County and the National Park Foundation
to figure out ways, we've actually removed Brazilian pepper off
4,200 acres of that.
So, we are chipping away at the problem.
In terms of some of the exotic animals, I'm sure many of
you have seen the pictures that seem to be everywhere about the
pythons that we are dealing with in Everglades National Park.
We've worked on, we're working on a number of programs there,
one of which is kind of a don't let it loose campaign, to let
people know when they buy a python that they ought to think
about ultimately if they can keep it in their aquarium forever.
I don't know if there's a python rescue around, but we are
working on that.
We are also trying to learn more about where they go in the
park. We don't know very much about pythons. We know they like
to hang out on canals, on levees, but we are trying to right
now find out where they go so we can do a trapping program, and
ultimately try to eradicate pythons from Everglades National
Park.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you.
Ms. Gustin. May I add something regarding exotics?
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Yes, thank you.
Ms. Gustin. I think we deal with the same species that
Everglades does, as far as trying to eradicate Brazilian pepper
and melaluca, etc. Related to the hurricane, though, because
this hurricane was so strong, it destroyed or heavily impacted
a lot of the hardwood hammock areas, and really opened up a lot
of vegetation areas that were previously closed or had a higher
level of a canopy. And, the thought is that, this year and next
year it will take a while for those canopy areas, or those
vegetative areas, to recover, and they will be a prime ground
for exotics to start landing and spreading their seeds and
growing.
So, related to the hurricane, it's going to be a year or
two before we really do understand the impact of the hurricane
on the spread of exotics. So, that's a concern from a natural
resource perspective.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Well, Mark and I consider liberals to be
invasive species, and we haven't figured out a way to get rid
of them either.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. I was going to say, enough news stories about
pythons may explain your drop in visitation, if you get enough
of that.
Mr. Lewis. We'll look into a regression equation for that.
Mr. Souder. Are there, I believe it was out in Utah,
cottonwoods, are any of these particular invasive species water
suckers, in other words, take a disproportionate of water
compared to others that are also altering the water balance,
and do you target that first, given the nature of your parks?
Mr. Lewis. That's why the Melaluca plant was planted here,
was to drain the Everglades, to suck up the water out of the
Everglades, and one of the reasons it's such a huge problem
here is because it does such up a tremendous amount of water
that would otherwise be available for other natural resources.
Mr. Souder. Does that become a target when you are
prioritizing invasive species because of that?
Ms. Gustin. Yes.
Mr. Souder. I wanted to ask one followup question on the
large donation you said you had to the park. Did that come
through an Everglades foundation that you have?
Mr. Kimball. Yes, it actually was a donation through the
South Florida National Parks Trust, which is an affiliate group
of the National Park Foundation. It's a group that was
established about 3 years ago, to assist Everglades National
Park with both fundraising and friend raising here in south
Florida.
Mr. Souder. So, it does, not only functions like types of
things, like nature conservancy, where they may buy a piece of
land to preserve transfer over, it also does operating?
Mr. Kimball. It does not, it does not function as a land
trust. They do not hold land. They raise money, assist the
park, as I said, in friend raising, but then also go out and do
fundraising activities to assist the park.
Mr. Souder. The best example that we've had thus far is
Friends of Acadia, the Rockefeller's built, they bought the
trail system, and also gave them a donation to operate that.
Have you had--what was unusual, and what I heard you say was,
is it actually helped pay for rangers.
Mr. Kimball. That's correct.
Mr. Souder. Which is one of the concerns we've had, is that
if the Park Service doesn't adequately fund many donors don't
want to get into covering operating things that they think the
taxpayers ought to be operating. You've kind of hinted that was
a cross zone thing. I'm interested in a little bit more
information on that.
Mr. Kimball. This particular donor was specifically
concerned about putting rangers on the water, law enforcement
rangers, to make contacts with fishermen and others that are
using Florida Bay to enforce a wide range of regulations at the
park.
And, as I understand, this is the first time that a donor
specifically wanted to support a law enforcement function in a
national park.
Mr. Souder. And, was there a trust set up to pay for that
long term? Was that like a 2-year funding project? How does
that work?
Mr. Kimball. We received the first year funding, we are
hoping on the second, and we're told that if we perform that
there would hopefully be a third.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Each one of these hearing books, each one of these hearings
will be an actual little book on that region. Is there anything
you want to add here at the close, and we may add a few
followup things for that, as well. I want to have a little more
in depth on the coral question, because that's unique to your
area, also how the water systems and the coral impact the whole
Keys structure, southeast Florida and southern Florida, because
that's something we won't face anywhere else, just like out in
Hawaii with the volcanos the day before we held our hearing,
the park fell into the ocean. It was, what, like 45 acres, I
think, fell into the ocean with the visitor station and
everything else, and we don't have that problem in a lot of
parks either, and trying to figure out the regional challenges.
One here is that your whole coral structure of the Keys and the
water interrelationship is very unique at this scale, and it
would be helpful to get some of that, anything you would think
that if somebody picks this book up and says, here's what is
unique about this section of the country in the Park Service,
and we have a challenge, help us fill out a little bit the
documents we put in and other info.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Mr. Lewis. What I would like to do, if it would meet your
purposes, would be to provide a short summary of the knowledge
of the resources and the threats facing the resources, and we
would provide that to the committee.
Mr. Souder. That would be very helpful.
Mr. Lewis. OK.
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much for your participation. I
appreciate you coming out today and fielding the questions, and
we'll be following up through Ms. Fields and the individual
parks.
Thank you very much.
Ms. Gustin. Thank you.
Mr. Kimball. Thank you.
Mr. Kimball. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. The second panel, if you could come forward, is
Nathaniel Reed, Member of the National Council for NPCA, the
National Parks Conservation Association, and Dexter Lehtinen,
senior member of the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task
Force.
Mr. Reed. How would you like to handle this, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Souder. I need to swear you both in first. If you'd
each raise your right hand.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that each of our witnesses
responded in the affirmative.
Thank you very much for being here today. NPCA has been
critical in helping us talk through this hearing and have been
very helpful in providing data. Your full statement will be
inserted in the record, feel free to go through as much of this
as you want.
STATEMENTS OF NATHANIEL REED, MEMBER OF NATIONAL COUNCIL,
NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION; AND DEXTER LEHTINEN,
SENIOR MEMBER, SOUTH FLORIDA ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION TASK FORCE
STATEMENT OF NATHANIEL REED
Mr. Reed. Mr. Chairman, I am really pleased that you are
here, and I'm simply delighted that Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen
is here as well.
I want to take a moment aside, we are in a building that
has a great attachment to me. My uncle, my mother's brother,
was one of the founders of Pan American World Airlines, and
this building, this room, was headquarters of Pan Am in the
1920's and became a vital part of Pan American World Airlines
in 1933, with the advent of the aircraft that is somewhere on
the wall, right up there, the first Martin Aircraft. And from
just outside these doors the Amphibius flew to Cuba, the
Carribean, and later to Central and South America, right from
here. This was the headquarters, and this is where the
passengers came and embarked on the airplane. That's such a
short time ago, relatively, and think what it is we now fly all
over the world.
Mr. Souder. Thanks, it is a great, it's a wonderful
building.
Mr. Reed. It's just a marvelous feeling.
I want to say how pleased I am that the three
superintendents were here, and I want you to know that they are
three of our most distinguished members of the National Park
Service team. We are really fortunate that Fran has sent us
three really exceptional human beings and managers.
I want to introduce somebody, Lloyd Miller, sitting beside
me. Lloyd Miller's career has been extraordinary, in the sense
that he opposed, he formed a group opposed to building a huge
petro chemical concern on the banks of Biscayne Bay, led with
Dante Fascell the effort to make Biscayne Bay first a National
Preserve, and then in the Nixon years we made it into, extended
its boundaries and it became a National Park. He opposed, when
I was Secretary of the Department of Environmental Regulation,
Florida Power & Light's plans to build a huge nuclear power
plant, which was built, but they were going to put their
effluent, their heated effluent, in the Bay and boil the bay.
And, I challenged that, refused to give that permit.
I'm going to go back to my text now, Mr. Chairman.
I had the honor and privilege of serving six Florida
Governors in a variety of positions, including Environmental
Advisor and Founder of what is now known as the Department of
Environmental Protection. I had the rare opportunity to serve
as the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Interior for
Fish, Wildlife and National Parks, from 1971 to 1977. During
this period, the National Park Service and the Park System was
one of my main fascinations and challenges.
I have been a member of the Board of Trustees of the
National Park and Conservation Association, and I am currently
a member of the NPCA's National Council.
As you know, since 1919, the non-partisan National Parks
and Conservation Association has been the leading voice of the
American people in protecting and enhancing our National Park
System for present and future generations. Today, we have
300,000 members nationwide, who visit and care deeply about the
future of our national parks.
My fascinations with the Park System, the system is unique
in the world. I have visited the great East and South African
Park Systems that are famous for the magic of great animal
herds and the diversity of habitats, but I have witnessed
extraordinary wildlife and breathtaking scenery in America's
national parks, but wildlife and scenic majesty are but a small
part of our National Park System. We have preserved as a Nation
the best of our history, the system is unique, there is no
other like it.
In a recent poll of American adults by Harris Interactive,
the National Park Service was rated the most popular of all
government agencies and services. It is an example of the mis-
aligned priorities in Washington that we are consistently
struggling to protect this goldmine from a lack of proper
funding and adequate staffing levels, political gamesmanship,
and, frankly, absent congressional oversight, ultimately
driving out talented and experienced staff.
Your oversight is long overdue. The problems of the
national parks and the National Park Service have been growing
unchecked for too long.
This fall I visited Liberty Island and Ellis Island, and it
reminded me of when then Director George Hartsog and I had
visited Ellis Island together in 1973. We were so impressed by
the history of the center of American immigration, yet
dumbfounded by the deterioration that had occurred since the
site had been abandoned. I begged and received permission from
President Nixon, and the two congressional appropriations
committees, to begin to stabilize the main building.
I don't know whether you knew Congressman Sid Yates. He was
chairman of Appropriations. I took him there in 1975. His
father had come through the Great Hall as an immigrant. I'll
never forget Sid weeping, weeping, and I thought of him this
fall when I went through. I've forgotten what the percentage is
of Americans, the legacy of Americans that came through the
Great Hall is, but it's a staggering figure, and it is the most
glorious site now.
The combination of taxpayers' funds and private donations
has recreated a national site of great historical importance.
This is another aside, I joined a group of Afro American
children from a high school. I joined a group of 16 young
Hasitic students from a synagogue. I joined two groups from, I
would say, very yuppy high schools in upper State Connecticut
that had been driven down by buses. There was no difference in
those groups, in their total fascination of what the importance
of Ellis Island was to America. It was an eerie and marvelous
feeling, Mr. Chairman, of identity.
Despite the valiant efforts of public/private partnership
whose dollars support parks, inadequate funding continues to
plague all parts of the system and erodes the foundation of
some of our hard-earned trust.
You asked an awfully good question about Friends of the
Acadia. I'm a member, my summer home is across the bay from
Acadia in Winter Harbor, and I've been a member of Friends for
many, many years. I helped to establish the Yosemite
Foundation, was on the board and one of the founding members of
the Yellowstone Foundation, and on this board down here as well
as a founding member, it's called the South Florida National
Park Trust. Those trusts and foundations raised money for
desperately needed projects within their parks that Congress
does not appropriate. It doesn't buy land, it doesn't get
involved in litigation. It does things that should be done, but
the money from Congress isn't there.
Here in Florida, you can look at Biscayne Bay, or the
Everglades, for evidence of underfunding. I happen to fish in
Biscayne Bay six times a year, so I know it like the back of my
hand. I was Assistant Secretary when we expanded its boundaries
to the north. It is an amazing underwater park that's part of
the third largest coral reef system in the world. But,
unfortunately, Biscayne Bay's budget has increased by just 2
percent since 2001. According to NPCA's recently released State
of the Parks Report on Biscayne, this funding shortfall has
significant consequences for the park. Biscayne's coral reef is
in trouble, fish populations are declining, and fresh water
flows, which the superintendent bravely mentioned, critical to
the health of the regional ecosystem, are changing.
The reason I say bravely, it's sort of the untold story
that we are close to losing that fresh water supply that's been
promised by the Corps of Engineers to refresh Biscayne Bay.
It's a crisis that's in the works right now. I sent a letter to
the Assistant Secretary of the Army this morning on that
subject, and I'm afraid we are going to have a terrible
confrontation if the plans of the Corps of Engineers are
ignored by the State of Florida and the water resources that
should be going to Biscayne are not utilized.
The park is primarily a marine park, which means that it's
under-staffed ranger force is hard pressed to deal effectively
with illegal immigration and smuggling issues. According to a
2003 rating by the Fraternal Order of Police, Biscayne is the
sixth most dangerous park for law enforcement officers. That's
not a great place to be.
At Everglades National Park, the operating budget increases
over the last 5 years have not kept pace with inflation or
other escalating costs for the park. As a result, the park
faces a lack of research scientists and law enforcement
personnel.
In 2005, Everglades National Park had a total of only 12
full-time law enforcement rangers to patrol 444,790 acres of
Florida Bay. I just was on Florida Bay Saturday and Sunday, and
it was freezing, but I've got to tell you, it's still one of
the most magical places on the face of this Earth. The islands
the superintendent mentioned to Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen that
shouldn't be touched are principally bird rookeries. There were
thousands and thousands of white birds, grey egrets, American
egrets, grey herons, white pelicans, little whites, little
blues, snowies, all huddled like I should have been in the 50
degree temperature. Hopefully, they are going to breed.
According to the most recent law enforcement needs
assessment completed in 2003 by Everglades National Park,
there's a 30 percent shortfall in the number of rangers needed
to adequately staff the park. Dan knows this. I fish there on
the west side from the 10,000 islands down frequently. It's the
most popular fall snook fishing area in Florida. It's possible
to catch 50 small snook a day with a fly rod, may almost be too
good. You are ruined for the rest of the year.
And then I come back in January, my guide got blown out in
the hurricane, so I haven't come back this year, but we fish
after very cold weather, giant snook move in from the Gulf and
lie up in water that's shallower than that to get solar heat,
and they'll take a fly at day three, four or five, as their
metabolism begins to establish, and I'm talking about big fish,
I'm talking about fish from 20 to 35 pounds. And, I don't come
back from Everglades City and Chokoloskee, I don't drive back
to my home 3 hours without thanking God that I was involved in
the acquisition of the Big Cypress, and without being so proud
of America and Americans for protecting something as
magnificent as the Big Cypress is, and how it connects with
Everglades. I've walked all over it, been in the swamps, pushed
alligators and cottonmouth moccasins aside, I've got to tell
you, it just brings chills to me that I was involved with an
administration that cared and with a Congress that cared to
protect these areas.
The funding issues at Everglades also threaten the
protection and enhancement of the Everglades, one of the most
significant and magnificent ecosystems in the world. The
problems include too much water during very wet periods, and
too few places to store it when there is a drought. We are in a
wet period right now, we don't know what to do with it, we have
just been sending it out to sea, out to St. Lucy on the east,
out to Caloosahatche on the west. We've ruined two estuaries
and drowned the Latorio Marsh in Okeechobee. It's a scandal of
major proportions.
We can go into the blame game of who did it. Obviously, the
hurricanes, four hurricanes have added billions of gallons of
water into Lake Okeechobee, but to give you an example of
misuse, we have sent over 800 billion gallons of water,
polluted water, to the estuaries in this past year, this past
year, 800 billion gallons of water which we could use when it
is dry.
Our State's rapidly growing population, and lack of Federal
funding for land acquisition, threaten the ability of the NPS
to assure that our south Florida parks are buffered and
restored.
Now, make no bones about it. The continuing problems of
gross agricultural pollution threaten Lake Okeechobee, the
heart of the Everglades system, and the park's headwaters.
I'm involved with the Everglades restoration issue 7 days a
week. It's my fascination. While the problems are numerous, the
Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan passed by Congress by
almost a unanimous vote proposes to alleviate them through a
unique Federal/State partnership. While the vote passed the
Congress by overwhelming margins, the Corps planners frankly
are tied up in bureaucratic knots, and have yet to complete a
single CERP-related project.
Part of the problem, Mr. Chairman, are new rules and
regulations, and during the reform movement that's going on in
the Congress to try to reform the Corps of Engineers, a
frightening prospect. Part of it is acquiring the right people
to man the jobs in Jacksonville at the district office. Part of
the problem is eight hurricanes in the past 3\1/2\ years.
The combination of all those has delayed every project that
Congress authorized, and we are now 5 years into it, and we
don't have a single project to go forward to the Congress for
appropriations.
The Governor, tired of waiting for the Corps to overcome
real and perceived obstacles, created a program known as Excel
8, financed by $1.5 billion of Florida taxpayers' funds to
jumpstart the process. Frankly, some of the major Excel 8
projects have major environmental problems that must be settled
regarding, not only the objectives of the proposed projects,
but who the beneficiaries are supposed to be.
It is my opinion that the primary purpose of the Federal
Government's role in CERP is the restoration of federally
managed lands, that is, Biscayne National Park, Everglades
National Park, and the Big Cypress. Unfortunately, as the
Everglades awaits further congressional action and
administration support, land values continue to skyrocket,
development pressures increase, and major opportunities to
acquire lands that are critical to the restoration of south
Florida's national parks are lost.
Frankly, I have been frustrated by the lack of
congressional oversight and the lack of consistent funding to
deal with all the problems facing Florida's national parks, so
I ask repetitive, where is the congressional accountability for
funding and restoration of our south Florida national parks?
Only after 15 years, we finally see some real Federal
funding for one of the Everglades restoration projects, thank
God for it, $60 million for the restoration of flows through
the Everglades into Florida Bay. If it wasn't for the dedicated
efforts of Congressman Clay Shaw, and by the way I spoke to his
wife Emily this morning, he is resting comfortably, he is home,
he feels strong, he's going to make a perfect recovery from his
lung operation.
David Hobson and Senators Bill Nelson and Mel Martinez, and
a special friend, John Warner, Senator Warner, who helped
enormously this year, in getting the mix-up between the two
Appropriations Committees straightened out so that the money
did flow to the ModWaters Program. I don't know whether you are
aware of that, but the two Appropriations Committees had
conflicts in their bills, and neither one wanted to give way.
Senator Warner was willing--was able to get the Senate staff to
change their language and we moved forward.
More congressional oversight and funding is still needed to
ensure that we get the water right, in order to protect our
south Florida parks for future generations. The verdict is
still out.
I leave you, Mr. Chairman, with a sense of genuine
gratitude that you have taken time to investigate the
shortcomings and financing of the National Park System, the
service, and the impact on recruiting the once broad-ranged,
highly trained and motivated Park staff, now becoming
frustrated by a lack of adequate funding, political
gamesmanship, and a sense that the problems are insoluble.
I'm on the last legs of my life's journey, and I'm
determined that my attention will continue to be focused on the
incredible problems that your subcommittee is studying. Your
recommendations can make the difference in the enhancement, if
not the survival, of one of America's greatest gifts, not only
to our citizens, but to the world.
I wish you courage. I wish you foresight, but especially
courage, as you conclude your hearings and render your report
to the Congress and the administration.
Thank you, sir, for the opportunity to appear before you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Reed follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.003
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.005
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.006
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.007
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.008
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.009
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.011
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.012
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.013
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.014
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.015
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.016
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.017
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.018
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.019
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.020
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.021
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much for your testimony.
We'll now go to Mr. Lehtinen. I know the Congresswoman had
another event, that's one of the disadvantages of being in her
home district. You can probably get anything you need to her in
another forum.
STATEMENT OF DEXTER LEHTINEN
Mr. Lehtinen. Thank you.
Of course, I have the longer written comments submitted.
I'd like to just focus on some observations I've developed over
the years from serving in the State House/State Senate, U.S.
Attorney, and then as the longest serving member of the South
Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force.
Among others, I do represent the Miccosukee Tribe of
Indians of Florida, whose Everglades lands recognized by
congressional act are north of Tamiami Trail, north, but
contiguous to, Everglades National Park, and which by
congressional statute were guaranteed to the Indians to be
preserved in their natural state.
It is the belief of the tribe and many others that
commitment by Congress is not being met, that the Everglades
north of Tamiami Trail is discriminated against, and does not
receive the same recognition that south of Tamiami Trail does.
My remarks are twofold. One would be some very specific
comments about south Florida park management, and then some
comments about Everglades restoration.
What we need, perhaps, throughout the country, but
especially with south Florida park management, and
Superintendent Kimball and the others are actually making a
real effort to change this bureaucratic approach, but we need
the Park Service to be more people oriented, as well as take a
broader ecosystem-wide approach beyond their own ownership
lands.
Especially in south Florida, where we have an international
airport and a large urban area, and people coming from around
the world so close to a million acres, if you think about it
you don't really have that in many places in the country, we
need to make a greater effort to get those people to visit
Everglades National Park in an ecosystem consistent protection
way, and that would mean, for example, rebuilding Flamingo, and
rebuilding it on the congressional directive to do so, and, of
course, funding it because of the cost that would be involved.
But, if we don't have people visit our parks, and recognize
what's the really treasure, Everglades National Park doesn't
stand out, you know, it doesn't have the mountains and snow
covered peaks, you have to visit a little bit to really come to
understand it, and it's self defeating in the long run if we
don't have people visit the parks.
An example of this is another recommendation is to reopen
the Chekika Springs area. It's in the middle of Everglades
National Park, very close to our urban areas, accessible from
S.W. 168 Street. It's marked on all of Everglades National
Park's tourist literature as a camp site and as a picnic area.
My brother and I used to hunt there when it was known as
Mineral Springs in the 1950's and 1960's. It became Chekika
State Park, named for the Indian leader who was killed there in
one of the last of the U.S. Army/Native American battles in
south Florida. And, as Chekika State Park we could visit it,
turned over to Everglades National Park in the early 1990's as
part of the Park Expansion Act, and almost immediately closed
by Everglades National Park.
And, I haven't been able to go there for 14 years.
Superintendent Kimball tells me they are working on it, he
hasn't been superintendent that long, and I believe him, that
he wants to reopen it, but it was closed due to a hurricane in
1992, and has stayed closed ever since, and many of us in south
Florida have just thought, what kind of message does that send,
that we'd have been better off keeping it as a State park than
in turning it over to the National Park, because all else being
equal we think of the national parks as--I don't want to insult
out State parks, but, you know, better management, higher
priority, more important.
That's not true with Adirondack State Park, you know, in
New York State and so forth, but that was our thinking. Most of
us think we shouldn't have turned it over to Everglades
National Park, we should have just kept it as a State enclave,
and then we'd have access to it. I do think Dan is going to
make an effort in that regard, to get Chekika open. It's a real
sore point with some members of the public that could easily be
solved, while it does take some money. But, other than money it
could be solved.
I'd like to note that another thing that happened there,
you know, when Chekika was turned over, and the park expansion
area condemned several houses, houses like this that were
condemned from private owners as inconsistent with the
ecosystem of the National Park were actually then reoccupied by
the Park Service, and Park Service employees live in them, and
they are used sometimes as, I think one is a fire station, and
that's something that's hard for a member of the public to
understand, that they are kicked out because they are
inconsistent with the National Park, but then it ends up being
home for National Park employees.
Another point would be, Big Cypress, as Mr. Reed said, is a
real gem. That was a real political achievement when it was
declared a National Preserve. Exactly why it's a called a
preserve instead of a park, you know, some limitations on the
mineral rights or something like that. That's a little beyond
me, I haven't studied it, but one of the points that I make as
a member of the public is that you fight those political
battles and you achieve a political accommodation. We did that
with the Modified Water Deliveries Act in 1989, and with Big
Cypress National Preserve.
The Big Cypress National Preserve enabling legislation
assures that the Preserve will be maintained, but it does
guarantee certain public access to it, and the perception of
hunters and others is that access has gradually eroded
improperly and that the eventual goal is to exclude them from
it.
Now, I'm not talking about ATVs and those kinds of things
should be in there. I think the Preserve has every right to use
all of the regulations necessary to preserve the Preserve,
small p and capital P, but there is a sense that the general
orientation of the Park Service is always toward moving people
out of park use. So, I don't make that accusation as much as I
say that is an area that will be looked at a great deal by the
public, both to maintain and honor the enabling legislation.
That is to say, whatever the enabling legislation, what deal
was cut there, let's not have a what's mine is mine and what's
yours is negotiable kind of approach. Let's honor that enabling
legislation and, ultimately, preserve the Preserve under that
way.
Another issue that there will be a lot of future publicity
about deals with the Florida panther. Actually, the Florida
panther that is either no longer in existence or will no longer
be in existence within 10 years, the fact is the Florida
panther was going into extinction due to natural breeding
conditions. So, the Texas cougar was brought in and cross bred
with the Florida panther, and that cat that now exists is less
nocturnal and more aggressive than the Florida panther was, and
it poses a threat to human beings. Cougars in the west have,
when we were there 2 years ago on a visit in California, a
camper was killed by a cougar, joggers have been killed by
cougars. The current Florida cougar, the DNA different cat
that's traveling under the name Florida panther, has been seen
and observed electronically, at least Panther 124 that has a
collar on it, goes into National Park Service camp grounds
while there are campers there, and there was a plan developed
under the Endangered Species Act that if these cats, 124 did it
three times, you know, if they did it once you'd try to
environally sensitize it, encourage it, you know, teach it not
to come in there. But, if it ended up coming three times into
the backyards of residents, you know, where there are small
children, dogs, you know, out west the pattern is the cougar
eats the dog first and then goes after people later, that if it
happened three times it would be captively caught and bred, not
executed, but moved and then after it--because it's got two
cubs, pretty old cubs now with it that are not collared, but
when the cougar violated that rule about 10 times they just
abandoned that rule and have another rule, which is, eminent
danger.
And, residents in that area, some of whom are Miccosukee
Indians, but most of whom are not Miccosukee Indians, will
shoot that cougar, or Florida panther 124, or their kids won't
be able to defend themselves and they'll be injured or killed,
and either way that's bad for the Endangered Species Act, to
say the least. We need a proactive approach instead of the
ideological idea, OK, we want to save the panther, but the fact
is, that Florida panther is gone. I mean, every biologist says
the Florida panther either no longer exists or those few adults
that remain will not exist within 10 years.
We are not saying don't try to save it with a cross breed,
don't have, you know, like this new animal, but one has to not
allow the bureaucratic imperative where as a Government
official you are supposed to be like on the side of the animal,
be blinded, blind you to the fact that it's not the same
animal, it doesn't have the same DNA, it's bred with a western
cougar, and that produces different behavior patterns and some
real fears on the part of the people who live in the loop road
area.
I don't view this kind of testimony as much as hostile to
the Endangered Species Act as favorable. In other words, the
way you are going to protect this act is by reaching
accommodations, you know, is by balancing the human and the
animal factors, but without that balancing we are going to end
up with a prosecution in Federal Court for shooting a cougar
that a jury is not going to convict on, because, you know, they
are going to think you are entitled to protect your kids and
that it isn't a Florida panther anyway.
With regard to restoration, let me just say this. It's a
broad topic. The dilemma in restoration is that all of us want
to recognize the incredible progress of restoration. We've made
a lot of progress. We are making a lot of progress in water
quality, especially up north, especially as a result of
litigation that has brought the State in line with respect to
creating storm water treatment areas that protect for water
quality.
But, with respect to water quantity, that is to say hydro
period, we have some real problems, and one of them is that
Federal agencies do not take an ecosystem-wide view. The
largest remaining part of the fresh water Florida Everglades,
the Margery Stoneman Douglas River of grass is outside of
Everglades National Park. Everglades National Park, all of it,
is worth saving, but a substantial part of it is Florida Bay,
well worth saving, but not fresh water Florida Everglades.
The marine estuarian elements of Everglades National Park
are well worth saving, but they are not the fresh water Florida
Everglades. The fresh water Margery Stoneman Douglass slews are
in the northern part of Everglades National Park, and the
largest part of the remaining Florida Everglades is in tribal
land and north up to the Everglades agricultural area that Mr.
Reed indicated was a problem source of pollution, and in the
Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge. That's the largest part
of the Everglades. What we need is an approach that treats all
of the Everglades equally, and I believe that's the mandate of
the Water Resources Development Act 2000 CERP Comprehensive
Everglades Restoration Plan.
However, one of the questions, since you had spoken of
earlier, I was going to throw in there, you were asking about
personnel, those of us on the Task Force, the non-governmental,
Federal Governmental members, have always wondered how much of
this restoration money is actually funding Department of
Interior personnel costs. I mean, most people think it goes to
doing something on the ground, it goes to a project, but a lot
of it seemingly goes to personnel costs, and we've never had
that answer. Mr. Kimball is forthright and says something like
he got 40 additional positions in the Park, but it would be
defying the logic of organizational management to believe that
40 additional Park employees are going to focus their attention
on how to save the entire Everglades, most of which is not in
the park.
It's the same problem you had in the Vietnam War. You
assigned Army officers to a civilian development project, and
they might do a good job, but it doesn't get them their command
time, their officer efficiency report doesn't come from another
Army officer. I mean, we have serious problems in having the
Federal agencies analyze the entire Everglades.
The best current example is the so-called interim plans
that have been adopted for the Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow in
the western Everglades National Park, the western side, where
the S12 structures are, just before you hit Big Cypress. Just
figure you go west, and before you hit Big Cypress, south of
Tamiami Trail there is the sub-population A of the Cape Sable
Seaside Sparrow, so named because it was found in Cape Sable.
Its declared habitat is nowhere near that part of the park, and
it was never found there until it got blown there or moved
there, and it's not a declared habitat.
The least number of birds were there, Sub-pop A had 25
singing males, they multiplied by 16. We have disputes about
that, but that was their number.
Starting in 1998, they said Endangered Species Act, an act
in which the Government is the prosecutor, judge and jury, if
you are not the decisionmaker, if you are not an agency
official in the ESA you lose, that's the way the ESA works,
Government wins, outside people lose.
The determination was made that water had to be kept lower
south of Tamiami Trail, a move away from the surf-adopted
Natural System Model. This is the model submitted to Congress
that said this is, we are going to restore the Everglades,
according to NSM, Natural System Model, we want lower waters in
the park south of the trail, higher waters north of the trail.
We get those by blocking the 12 structures that let water
through Tamiami Trail, lower on the south, higher on the north,
all in the name of restoration.
The current position is, we cannot move toward restoration
goals, because the Endangered Species Act won't let us do it.
The point is, the Everglades has been altered, we all say, by
man-made action. To return to its natural condition means that
something that moved, you know, altered environments are not
dead environments, they are different environments, something
moves in, you know, that wasn't there naturally. Well, when you
start to restore, for example, you have certain trees grow up
in an altered environment, and when you restore water flow the
first thing you start to see is those trees die. And, if you
stand there in a time-lapse photography, you might say we are
really doing a lot of damage because this nice green area is
now looking brown. Well, that's natural, we are getting it back
to what it was.
Well, there's birds moved in to low water, and we are being
told we can't go to natural levels of water because of the
bird. In the meantime, the undeclared habitat in the south is
protected, the declared habitat is the snail kite north of
Tamiami Trail is being flooded with loss of tree islands
according to the Corps of Engineers at the rate of more than
eight tree islands a year, and more than 246 acres a year due
to the flooding. Tree islands, as you might guess, I don't
think I would need to explain it, but tree islands are these
areas that create the real diversity in the Everglades. I mean,
that's where you have some of your smaller mammals and, you
know, your alligators come on and eat some rats, and whatever
happens there, you know, and that's where you get your
diversity. That's what all the scientists say, if you go to no
tree islands then you have a very non-diverse, non-natural
Everglades. We've lost more than almost half of the tree
islands since the Central and South Florida Project went into
existence, this is a U.S. Government figure, and since this new
1998 block the water to save this Cape Sable's 25 singing males
we've lost more than eight tree islands a year north of the
trail, and 246 acres.
Now, if that were Federal property, and not State
Everglades or Indian land, it would be called a crisis. But,
Tamiami Trail is the boundary line, so it's not of concern much
to the Federal Government.
We have, in fact, this plan adopted in 1998 that was
supposed to save the Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow, now has found
no Cape Sable Seaside Sparrows, or one Cape Sable Seaside
Sparrow, meaning a 90 percent reduction.
Now, in high school science fair classes you say, here's a
condition, here's my hypothesis, if I block this water my birds
are going to prosper, and then your chart goes the other way,
down to no birds at all, you have to say my hypothesis was
wrong, to get by your high school science fair project, but you
don't have to say that when you are Federal scientists, because
you own the scientific process. You just say, so what.
I mean, that's the problem we have there. We are being
moved away from restoration goals by a lack of system-wide
approach. We can say--they can say the Endangered Species Act
forces them to do it, but the fact of the matter is, if they
wanted to do something else they'd say the Endangered Species
Act forces us to let the water through because the snail kite
is being killed north of Tamiami Trail. You just pick your
bird, that's what you do, the way the Endangered Species Act
works now.
A second and third area related are Modified Water
Deliveries adopted in 1989, supposed to be done in 1996, the
plan as approved by Congress adopted the act in 1989, the
General Design Memorandum approved in 1992 by Congress and the
Corps submitted it. The Park Service didn't like that plan. It
wanted to condemn more than 500 residents on the edge of the
park outside of the park expansion area, where the act said
they will be protected. Two different plans to do that were
found unlawful in court, and eventually Congress let them have
20 percent of those residents and protected the other 80.
In the meantime, that failure to adopt that plan means you
can't move the water over through N.E. Shark River Slew, and
you are still backing water up into Water Conservation Area 3,
doing serious damage to the historic Everglades, and you have
the following circumstance now, the amount of water that
ModWaters was supposed to move, and that's a pre-CERP project,
and in 2000 Congress said they want that pre-CERP project done
before we do the CERP reconnecting projects, and you can't
raise Tamiami Trail, word of 2000 says you cannot raise Tamiami
Trail until you finish ModWaters. Well, that legislation
doesn't mean too much to us in the field. We now have adopted a
model, we being the Federal team here, that moves, not only
twice the amount of water that ModWaters called for, but moves
more water than CERP calls for, in order to justify building
two bridges on Tamiami Trail, which word of 2000 says you can't
do.
Don Young from Alaska already sent them a letter, said it's
unlawful, you can't do it without congressional authorization.
They are going to adopt that proposal anyway, drop it in your
lap, and say you wreck the Everglades if you won't spend the
money, which is now four and five times the original projection
of the ModWaters Project.
The Indian tribe and others of us look at this and say,
long-term goals are fine, but when you are always making a deal
and then breaking that deal in order to slide in your
personalized view of what's better for the Everglades, like
let's move more than CERP authorized water, twice ModWaters
authorized water, under the label ModWaters, what you do is,
you just stop the projects, you slow them down, you cause
serious problems in the northern part of the Everglades.
Now, this is the part of Everglades restoration that
concern us. In a longer-term view, we'd list all the successes,
as Mr. Reed has. There are successes. This is worth funding.
The only dilemma someone like I have in criticizing
restoration, and I've done this many times, is going to
Washington and saying, look, what we want you to do is more
oversight, we want you to get control, but what we don't want
you to do is divert these funds. Everglades restoration is
worth it, the fact that we have some problems and disagreements
in implementing it should not lead to the conclusion, well,
let's cut that off and dump it in, you know, some project in
Wyoming.
And, some of us are reluctant to criticize the failed
elements of Everglades restoration, or the difficult elements,
because we are afraid, you know, it will be used as ammunition
against restoration overall.
I like to think that won't happen, that the overall value
of restoration, and even the disagreements between elements
here, I mean, we think the Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow is a
scandal, but the fact of the matter is, if that thing gets
worked out, and we'll be hands in hands with the people who we
think messed that up radically, I mean, you know, we each have
our viewpoints. We argue they are wrong, they say we are wrong,
that's all within a team that wants to see the Everglades
restored, and we want you to keep spending the money, just put
some strings on it that assure you that it's being spent the
way you want it to be spent, but don't reach the conclusion
that it's not worthy to fund these projects, because the fact
of the matter is, I think you have in south Florida about as
good a national and international interest, and at least a,
what do you call those projects, when you call them a local--
well no, I mean, you know, a project that has no real national
value, I mean, this, the only arguments down here are not over
its national value, it's just over how to do it. And, when you
are arguing over how to do it, that's a worthy argument no
matter which side you are on.
Appreciate your time, and you've been here quite a while, I
would not have predicted it, that you'd be here so long.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lehtinen follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.022
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.023
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.024
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.025
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.026
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.027
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.028
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.029
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.030
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.031
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.032
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.033
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.034
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.035
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.036
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.037
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.038
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.039
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.040
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.041
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.042
Mr. Souder. Well, thank you.
We have an agreement to leave this room in just a few
minutes. I want to make a couple comments and ask just a couple
questions.
First off, this wouldn't happen in Washington, we'd do this
5-minute rule and bang, you know, people come in and out, and
you are called, and that's why I wanted to have a full
statement, because it just doesn't happen in a record to have
those kind of things. So, I think that Mr. Lehtinen has raised
an illustration of one of the challenges we have in the
National Park Service, and that is that things that happened,
and Mr. Reed did a similar thing, things that happened outside
the park are having bigger and bigger impacts on the parks,
whether it's invasive species, whether it's--it was fascinating
to talk about the salt water and the fresh water.
We vacation once a year over at Sanibal Island, and as we
were coming down the West Coast the front page of the Fort
Myers newspaper is about the overflow in Lake Okeechobee, going
into the river, going into Fort Myers, which has apparently
caused a whole bunch of dead fish over in Ding Darling, and is
a mess over in Sanibal. In fact, what happens to this water?
How do you manage the water? The north and south, this whole
question of endangered species and shifting habitat, and in the
Park Service once you get into the details and you are inside,
my first exposure on the Parks Committee was, do you preserve
the cyclorama at the Gettysburg Battlefield because it's a
national historic structure sitting on the point of land where
it is arguably part of the reason, if not the major reason, we
have the Gettysburg Battlefield, which was the highland point
and people were parking all over it, and what a mess to try to
sort out, because is it the building or the historic structure?
What happens in a park at Concord and Lexington, where we were
looking at, should the battle road look like the battle, or
what if you brought into the Park Service buildings from the
1840's and 1880's and represented their times in history, and
then the trees are planted at Presidio and on this trail that
weren't there, that, in effect, don't give you the historic
feeling of the park. But, now people bike along them, and think
it would be a travesty if you tore out the trees that are in
the Gettysburg Battlefield, the peach orchard isn't in the
right place, I mean there we made the decision to get it more
like the battlefield. But, that hasn't been done on the
battlefield road, and it hasn't been done at the Presidio.
These are tough choices when Federal laws run into Federal
laws, and we have to have, in my opinion, to some degree what
the Park Service is doing with core ops, in trying to identify
what are the priorities within the parks, how do you decide
what your core mission was, your secondary mission, it's a
thing that private business has to do all the time, in that,
how do we force these tradeoffs, and how do we have an open
debate?
I can tell you how it is in Congress. The first thing is,
each one of us are so overwhelmed in our own district, the idea
of a fight in somebody else's district means you get your head
down and you go, local guy, handle your local fight, then come
to us. The problem is, what about if it crosses Members'
districts, like in Florida, or it's a project of national
significance, how much do you defer to which local Congressman,
when you are telling me this is going all the way up to, say,
Foley and Weldon's district and coming all the way down through
this district, how do you resolve something like that?
The usual House solution, by the way, isn't to let the
Senate decide. We figure out how to meddle anyway. But, that
was a good discussion for me to hear some of those kind of
tradeoffs.
I do have a very particularized question, Mr. Reed. One of
the things that has been very interesting in these hearings is
to have people who have a national perspective for a number of
years, that former park superintendents, people who have been
in the different administrations, and to kind of get an
overview of what we are facing now versus what you face,
clearly, being efficient in wildlife and in multiple positions
you've seen different challenges. You've suggested some of
that. I'd be interested in hearing how you would better
integrate, not only in the Park Service, but with the--I mean,
we all know that the names, what's a preserve, what's a
recreation area, we've become so confused inside the Park
Service, but let's not even talk about just Park Service, how
does this interrelate in a system with other Federal agencies,
BLM, Army Corps, Fish and Wildlife, when clearly in the south
Florida system they are completely integrated. And then also,
if you could talk a little bit, it is extraordinary the amount
of time and your personal life you've invested in starting
things like Yosemite Fund, Friends of Acadia, and so on, how
can we, because clearly the Federal Government alone, no matter
how much we plus this up, isn't going to meet the needs of an
expanding system, how can we get the next generation, and do
you see this happening, of whether it's Hollywood money, music
money, soft, kind of the high tech money, the computer type
money, the new wealth in America, the kind of older
establishment wealth looked at our natural lands, now many of
the new people seem to think, well, the Federal Government is
going to take over this, and they'll kind of run to the project
of the moment, how can we get the romance of the parks back?
How can we capture some of the new people, adopt different
parks, how do we do this?
Mr. Reed. That's a good question, Mr. Chairman.
At Acadia, besides the Rockefeller money, there was
substantial grants from the heir of Campbell Soups, and other
associates who had made more recent fortunes on the market or
through innovative investments.
Secretary Babbitt was there a day when I joined him. The
Park received a check for $12 million, entirely privately
raised among the summer residents, northeast, southwest, and
the Rockefeller dominion.
We started slowly at Yosemite, but I haven't got the
figures anymore, but the figures of what it raises per year,
Bill Lane, former publisher of Sunset Magazine, involved me,
Bill was a great personal friend, former Ambassador, dynamic
lover of national parks, and I'm sure he was at probably one of
your hearings. If not, you should invite him to testify, even
though he's in his late 80's, he is still a most dynamic
supporter of the System and the Service.
Yellowstone, the same thing. Mike Finley was
Superintendent, and he was desperate for funding, for a whole
bunch of different projects that wasn't going to be possible,
and he put together a group from all over the country, plus an
astonishing group of people just outside the park between the
northern boundary and Bozeman, and at the south to Grand Titan
and Jackson, and they are well underway. I'm no longer a member
of the foundation, because I found it difficult to leave
Florida twice a year to attend meetings. I'm beginning to
rethink that one, and get to Yellowstone.
Everglades desperately needs an increase in funding for a
whole bunch of different projects, which are not covered by
Federal appropriations.
Yes, your question is good, how do we get the Gates', the
``Gates' '' of this world, to step forward with these vast
fortunes that have been made in the last 25 years and take an
interest in the National Park System?
I do think there's going to be a continuing responsibility,
regardless of the pressures on the budget, for the Federal
Government, for the Congress to step up, and honestly assume
the mantle and responsibility of managing, and overseeing, and
funding the National Park System.
1971 to 1977, my period, was a period where Rogers Morton
was Secretary for four of those years, and came from the
Congress, Congressman from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the
last Eastern Secretary of Interior, followed in rapid order by
two more Western Secretaries who I served, and the overwhelming
feeling in the Nixon/Ford administration was, expansion, save
that land now or we'll lose it.
That certainly was true in Big Cypress, it was certainly
true going through the Nixon/Ford administration, into the
Carter administration, on the Alaska Lands Act, which basically
the lands that were withdrawn by President Carter, those maps
were drawn by my staff work in 1971 to 1977, we handed over to
Secretary Andrews a complete set of maps and a complete set of
EISs, and I would be very honored, I have one of the pens from
President Carter when he signed the act, and I had the great
privilege of working with Members of the House and Senate to
see that act passed.
So, that was a period of growth, enormous growth. We
probably could be criticized validly for understating the
amount of money and manpower needed to manage the parks full
time after acquisition or removal from National Forest or BLL
lands, the creation of the new Park System. I accept that. We
picked a basic number of manpower positions and costs to open
the park initially and get planning underway.
I think the Congress knew perfectly well, the
Appropriations Committee knew perfectly well, because I always
responded faithfully. Mr. Secretary, are you going to need more
manpower in years to come? And the answer was, yes. This is the
minimum amount of manpower needed to open these places and
protect them.
When you have your hearings in Alaska, you'll find that
you've got a skeleton crew still on the land there, but in
high-use parks, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Yosemite, the
Congress has known from day one that the needs for additional
manpower were real.
Now, there were surprises all along the line. Former
Assistant Secretary Stan, professor of ecology at University of
Michigan, left me a letter on my desk when I was confirmed in
May 1971, I'm leaving you a bunch of problems. And, I promised
to myself I wasn't going to do that to my successor, and I did
it.
Among them was, timber companies that were ravishing the
headwaters of Redwood Creek, and we were going to lose the
Avenue of Tall Trees in Redwood Creek, which was one of the
most expensive purchases in America's history. Nobody told me
that the grizzly bears were still being fed garbage in
Yellowstone National Park, and I would be on the front pages of
the American newspapers for the next 5 years taking on the
Craighead brothers, who were photogenic, biologists, well-known
researchers in Yellowstone, and I had a liberal arts degree
from a small college, community college in Hartford, CT, and
even though I was supported by three of the greatest ecologists
in America I had to destroy over 180 bears that could not
survive in the wild, and who had become totally accustomed to
eating human garbage. And, I had to ask the Appropriations
Committee for millions of dollars to make every garbage can
inside the park and outside the park in the Forest Service
areas bear proof, so that bears could not continue to eat human
garbage.
Dr. Starker Leopold of California Berkeley said, ``Once a
grizzly bear gets into human garbage it's exactly like
mainlining one of the most powerful drugs in the world. He'll
never forget the glorious good taste of human garbage, and
he'll kill to get it.''
One of the happiest moments of my life is to see that there
are 525 grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park, every
corner of Yellowstone Park that we agreed upon in the 1970's,
if they were filled with bears we could take the bear off the
endangered species list. We've arrived at that, there are over
700 bears between the park and the National Forest lands. But,
that was a cruel period in my life. Those are tough decisions.
My distinguished friend, Mr. Lehtinen, and I do not agree
on the Cape Sable Sparrow, and I will furnish the Staff
Director with my response, but I do agree, heartily agree, that
our disagreements are minor compared to our agreement on the
continued need for congressional oversight and support to
restore the Everglades.
Boy, he made a powerful statement, and that's what I'd like
to leave with you, is the vast majority of the people of this
State, all congressional districts, every poll shows that the
people of Florida are willing to spend, a Governor putting in a
$1.5 billion, committing $1.5 billion, that's on top of $200
million a year for the last 4 years extra, to acquire lands and
try to get this system straight. It is, the system is a mess.
Mr. Lehtinen is right, we've got too much water in the
upper Everglades. Where is it coming from? It's coming from the
agricultural area, the vast 500,000 acres of sugar cane, that
every time it rains is pumped directly into the upper
Everglades, it floods it, and we have no way to get it out
except through the Modified--we might disagree, we do disagree,
on whether the present Modified Water Delivery Plan is a better
plan than the one originally proposed. Yes, we would have
gained time had we done it his way, we are getting, in my
opinion we are getting a better one by waiting. Congress has
funded it. We are underway. We are digging out there right now,
the Corps at last is doing something in restoration.
We should be using Conservation Area 3B to get rid of a lot
of water that's drowning the tree islands. I've been to the
tree islands. I went with the representatives of the Miccosukee
Tribe in airbus to those islands. I wept as a member of the
Water Board. I served 14 years on the South Florida Water
Management District Board. I didn't serve just 2 days a month,
I often worked 11, 12 days a month. I know what damage has been
done to the system.
But, I also have, perhaps, different ideas on how we can
alleviate the problems that we face right now.
I need to get on the road, because I'm going to hit U.S.
No. 1 and I-95 and the Turnpike at the height of the Florida
maddest period of the day, which starts in about--started about
an hour ago, but it will get worse. I just want to reiterate to
you and the members of your staff the deep appreciation we all
have in this room that you've undertaken this mission, and God
bless you.
Mr. Souder. I want to thank both of you for your testimony.
If you have any additional materials you want to give us, we
may have some additional questions provided through print.
Thank you very much.
The subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:30 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Additional information submitted for the hearing record
follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.051
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.052
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8170.053
<all>