bookings, restaurant patronage, and slower gift and merchandise sales.

When viewed alongside rapidly escalating energy and operational costs, the future for park concession business is far from robust.

Interior Secretary Babbitt's campaign proved to be a public relations disaster. It is true, the Secretary did attempt to reverse his message with backtracking acknowledgements that "I really didn't mean American people should not come to their national parks." It was clearly a case of too little too late.

Today, the American public seems convinced that parks do not welcome visitors.

While our examples demonstrate how Federal park policy decisions discourage U.S. park visitors, we also wish to stress to the Committee that we want to build upon our unique partnership with the NPS to enhance the recommended protection and preservation goals. In particular, Congress should ensure the NPS receives funds to confront the monstrous maintenance backlog.

Our partnership with NPS is unique. We have more to give and more to gain from a successful, practical implementation of goals that heighten the commitments to the both the visitor experience and the conservation of precious park resources.

Congress needs to provide guidance and restore a more balanced approach to park preservation and visitation.

We will work with you, Mr. Chairman, and this Committee, to achieve the mutually compatible goals. And I thank you for this opportunity to testify.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Woodside follows:]

Statement of David Woodside, Vice Chairman, National Park Hospitality

Association

Mr. Chairman, on behalf of National Park Hospitality Association we want to thank your committee for convening this hearing on visitor access to the National Parks. I am David Woodside, Vice Chairman of the National Park Hospitality Association and President of the Acadia Corporation that operates visitor services in Acadia National Park.

The National Park Hospitality Association is the national trade association of the businesses that provide lodging, food services, transportation, and retail services to visitors in the National Park system. Our members work in public-private partnership with the National Park Service and have served the public interest well over 100 years, pre-dating the establishment of the National Park Service (NPS). Basic Management Policy for National Parks

"National parks belong to all Americans-Enjoyment of park resources and values by the people of the United States is part of the fundamental purpose of all parks The Service is committed to providing appropriate, high quality opportunities for visitors to enjoy the parks, and will maintain within the parks an atmosphere that is open, inviting, and accessible to every segment of American society . . . The fact that a park use may have an impact does not necessarily mean it will impair park resources or values for enjoyment of future generations." 2001 NPS Management Policies Guide.

The words sound good, but sometimes management policies are at odds with the expansive policy objectives. No words on paper can compensate for the disruptive practices at those same national parks. When these actions take place, there is invariably a decline in visitors and revenue to the concessionaires within the impacted parks. No other entity in the national parks has more to gain or lose from public relations and management decisions made at that park than the visitor services concessioner.

The National Park Service has done an outstanding job over the years of preserving and managing a steadily expanding network of national parks, national historic sites, national seashores and national recreation areas which now number 379 units while accommodating a growing number of system visitors.

As established by the National Park Service Act of August 25, 1916, the National Park Service clearly was given a dual mandate:

"To conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life in the parks and to provide for the enjoyment of same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."

The NPS has been entrusted to preserve our parks for the enjoyment, education and inspiration of current and future generations. We believe that park units should be preserved for visitors, not just for the sake of preservation alone. Whether it is the extraordinary vistas of the Grand Canyon or the ability to track a soldier's footsteps across the now quiet battlefields of Gettysburg and Valley Forge, national parks have tremendous value to each one of us.

Members of the National Park Hospitality Association are committed to preserving access to National Parks for all people. Not everyone can don a backpack and trek across the wilderness. But with responsible management of the parks, and services provided in them, people can come and experience the wonder of these special places.

The concessioners strongly support park resource preservation and work to enhance the park environment both philosophically and as business imperative.

Shifting Park Visitation Policy

It is often very difficult to strike an equitable and fair balance between visitor use and resource preservation which often forces the National Park Service to manage competing interests of the environmentalists and visitors.

In 1993, then Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt announced a policy shift which emphasized the NPS' role to preserve the park environment, stating that "we are loving our parks to death." The Secretary of Interior was engaged in a concerted public relations campaign to discourage Americans from going to their national parks.

During the recent past, then NPS Director Robert G. Stanton in a keynote speech at the NPS' Discovery 2000 encapsulated this shift by stating that the "National Park Service is now a conservation agency" with the major focus on protecting and preserving America's natural and cultural resources, not visitor services.

This shift toward preservation, coupled with a stream of negative national media stories, has skewed the public perception of the national parks. During the past decade, park visitation has been routinely discouraged by media accounts that highlight the supposed ravages of tourism to the national parks with nightmares of congestion, overcrowding and blighted parks.

Further media stories stress the dilapidated and depleted state of the parks emphasizing the lack of infrastructure available to accommodate these hordes of tourists. One recent story by the Chicago Tribune, claimed that parking spaces were so scarce at the Grand Canyon that visitors had to circle for hours waiting until a space opened up much like a crowded shopping mall.

Visitation in National Parks Reduced

The public certainly responded to Secretary Babbitt's message. This Federal policy shift has resulted in a definite impact on the amount of park visitation. Since 1994, there has been significant visitor decline in some of the nation's major parks. The NPS Intermountain Region has posted a steady decrease in recreational visitation over the past eight years, especially at Grand Canyon National Park.

Overall, national park visitation is flat. System wide NPS has posted a small increase in visitation of around 1.2% annually, however many national park units have actually experienced visitor declines. In fact, over the past several years many of the major parks have experienced a decline in the number of visitors well beyond factors like inclement weather, wild fires, and increased gasoline prices.

The following chart illustrates the overall decline in visitation at some of our concessioners' parks from 1993 when Secretary Babbitt issued his proclamation.

Concessioner businesses have experienced declines as a direct result of the lower number of visitors. In many major national parks, we have witnessed a reduction in our members' concession businesses in terms of fewer hotel bookings, restaurant patronage, and slower gift and merchandise sales. The association received reports that many concession operations experienced a reduction in business last year from a few percent up to 50% in the parks hit by last summer's wildfires. When viewed alongside rapidly escalating energy and operational costs which impact our member's businesses, the future for the park concession business is far from robust. Doing Business in the Parks Is Always a Challenge

Federal policy is just one of the factors impacting park visitation. Visitor service business is affected by many factors including facility, transportation and services infrastructure, inclement weather and other acts of nature. The national park hospitality industry is continually challenged by natural forces like the devastating Yellowstone fires of 1992 and the Yosemite floods in 1996 that closed the park to visitors, and the summer of 2000 spate of wildfires that resulted in over 30% fewer visitors to the western parks. The irony of the 2000 fire season was the fact that the devastating New Mexico fires were started by the NPS itself as a "controlled" fire.

NPS Management Decisions Directly Affect Park Visitation

Interior Secretary Babbitt's campaign proved to be a public relations disaster. It is true Secretary Babbitt did attempt to reverse his message in 1994 with back

tracking acknowledgments that, "I didn't really mean that the American people should not come to their national parks." It was clearly a case of too little, too late. Today, the American public seems convinced that parks do not welcome visitors. We are very encouraged by the recent developments in which the National Park Service and the National Park Foundation are teaming up to launch a multi-million dollar, multi-year public education program to issue citizens an invitation to "Experience Your America" and visit their national parks.

Conclusion

While our critical examples demonstrate how Federal park policy decisions discourage U.S. park visitors, we also wish to stress to the committee that we want to build upon our unique partnership with the NPS to enhance the resource protection and preservation goals and increase Federal revenues to NPS to confront the monstrous maintenance back log.

Our partnership with NPS is unique. We have more to give and more to gain from a successful, practical implementation of goals that heighten the commitments to both the visitor experience and the conservation of the precious park resources.

Congress needs to provide guidance and restore a more balanced approach to park preservation and visitation. Congress needs to fund the park infrastructure maintenance backlog fully. Congress needs to ensure that the dual roles of the National Park Service of preservation and visitor service continue to remain equal.

We will work with you, Mr. Chairman, and this committee to achieve these mutually compatible goals.

We thank you for this opportunity to testify.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, sir.

Mr. DeCou?

STATEMENT OF WESLEY DECOU, FLYING SITE COORDINATOR, ACADEMY OF MODEL AERONAUTICS

Mr. DECOU. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee.

I am Wesley DeCou, flying site coordinator for the Academy of Model Aeronautics, a 165,000-member organization concerned with all aspects of the international sport of model aviation.

Prior to accepting my current assignment, I held the elected position of AMA vice president, serving our members in New York and New Jersey, as well as our members who are in the U.S. armed forces in Europe.

With me in the gallery today, are Academy President David Brown, East Coast Free Flight Conference President Bob Langelius, and members Sydney Krivin and Jean Pailet.

I speak on behalf of the Academy today in an effort to provide you with background relative to what we consider to be very appropriate use of public lands, a use that comes with negligible impact to the environment, yet which provides educational and recreational opportunities for entire families.

As its representative, I am speaking, of course, about model aviation.

Historically, many of the most prodigious advancements in aeronautics in this country have come from the minds of individuals whose intellectual fire was first sparked by an interest in model aviation.

Wherever I travel, when I speak to a group about our sport and ask for a show of hands, fully half of those in attendance indicate an interest, either past or present, in model aviation.

The ranks of our AMA members have included such aviation and aerospace luminaries as Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Dr. Paul

MacCready, Burt Rutan, and many other pioneers in the fields of aviation, aerospace, and related disciplines.

With our population on the increase and urban sprawl trying to keep up, we see fewer and fewer venues at which we can practice our sport. As a result, seasoned pilots as well as youngsters who would aspire to the many world championship model aviation teams representing the United States are left without an adequate space to hone their skill.

More and more people of all ages and from all walks of life are denied access to the hobby sport of their preference. An example familiar to some of you as a result of Congressman Benjamin Ĝilman's testimony before your Subcommittee on Fisheries, Conservation, Wildlife, and Oceans, in June of last year, is that of the east coast free flight conference flying site at Galeville, New York.

This flying site, by far the best location on the east coast for free flight modeling activity, had been used by aeromodelers for nearly 30 years and was administered by the Military Academy at West Point.

In the early 1990's, the site was cleared of underbrush by the modeling community and the AMA at no expense to West Point, but with encouragement from a West Point biologist. The specific objective, which was indeed realized, was to create a Savannah-like grasslands environment for grass-nesting birds co-located with a launch site for the free flight modeler-a win for the birds and a win for the modelers.

Shortly after the grasslands environment was created, the Galeville site was declared excess by West Point. And after a short period of time, it was given to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Because of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service interpretation of the National Wildlife System Improvement Act of 1997, the east coast free flight conference flyers were summarily banned from further activity at the airfield. That interpretation was essentially that only wildlife-dependent activities could be conducted at Galeville.

Hunters would now be permitted to go on the site, but the modelers would have to go.

In spite of documented evidence to the effect that model aviation activity is ignored by birds, just as they ignore full-size aircraft operating in and out major airports, and in spite of professional opinions that any impact on migratory or migrating birds would extremely unlikely, the ban continues in effect since model aviation is not a wildlife-dependent activity.

We urge that priority activities on any public land-be it a national park, a national recreation area, a national wildlife refuge continue to be undertaken by the local staff people. Further, as a means of creating a significant increase in recreational opportunities on public lands, we urge that activities such as model aviation, with minimal attendant cost and minimal or zero impact on the local environment, be permitted uses in addition to the stated priority activities.

A grassland created and maintained by a group of dedicated modelers is a win. A model aviation venue where we can strike the spark that fires the imagination of a youngster is a win. Model aviation's loss of the Galeville facility is a shame.