AN INTERVIEW WITH JERRY BANTA

Stiles: I know you were here in the early 70s, so what is your take, 25 years later? It's a slightly different place...
Banta: In terms of the parks, there are a number of big changes; when I worked at Needles, we had, I think, maybe a little more than 10 thousand people a year showed up. You could have a personal contact with everybody. At Arches I think there were maybe a couple of hundred thousand and now we're at 900 thousand, approaching a million. So, the numbers of people have changed a lot. The resources are kind of interesting; just visibly, the first thing that hit me when I got here was the great increase in tamarisk. Alien plants. We used to hike around Salt Creek and do things down at the Needles and not see much of it. Some parts in Arches are tremendously impacted by that. It's visually I think the biggest change on the landscape. There are some positive things. When I worked here 20-30 years ago we still had grazing in substantial parts of Needles and in Arches. In some areas, they look much better in terms of recovering and things like that. The changes have been both ways.
Stiles: I was at Arches for 10 years, from the mid-70s to mid 80s, and I think in the 10 years that I was there visitation increased from 300,000 to 400,000; 13 years later and, as you said, it's pushing a million. I guess that's really the challenge--what do you do? How do you maintain the kind of park experience that people had then with a visitation that continues to increase?
Banta: Interesting, well, that's sort of the same kind of question we were asking 30 years ago. As you remember, we thought we were crowded then. I think there are two parts to that question--Arches has a windshield side and a backcountry side. I have always thought one of the critical things we have to do is really fight to preserve the experience for the people who want to get outside of their car and do some looking at the heart of the park. The other side of the question deals with the car itself; we critically need to do some transportation planning and we're doing everything kind of backwards. Probably over the next couple of years, we're going to change the entrance station, but that's just going to get more people through the gate faster. We really need to get funding to basically look at all the transportation issues in the park, to see if there are alternatives, if there are other things we could to invest in, road-wise, to better distribute people.
Stiles: I remember a couple of years ago Congress approved a park expansion at Arches into Lost Spring Canyon. At the time your predecessor talked about promoting this area as the jewel of the backcountry at Arches and possibly even establishing a back-country campground. It seems like the Park Service will acquire land and then promote its use. Or sometimes it attempts to disperse use into seldom-visited places and creates new impacts. Why can't the Park Service just preserve an area by not talking about it?
Banta: Or at least not promoting the development. Well, I think that's a good point. Of course, whenever you get to talking about new parks or expanding parks or whatever, it is a lot of different drivers in the process. Lost Spring Canyon--one of the things we need to do is look at how that fits into wilderness land at Arches because right now it's not included. It obviously has a high potential for that kind of experience in the parks. I don't think we'll be doing campgrounds in there unless it turns out to be absolutely necessary for resource protection.
Stiles: With all the people we have coming here, do you think you're making the best use of your staff in terms of their accessibility to the visitor? Twenty years ago, the administrative staff all fit into a small building on Main Street. Isn't the ratio of staff to field rangers weighted toward staff?
Banta: I think if you actually looked at the numbers the big difference would be with the seasonal employees. When I worked at Needles there were three of us, now there's four times that many or so. At Arches there were two permanent rangers when I worked at Arches and that includes interpretive and protection staff. So, the field staffs have actually increased proportionally more than the central office staff in terms of permanent employees. But the fact is when budgets get tight, seasonal employees who are the people that normally do the professional job of guided walks and those kinds of things, pretty much get eliminated and we're forced to use volunteers. I haven't had time to assess the whole operation here but times have changed so much in terms of the expertise you need, the compliance procedures that we deal with the resource specialists. Back in my day most rangers had some kind of natural resources background. You did most of the resource management yourself. The paperwork process just for payroll is intense. It's a difficult situation, but every position that we fill, we look at where the need is the most.
Stiles: One of the things that seems like it hasn't changed in 25 years is that when we talk about available funds for parks, the seasonal staff are always at the low end of the totem pole. I can remember there was always money for heavy equipment, road and trail crews, capital improvements, but money for seasonal interpretation was always tight. And it still is. For example, I know there was a need for trail repairs at Arches, but when I go to the Windows and see this incredibly expensive trail system with rock stairways, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, it seems a poor use of NPS funds. I just have to wonder, does the park have the opportunity to say, we'd rather have that money spent in other ways? And if you don't have that opportunity and this has been going on for so long, when are all these superintendents going to rise up against Washington and try to make some changes?
Banta: I think there will be some changes. I personally am not sure the extent to which we built trails in the Windows was necessary, although there needed to be some trail improvements up there. Most of that is raised from the fee demonstration program. The next time Congress looks at the fee demonstration program, it needs to look at whether the use of that money can't be broadened. As you would expect with a new program there's real interest in making sure that projects that are done are highly visible, that they are things that get people's support for the program. A lot of the direction has been focusing on maintenance backlog. Hopefully the fee demo program will be made permanent or at least restructured so that we can use it for a broad range of activities--to put it into interpretation, to put it into resource management. Everybody is talking about that; it is pretty hard to do these things without for instance being able to spend the money on permanent salaries and things like this.
Stiles: How about seasonal salaries?
Banta: You can expand seasonal salaries; in fact that that's the only thing you can spend it on. You can spend the 80 percent of the money to keep on seasonal salaries, the trail crews are seasonals. Some other things, maintenance people, projects, people that build things.
Stiles: But not interpretation...
Banta: We aren't to that point yet, but obviously that's where a big part of the need is. I'm sure Congress is concerned about us, the National Park Service, keeping focused on priority needs and not just absorbing the money into kind of the abyss of the operation, so it will be interesting to what happens, but everyone is pushing for a much broader application of that money.
Stiles: As long as we're on the subject of spending money, Owen has a question about the fee demo program: 'Hikers have to pay a fee to hike near the Fiery Furnace without any direct benefit from the fee. Why single out one group of visitors?' I think he's talking about the fact that beyond just the Fiery Furnace guided walk, if you want to walk in that section of the park, even if it's outside of that trail, there's a fee attached to it.
Banta: To hike into the Fiery Furnace you need a permit, the basic reason for that permit is resource protection; we want to limit the number of people and impact of people and to see that they get educated before they get in there. Why that particular area gets a fee charge and others don't, relates to the amount of work it takes to manage that permit system. To be quite frank, we've had some discussion since I've gotten here about whether what I consider to be the highest quality interpretive program at Arches National Park, why that should be something that is charged a fee for and that's where we put out our message the best. Right now, it is a part of the fee demo program--that's what it keeps it going.
Stiles: Is there the possibility that someday you would also feel that you needed a fee to hike the Devil's Garden Trail or Delicate Arch?
Banta: I hope not. I think one of the dangers of the fee demo program, not just here, but across the country, is this thing of getting nickeled and dimed for everything. Theoretically, you'd like to pay an entrance fee and have most of the things accessible to you, unless they're particular things that aren't available to anybody else like special users. That's one of the big concerns we have is that the plethora of different types of fees are going to doom the whole program. Having to pay a fee every time you turn around.
Stiles: You've mentioned the possibility of building a new visitors' center at Arches and Owen was wondering if you plan on tearing the old one down; his thought was the fewer structures in a National Park the better. Why not tear it down and move those offices into town. But his thinking is, if you're going to have offices why have them right on the edge of the National Park itself?
Banta: The answer to the first question is yes, we not only plan on--and it's not designed yet so you can't talk too specifically about it--but the scenario would be that you not only replace the existing visitors' center but that you remove some of the other buildings out there at the same time. As you're aware, Jim, the visual appearance of the entrance to Arches has always been kind of a haphazard thing. What we want to do in the course of that process is not only look at removing a few of the buildings that are there but also seeing how we can visually improve some of the ones that are. There are some offices that have to be there--fee collectors, toll ranger service and some of those kinds of things, but probably it won't house any more folks than are directly to those operations.
Stiles: What about the maintenance area, will that pretty much stay the way it is?
Banta: Well, we don't know yet, but one of the planning things that we're hoping to do if we get a little bit of money to do planning is to look at the maintenance area. If we can't do anything with it, certainly it can screened much better than it is.
Stiles: Balanced Rock is one of the centerpieces of Arches National Park, but if you go up that adjacent gravel road about 200 yards, you'll find the park gravel pit, just 100 yards from the picnic area. It has been an eyesore for as long as I can remember, with heavy equipment parked up there, diesel oil in the wash. And a lot of junk. Any chance of moving that?
Banta: It's been reduced somewhat significantly, in fact, when I was here there were two of them. There was that one and another you could actually see from Canyon Rim Point just before you dropped down from Salt Valley. It was an incredible eyesore from one of the major viewpoints of the park. That one somehow over the years got removed. I hope we can do a better job with the one that's here.
Stiles: Along with the fee demo, which was in response to increased visitation and impacts in the park, there are obviously a lot more restrictions than there used to be 20 years. If you wanted a backcountry permit to go to the Maze, you went out there, showed up and got a free permit and went. That's all changed; how do you see that evolving? Is it going to get even more restrictive in the future and do you support all the restrictions that are in place now? For instance, closing Salt Wash to vehicles limited the number of people that Angel Arch to just a handful. How do you see these restrictions continuing and expanding?
Banta: If we have restrictions, they should be either related to impacts on resources or the opportunity for experience. I really don't see much more in terms of restrictions. It seems me that we'll be visiting the backcountry planning for Canyonlands in probably two or three years. The Salt Creek thing is a different issue. The Salt Creek case is the basis of a whole new section of national policies in the National Park Service. The circuit court of appeals has heard arguments on that and I expect a decision in a few months. Interesting question. In this park, obviously the jeep, 4-wheel drive travel was referred to often in the legislative history and was a part of what the park was about when it was established. That butts up against real damage to resources... somebody has to make some tough decisions about that.
Stiles: Here's an Owen question. 'What is your opinion of the new exercise rooms in the districts? Can't your rangers get their exercise by putting on hiking boots and going out into the park and meeting visitors?'
Banta: Actually some of us oldtimers, have a hard time with some of that stuff, but it's a requirement of law enforcement that they pass certain physical examination battery every year and that battery is no longer an aerobic thing; it involves muscular skills. We're required to provide them with facilities where they can train. It's a lot different than it used to be.
Stiles: How do you feel about the state of law enforcement in the parks now?
Banta: In Canyonlands, as far as I can tell, we have a good ranger staff. All the people I've met have a real good concept of what a ranger is and that law enforcement is a part of that process, but the major focus of the job is education and information. Law enforcement in the National Park Service is much more formalized A lot of us worry that the people we're attracting for those positions are people that aren't really interested in the rangering side of things and more the law enforcement side. Some parks, I think, do have a problem. I haven't really seen it here.
Stiles: Do you get much public feedback on law enforcement?
Banta: It's changing. My first experience with the National Park Service was when I was in Grad school and I wandered into the boundaries of a national monument collecting insects and a ranger stepped out from behind the bush and asked me for my permit. I couldn't believe anybody would expect me to have a permit for collecting insects; luckily for me the ranger saw that as an educational opportunity, not a law enforcement opportunity. We still have to make sure that rangers understand that that's basically what they're about.
Stiles: Do you ever feel like you can't please anybody? You have on one side the San Juan County Commission planning on claiming some of the park roads as county roads and you get environmentalists who feel like you're not doing enough. How in the world do you find a balance or do you just assume, no one likes you.
Banta: Everybody has their job and it depends on the constituencies on both sides of the issue. The letters and calls I get, some of them are pretty vehement in opposition to what we do. But 90 percent of them are folks who say gosh I was in the park and it was great or I really had a good time up there. The rewards are there, and I don't feel picked on too much.
Stiles: What do you see the park being like in 10 to 20 years? As more and more people want to get out into the parks to escape their urban nightmares, what do you see if these trends continue?
Banta: We don't know where we are in terms of trends. If you look at Arches' visitation, there was a big boom and it looks like we're leveling off a bit. I'm not sure what the future is going to hold in numbers. We do know that the future holds a change in use and user demands. In Arches, we may have to develop a different transportation process, we may have to really work at marketing in the off-season. We have a system in place to pretty much maintain the quality, but at some point or another, if the numbers keep increasing, then we'll have to limit the number of people who can have that experience. That's why we have a permit systems in place to try to preserve the experience as well as the uses.
Stiles: I guess I'm an old-timer now and I can wax nostalgic about how open and unrestricted things were here 20 years ago. It's difficult to realize things have changed so much.
Banta: One of the places I recall is the Island in the Sky; my remembrance was of a gravel road; it took work to get out there and hike and you go out there now and you see 250-thousand people a year. There have been some real changes.
Stiles: For me that has always been the bottom line--you could get out to Grand Viewpoint in a 1963 Volvo, because I used to do it, but you had to work at it. It seems like some of the best ways to limit the overuse is to not make it so accessible and I rarely see that approach. It sure didn't survive the road building at Canyonlands.
Banta: I think if you look at the proposed Canyonlands reports, there were all kinds of roads that aren't there and as it turns out, it's not been as developed anywhere near to the extent that was envisioned by the people involved in the establishment of the park. And for the better, I think. I don't see much more development happening in the parks. I think we look at parks differently now than we did in the early days of parks and hopefully they'll be sustained, 10 years, 20 years down the road. I think we can do a better job with some of the trails that we have. I agree with you; the bulk of these parks should be a natural experience, a wilderness experience. I worry also that the time is going to come when the experience is going to be heavily impacted by the infrastructure. I think we need trails to control impacts where there is a whole lot of use to an area, but I certainly do not see a lot of new trails being built, just to get people in there.
Stiles: Thanks Jerry.