Parks face big test of preservation vs. use

From her office in Tallahassee looking southward down the great peninsula of Florida, Fran Mainella spent a dozen years shaping what is regarded by many as the finest state park system in the US.

While charting her own course, however, two very different models of what a park should be loomed on her horizon.

On one side was the theme-park playground of Disney World, the top tourist destination in the state. On the other was the vast Everglades National Park, among the richest wildlife estuaries in the world, but a preserve that has suffered from human landscape manipulation.

Though no one is suggesting that roller coasters be put in Yosemite, the contrasting approaches highlight one of the most important questions Ms. Mainella would face as head of the National Park Service: how to balance the tension between commercial interests that want to expand park visits and preservationists who believe restrictions are necessary to save the natural wonders from ruin.

Those issues now are coming to a head as the Bush administration reviews - and may seek to overturn - park protection initiatives launched during the Clinton years. Mainella will likely give some hint of where she stands during her Senate confirmation hearings this week.

By many accounts, Mainella brings a unique perspective: Not only would she be the first woman to take over the Park Service, but she enjoys bipartisan support even after switching party affiliation from Democrat to Republican two years ago. During the mid 1990s, at the same time that she was on a short list to become agency director under Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, tried to lure her to oversee his park system.

Her selection has generally won praise from environmentalists, park-user groups, and the tourism industry. "Fran is very bright and articulate and aggressive and capable in all respects that matter in looking after our national parks," says Destry Jarvis, head of the National Recreation and Park Association. "But her accomplishments could be determined by decisions that get wrested away from her by other political appointees higher up in the Interior Department."

Every Park Service director since Stephen Mather, in 1916, has complained about the need for more funding to increase visitor access to wild places. Today, however, Mainella inherits a system far more imperiled. Among her immediate challenges:

* Addressing a multibillion-dollar maintenance backlog that has left park roadways and buildings in disrepair.

* Solving air-pollution problems that tarnish views and threaten human health in several parks. Mainella must work with the Environmental Protection Agency to clear up haze over icons such as the Grand Canyon just as the Bush administration proposes relaxing pollution standards for coal-burning power plants.

* Fulfilling commitments to alleviate overcrowding in parks like Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and the Great Smokies. Although public-transit systems have been proposed, budget cuts may prevent them from being implemented.

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