With cold temperatures outside contrasting with hot discussions inside, Yosemite Park hosted a “user capacity” symposium in Yosemite Valley for two days during early February. Panels of academic experts and land planners from across the continent shared examples of visitor management at sites as diverse as the Statue of Liberty, remote wild rivers in Alaska, and heavily visited theme parks.
John, CSERC’s director, attended the event to try to better understand alternatives to Yosemite Park’s insistence that there is no need to set limits on visitor use in heavily-visited Yosemite Valley.
Two court judgments in recent years have gone against Yosemite Park planning staff, and currently the Park is halfway through its third attempt to produce a Merced River Wild and Scenic River plan to fulfill legal mandates. The first two River plan decisions were met with litigation by groups that doubted the Park’s assurances that adaptive management by Park staff was sufficient to prevent harm to the “outstandingly remarkable” resource values of the river corridor and Yosemite Valley.
Over the last decade, CSERC staff has invested extensive efforts into engaging in Yosemite Park planning – even when it appears the bulk of public comments end up in the trash. As an example, CSERC staff urged the Park to consider the use of RF chips (integrated circuit devices designed for wireless communications and data transmission). A further entrenched
tiny, inexpensive RF chip embedded in a permit tag could be taped to a vehicle’s windshield at Park entrance stations. The Park could use monitoring posts, triggered by the chip, to pinpoint exactly how many cars are in Yosemite Valley and when to divert visitors to other areas until congestion
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subsided. Other technologies also exist, yet in both plans rejected by the courts, Park planners insisted adaptive management was an adequate strategy.
“Adaptive management” primarily means trusting the Park service to effectively do the right thing whenever too many visitors might harm the ecosystem. Adaptive management also means trusting the Park service to clearly know any time such ecological harm is taking place.
At the user-capacity symposium, one long-time planning expert emphasized the many positive benefits of establishing clear numerical limits as a key part of managing visitors at highly popular sites such as Yosemite. The bulk of Park-invited presenters, however, advocated for less restrictive visitor management plans that depended primarily on giving informed Park staff options to choose from whenever visitor use reach high levels.
Key Yosemite Park planners were openly supportive of those who echoed the Park’s adaptive management strategy (that was twice rejected by the courts). Despite excellent speakers on many aspects of visitor use, it appeared that the symposium further entrenched Park staff positions defending their management approach – a strategy that CSERC fears will allow excessive visitation to gradually diminish the ecological web of life in Yosemite Valley. The impressive falls and cliffs will remain, but the foothill-yellow-legged-frog, fisher, marten, and other at-risk wildlife or plant species may well fade away under overly intensive visitation. The precious sense of awe and wonder for visitors may also be harder to experience amidst congestion and crowds. |
