Interior Secretary Zinke visits Grand Teton National Park, discusses infrastructure
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke made a stop in Grand Teton National Park this morning to discuss a variety of topics, from forest management to park infrastructure.
Zinke says he is looking to the next 100 years as he makes plans for parks and lands in the U.S. A big topic of the day was park infrastructure. Grand Teton National Park has a $200 million maintenance backlog. There’s a nearly $12 billion backlog for all the national parks. Zinke introduced a bill that has received bipartisan support to fix infrastructure in the parks.
“Our parks are being loved to death,” Zinke said. “We want to make sure that the visitor experience remains as it was when I grew up, as what the public expects, which is five-star, making sure the trail systems are well maintained, the bathrooms are clean and the environment behind us is protected in perpetuity.”
Another area of discussion was forest management. It cost close to $3 billion to fight forest fires in the U.S. last year. Zinke’s beginning an initiative to go back to active forest management. He introduced an $830 million bill to repair infrastructure, road systems and watersheds as a result of last year’s fires.
“It’s really looking at making sure we address the dead and dying trees, protect the watersheds and put us in a position where we don’t have these catastrophic forest fires every year,” he said.
Zinke also discussed approving grants to study wildlife corridors. He signed a secretary order to begin the process of looking at where these corridors are at and creating a conservation plan to protect critical components of the systems.
“Deer and big game learn,” he said. “And a lot of the wildlife corridors have been interrupted by our highway system. So the overpasses are very effective. So we’re working with (U.S. Secretary of Transportation) Elaine Chao to look at a system of prioritizing our overpasses so we can re-create the natural wildlife corridors that once were there.”
He also mentioned the growing numbers of visitors to the parks each year. When asked if there will someday be a limit on the number of visitors allowed each day, he said it is a possibility. He suggested using a transport system to take visitors into parks.
“There will come a time, you know, sometime in the future, at 330 million visitors today and we’re going to see more visitors next year, there will come a time,” Zinke said. “But this is about the managing resources as well as protecting the visitor experience.”
Zinke is in town to visit both Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks with members of Congress to look at challenges and opportunities in the parks.
