PARK SERVICE WOES UNSETTLING

A couple of news items are troubling.

A June 25 Associated Press article outlines further cuts to an
already struggling National Park Service. Already, rangers are in
short supply, visitor centers and restrooms in disrepair and public
services lacking. A recent poll found most park visitors would
support higher entry fees if the added money went to roads and repairs, first.

Now we know that the Park Service does a better job juggling scarce
resources than the equally short-shrifted U.S. Forest Service. But
another troubling aspect to forest rangering is cropping up.

Danger - and not from the occasional mountain lion or black bear.
Animals of another sort, drug users, marijuana farmers, drunks and
"deranged" environmental protesters, according to Agriculture
Undersecretary Mark Rey, have been taking pot shots at and otherwise
attacking forest personnel. Rey oversees the Forest Service and has
requested a $12 million increase earmarked for law enforcement in the
upcoming budget year.

The problems aren't all in Yosemite or far-flung forests across the
nation. Right here at home in the Angeles National Forest, rangers
were fired upon when they tried to eradicate a stand of marijuana.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility delivered the grim
numbers on why the Service is helpless to do much about lawlessness:
Last year there were a mere 660 rangers, investigators and special
agents in the nation's 155 national forests and 20 grasslands. To
wrap your head Advertisementaround that math, it translates to one
law enforcement position for every 291,000 acres of forest land in
the 192-million-acre system.

Yikes!

Of course much of our forests are inaccessible and can or should be
patrolled by aircraft. But how safe can the recreating public be in
our most used urban forest, the Angeles, when there are too few law
enforcement personnel?

The group said the Forest Service spends less than 2percent of its
total budget on law enforcement, less than the National Park Service
or the Bureau of Land Management. No wonder pot farmers find the
growing easy up in San Gabriel Canyon.

We'd like to see an audit of the Angeles in particular to see where
the money goes, both that appropriated by Congress and brought in by
the onerous Adventure Pass. Could resources be better allocated to
serve the greatest number of visitors?

By and large those throngs aren't lawbreakers, just law-abiding
residents looking for respite from urban life and city heat along the
shady banks of the San Gabriel or deep in forest glens. Still, they
should go with the assurance that law enforcement will make that trip
as crime-free as possible.