Rob Bishop: “I know some of my colleagues are tired of me making reference to the fact that 2 years ago I was simply a high school…”

“I know some of my colleagues are tired of me making reference to the fact that 2 years ago I was simply a high school teacher, but I am still amazed sometimes when I think back that indeed I was talking to a bunch of high school kids at that time, giving them brilliant lectures in history and government, and I know they were brilliant lectures because I was listening to them. Sometimes I feel I was perhaps the only one in the room actually listening to them. None of you actually had the chance to hear them, so it bespeaks the question on can you actually give a brilliant lecture if no one is hearing it. All of you are politicians, and I realize your greatest orations are given in the shower or the bathroom as you are preparing for the day. And it bespeaks the question, Can you actually give a brilliant speech if no one is there to hear it? National parks, like wilderness designation, is not a land management formula; it is a recreation designation. Brilliance of nature. Can it actually be there if no one has the opportunity of actually seeing it? That is the purpose of a national park, to see the natural beauty that is there; and to do so there are trade-offs that we make. In the summer, we are willing to make those trade-offs, because they are so traditional. We become used to them. We allow 3,000 belching automobiles to go through Yellowstone every summer day. We allow 956,000 tourists to go through there in the month of July alone.”