The trek up the slickrock trail to Delicate Arch - the one made famous on Utah's license plate - can be daunting, especially in the heat. But with plenty of water and sunscreen, tourists of all ages and degrees of fitness can enjoy the three-mile hike and spectacular views.

Yet even in the middle of vacation season, you won't find a crowd at the top. Most people here - as in other parks - seldom get too far off the asphalt, despite the common sentiment that national parks are being "loved to death."

Indeed, while the need for improvements, regular maintenance, and some expansion continues to pile up, park attendance actually has been declining in recent years. Still, the debate over the parks' future has never been more intense. How much the government should spend on upkeep and improvements, whether to limit cars in especially crowded areas, whether to turn over the jobs of park employees to private companies - it's all being argued in Congress and around the country.

So, too, is the extent to which the Bush administration is making good on its commitment to spruce up and improve park lands and facilities.

"The park system has suffered from neglect for many years," acknowledges Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who oversees the National Park Service. "But we are changing that."

Ms. Norton recently issued a report outlining "significant progress" during her tenure.

This includes 900 repair and rehabilitation projects, a doubling of funding for regular upkeep of park facilities, and a federal transportation bill that would increase the portion of park roads judged to be in good condition from 35 to 80 percent.

There's no denying that it's a massive job. The national park system includes 7,500 facilities at 388 park units around the country. Upkeep includes 8,000 miles of roads, 1,500 bridges, 400 dams, and 30,000 structures. In all, the parks accommodate some 280 million visitors a year.

Yet for all the effort so far, the federal government's General Accounting Office estimates the maintenance and construction backlog to be between $4.1 billion and $6.8 billion.

"Despite the importance of its maintenance program, the Park Service has yet to accurately assess or define the scope of its maintenance needs.... The agency does not have an accurate inventory of the assets that need to be maintained, nor accurate data on the condition of these assets," the GAO reported in January.

This worries park watchers.

"We had high hopes at the beginning of this administration but have been disappointed by the administration's failure to come close to increasing the rate of investment to the extent necessary to significantly reduce and ultimately eliminate the backlog," Thomas C. Kiernan, president of the National Parks Conservation Association, a private, nonprofit advocacy organization, told the Senate subcommittee on parks last month.

One of the most controversial Park Service initiatives pushed by the Bush administration is "competitive outsourcing" - a plan by the White House Office of Management and Budget to make federal agencies more cost effective by having private contractors fill some positions.

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