National parks need all the protection, funds available

By Hillary Rodham Clinton

Last summer, Bill, Chelsea and I spent two weeks at Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Like many other families, we hiked and paid our respects to Old Faithful. We came home with memories of long walks past waterfalls, sightings of buffalo, moose and eagles, and multicolored sunsets lighting up an endless Western sky.

But we also came home worried about the future of these beautiful lands. While on vacation, we took a helicopter ride over the site of a proposed gold mine just 3 miles north of Yellowstone Park. Afterward, local residents shared their concerns that the planned mine would leak toxic acid into the park's rivers and poison the wildlife. Bill said he would do everything he could to make sure that Yellowstone came to no harm.

This week, we're in Grand Teton and Yellowstone for another vacation. A few days ago, Chelsea and I accompanied Bill to a pristine meadow just 5 miles from the proposed mine. There, in the shadow of ancient and magnificent peaks, the President announced that no mine will ever be built near Yellowstone National Park.

After a year of negotiations, the administration and Crowne Butte, the Canadian company that owns the site near Yellowstone, have worked out an agreement to prevent construction of the mine. In exchange for other federal lands, the company will help clean up and turn over the site to the American people.

All this came about because environmentalists, business leaders and government officials overcame their differences and worked together. As the President said, "We don't have to make a choice between the environment and the economy."

Bill, Chelsea and I then drove to the ranger station at the top of Mount Washburn and took in the same breathtaking vistas that inspired Congress to make Yellowstone the world's first national park in 1872. We went on an eight-and-a-half mile hike to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, walking down a 50- million-year-old mountain, through golden meadows and around bubbling hot mudpots. We saw firsthand how the park is, as the President said, "more precious than gold."

For more than a century, our national parks have remained refuges from the pressures of modern life, places unspoiled by mass consumerism, commercialism and rampant development. At a time when urban skylines seem to transform daily, the National Park Service ensures that our country's most precious natural park lands survive all seasons of change.

The National Park Service, 80 years old this month, has made it possible for parents to share the beloved forests and streams of their childhood with their children. My husband grew up in Hot Springs, Arkansas, enjoying the national park of the same name. As a little girl, Chelsea walked the same trails he did and marveled at the city's old Victorian spas and hotels

Through our parks, generations of children can learn about the importance of conservation. As Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt says, the parks can help "communicate to the American people what it means to live more lightly and respectfully on the land."

But today, out national parks are heading toward a crisis. The National park Service's budget has failed to keep pace with inflation and rising costs. As a result, some parks have had to close campgrounds and museums, reduce maintenance on trails and roads, and cut back on the number of rangers patrolling the forests. At the same time, more and more people -- 270 million in 1994 -- are choosing to spend their vacations in America's 369 national parks.

And despite our parks' growing needs, and our people's growing love for our natural treasures, there are some in Congress who made repeated attempts to cut funding for and even close national parks, wipe out wildlife refuges, clear-cut national forests, drain wetlands and repeal water protection.

If we care about the future of our environment and our national parks, we must all do our part to protect them. That means committing ourselves to restoring sites, such as the Everglades, that have been damaged by time and man. It means making environmental values part of all our decisions about how we use our natural resources. Most of all, it means constant vigilance against efforts that undermine our commitment to preserving out environment for future generations.

Perhaps President Theodore Roosevelt said it best at the turn of the century: "There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of giant Sequoias and Redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children's children forever."

-- Creators Syndicate