Eleanor Holmes Norton: “My amendment would designate $300,000 from the National Recreation and Preservation Account for a National Park Service…”

“My amendment would designate $300,000 from the National Recreation and Preservation Account for a National Park Service study of whether applying the same rules and regulations to all parks maximizes the highest and best use of individual parks, for the system as a whole, and for Americans who use our parks. This is but a study, and it would require the National Park Service to look at how NPS, cities, counties and States, as well as other countries, manage their diverse parks and to suggest, from the available best practices, appropriate ways to help NPS meet the needs of individual communities within the basic uniformity necessary to operate a national system of parks. Today, the NPS applies the same rules and regulations to all its parks, regardless of location, from the almost 1200-square-mile Yosemite National Park to small urban parks on street corners. I support a unified national park system, but NPS should develop flexible standards that take into account the unique circumstances and population of individual parks and changing conditions throughout the country in keeping with congressional recognition of both conservation and recreation as primary reasons for our parks. The neighborhood parks in the District of Columbia, for example, serve a very different function from Yellowstone.…”