Smokey would never believe this.

• Author: Chase, Alston
• Position: Management of National Parks

Smokey Would Never Believe This

If you happened to be driving past Fishing Bridge in Yellowstone Park in July 1986, you might have seen a small band of scruffy protesters, some dressed as grizzly bears, marching across the bridge carrying a sign that read, "Bureaucrats out, grizzlies in.' Belonging to a new radical environmental group named Earth First, these people, along with their main-line cousins in such organizations as the Audubon Society and National Wildlife Federation, are convinced that Fishing Bridge, near the outlet of Yellowstone Lake, occupies habitat critical to the survival of the grizzly bear, a threatened species now declining in the park. So they are demanding that all the buildings--visitors' center, general store, service station, recreational vehicle park, everything--be removed so that the land can be given back to the bears.

It does not matter to these people that archeological evidence suggests this place has been a human settlement for 9,000 years, nor that other parts of the park are better bear habitat, nor that eviction of humans from this place would not in itself reverse the grizzly's slow but steady decline. To these people, the issue is more than one of removing a few buildings. Giving Fishing Bridge back to the bears is their way of drawing a line in the sand, stopping the relentless advance of mankind. For many, the Battle of Fishing Bridge would be to our juggernaut civilization what Stalingrad was to Hitler, Tours to the Saracens, Vienna to the Huns: the beginning of the big rollback.

That July, however, the National Park Service was ready for them. They had sent an agent to infiltrate Earth First's planning meeting, and when the group entered the park, they were followed by rangers in an unmarked van who kept in radio contact with park headquarters in Mammoth. At Fishing Bridge they had the water cannon ready. Just the week before, rangers had been put through a crash course on "verbal karate' (to teach them how to respond to jeers from a crowd) and the use of mace--preparations that had cost taxpayers at least $30,000. By the end of the day, 19 protesters had been arrested.

Fishing Bridge remains the symbolic battlefield for the future of the national parks. It raises what many think is the critical issue: are parks for people or for preservation? This dilemma has faced the Park Service since it was created in 1916. The enabling legislation stipulated that the new agency should manage the parks in such a way as to "conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects' but also "leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.' But how, many wonder, could parks be preserved while being visited by hordes of people?

Today those who care for the parks seem more divided than ever. Environmentalists argue that parks must be saved from people, while business interests (representing the recreation industry) insist that when push comes to shove, people must come first. Meanwhile Congress is divided and the Park...