Mount Rainier is among those listed as vulnerable

 By LES BLUMENTHAL, The News Tribune

 April 8th, 2008

 WASHINGTON - Unless the White House and Congress provide more money to buy private lands within park boundaries, there could be logging at Mount Rainier, commercial development in Valley Forge, and national parks from Golden Gate to Gettysburg could face similar problems.

A report issued today by the National Parks Conservation Association said funding to purchase so-called in-holdings within the parks has declined sharply over the past decade, from a high of nearly $148 million annually to $44 million now.

“The American public will be surprised to learn a lot of land in the parks is not protected,” said Ron Tipton, a senior vice president for the conservation association. “A lot of land is vulnerable to being developed, subdivided or sold.”

Nationwide, there are roughly 1.8 million acres of privately held land within national park boundaries that would cost an estimated $1.9 billion to purchase, Tipton said.

At Mount Rainier National Park, the major concern is the status of 440 acres owned by Plum Creek Timber Co. along the scenic Carbon River Valley.

Plum Creek has no immediate plans to log the tract and would like to see it protected, said Kathy Budinick, a company spokeswoman.

The Trust for Public Land has negotiated an option to buy the tract, but eventually Congress must appropriate money for the National Park Service to purchase it outright.

Even so, Sean Smith, Northwest regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association, said there are no guarantees the land will be protected.

“We don’t want to paint Plum Creek as a villain,” said Smith. “They are negotiating. But they can’t wait forever, and they shouldn’t be expected to wait forever. Eventually it could be logged.”

Peter Dykstra, Washington state director of the Trust for Public Land, said providing federal money to purchase tracts like the one owned by Plum Creek is imperative.

“It is critical to get funding to get these parcels in National Park Service ownership,” Dykstra said.

The Plum Creek parcel became part of the park when the park’s northwest boundary was extended in 2004.

The Carbon River Valley contains one of the last inland old-growth rain forests in the United States and includes prime habitat for such endangered and threatened species as the northern spotted owl, the marbled murrelet and Chinook salmon.

The 440-acre Plum Creek holding is part of more than 800 acres of privately held land in the expansion. The Cascade Land Conservancy also has been interested in protecting those acres, said Randy King, Mount Rainier’s deputy superintendent.

“It’s a holding strategy until Congress appropriates the money,” King said, though adding private lands in the park are “subject to sale to any willing buyer.”

The purchase price of the Plum Creek tract and the other privately held acreage is between $3.5 million and $4 million, King said. The estimate is based on current timber values.

About $1 million already has been appropriated to begin land purchases.

As chairman of the House interior appropriations subcommittee, Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Belfair, has control over the National Park Service budget and funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

“Logging is not an acceptable use in a national park,” George Behan, a Dicks spokesman, said of the situation at Mount Rainier.

Behan said Dicks will try to increase funding to purchase private lands in the national parks, including Mount Rainier, but money is tight and the White House in the past has threatened to veto any appropriation that exceeded its budget request.

Elsewhere in the conservation group’s report, it noted that one in every five acres is privately held at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania, site of the battle that was a turning point in the Civil War. At Valley Forge National Historic Park in Pennsylvania, where the Continental Army spent the brutal winter of 1977-78, one in every 10 acres is privately held and a hotel, conference center and museum are planned “within cannon shot” of Gen. George Washington’s headquarters, the report said.

Private holdings in the Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas could be developed; in Zion National Park in Utah construction has been started on a conference center on private land; and in Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska, unpatented mining claims could be used as the site of a remote lodge.

“Of the 391 units in the national park system, a significant and growing number face some threat to wildlife habitat or the preservation of cultural treasures because of development on privately owned land within national park boundaries,” the report said.

Though some of the private landowners have been willing to sell to the National Park Service or conservation groups, the report said the Park Service has “lacked funding to close the deals, and even the most public-spirited owners cannot be expected to forgo their own financial needs indefinitely.”