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Committee: No park status for volcano
Panel advising Congress does want Mount St. Helens to receive better funding Wednesday, March 4 Read Below or Click link...
http://www.columbian.com/article/20090305/NEWS02/703059960Mount St. Helens should not become Washington's fourth national park, according to a committee advising Congress.The committee wants the cash-strapped U.S. Forest Service to retain the 110,000-acre national volcanic monument, but the advisory panel is calling for changes that would elevate the monument's importance in the federal budget. The panel resisted calls for turning it over to the National Park Service.
That's the key finding in a wish list of proposals released by the committee this week for public review.
None of the proposals carried a price tag, but the list is ambitious.
It includes a new highway extension north to Randle, which would easily range into the hundreds of millions of dollars; overnight accommodations at the shuttered Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center; and unspecified destination resorts in and around the monument.
The panel expects to prioritize its suggestions during an all-day meeting on May 14.
U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray and Reps. Brian Baird and Norm Dicks commissioned the 14-member committee more than a year ago to explore the surrounding community's vision of the monument's future and make a recommendation about the best course of action. The committee includes a cross-section of elected officials, recreationists, scientists and residents.
It held a series of meetings over the past year.
"What we heard from the public was pretty loud and clear in those seven meetings to keep it with the Forest Service, but with more money and better management," said Paul Pearce, the Skamania County commissioner who served as the panel's co-chairman.
He cited concern that the Park Service would impose new restrictions on hunting, fishing and off-road use if the monument became a national park.
In 2007, Cantwell raised the possibility of turning it over to the Park Service when chronic budget shortfalls forced the Forest Service to permanently close the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center after just 14 years.
The advisory panel instead suggested establishing the monument as a mandatory line item within the Forest Service budget, similar to the treatment of national parks such as Mount Rainier. Under that scenario, the monument would be pulled out of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and treated as its own unique entity — similar to the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.
Even if more money materialized under that scenario, it would do little to boost a stagnant trend in visitors to the volcano, said Sean Smith, Northwest regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association in Seattle.
"One of the primary goals is to raise the profile and reverse these declining visitation trends," he said. "Just giving the money to the Forest Service isn't likely to create this buzz around Mount St. Helens."
The current monument manager said he was pleased with the group's suggestions.
"We're tickled," said Tom Mulder, the Forest Service's monument manager based in Chelatchie Prairie. "The premise that a place like the monument should be funded better, I think everybody agrees with that."
However, he said the Forest Service hasn't yet taken a position on the budget proposal. Mulder added that the agency has in the past discouraged congressional earmarks for particular locations.
National parks receive a line item allocation of funding in the federal budget each year. By contrast, Mount St. Helens receives its share of recreation money from the Forest Service only after it filters through three distinct layers of administrative overhead, from national headquarters, through the regional office in Portland, and, finally, through the Gifford Pinchot forest headquarters in Vancouver. At each level, the monument must compete with other recreation programs operated by the Forest Service.
Erik Robinson: 360-735-4551, or erik.robinson@columbian.com.
