Dear Editor:

The cat is out of the bag. Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly stated the National Park Service “basically tinkered with the ecosystem and took it completely out of balance” in the park’s first 90 to 100 years (article, Jan. 20). Bravo for the acknowledgment, Mr. Sholly!  

Mr. Sholly continues, “As a country, we started to wake up to the need for more principled conservation and preservation values” in the 1960s and ‘70s. 

To the objections of many NPS bureaucrats, an employee-only ski hill near Undine Falls outside Mammoth was dismantled in 1994. A bit of sleeping-in on this one, but a bravo just the same.

In 2020 the multi-million dollar Pelican Creek bridge was completed. The bridge replaced the earthen causeway built in 1935 under the watch of that old NPS. The new bridge restored the Pelican Creek estuary. The NPS way over slept on this; nonetheless, this action gets a bravo.

Still awaiting “principled conservation and preservation values” is the removal of Executive House, built in the pre-NPS year 1908, when, as Mr. Sholly puts it, a “small group” had a “really tough time” protecting park resources. Home to a park big-wig and his family, palatial Executive House — spiral staircase and all — sits aside Opal Terrace whereby the thermal feature’s natural growth is stifled by a wall of sandbags protecting this manifestation of mismanagement.

Mr. Sholly’s idea of “principled conservation and preservation values” is the bureaucratic bonanza of building more in-park housing — housing which will certainly be neglected much like existing housing. Evidently, a large group of today’s park protectors have not yet awakened to the new and improved platitudes of the modern NPS. Not so bravo, Mr. Sholly.

Groomed lawns in Mammoth’s developed areas are a remnant of past tinkering and an obvious ecosystem disruption. The lawns could easily be removed, however, not on Mr. Sholly’s watch. Elk and buffalo would likely forage elsewhere, exponentially improving pubic safety. Not so bravo, Mr. Sholly.

Mr. Sholly prattles on, “Although it [Yellowstone] was protected by law, there was no formal nomenclature to actually protect the resources on the ground.” Are you referring to the lawns, Mr. Sholly? Which ethical policy protects today’s lawns keeping the Mammoth niche ecosystem “completely out of balance” thus, over-riding “principled conservation”? Time for some groundbreaking ceremonies!

Today’s “formal nomenclature” is the Code of Federal Regulations. Specific to Yellowstone is Title 36. Leave a water bottle unattended or tie a clothesline to a tree in a campground and you will find out all about 36 CFR.

36 CFR 4.2(a) and (b) require park residents — primarily employees — to obey state traffic laws, meaning registering their private vehicles in Wyoming. It also means concession operation’s vehicles ranging from snow coaches to boat trailers to tow trucks to admin vehicles. Compliance with this “formal nomenclature” is as rare as environmental equity in Mammoth. Wyoming loses hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual revenue, perhaps more.

Barbecue grills and bird feeders on porches of many Mammoth houses; lawns and license plates are very telling of who our neighbors really are. 

Yes, the modern NPS is different today. It has evolved into an authoritarian, centralized bloated bureaucracy run by hypocritical elites bent on feathering their own nest, limiting public access, big government forever in the form of endless research and fire ecology (formally forest fires), manufacturing crises to gin-up purpose and need for foolhardy social engineering projects. Really, really not so bravo, Mr. Sholly. 

If you don’t believe me, visit with any proverbial Ranger Fauchi next time you’re in Mammoth. Ask questions.

Steve Torrey

Cody