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MULTIPLE THREATS Yellowstone Park considered among most endangered By MICHAEL MILSTEIN Gazette Wyoming Bureau A leading national park watchdog group has ranked Yellowstone among the country's 10 most endangered national parks, saying it's a "poster child for the neglect" of the American park system because it faces threats from failing sewage systems, alien species, overcrowding and more. "Yellowstone seems to hit on all cylinders," said Mark Peterson, regional director for the National Parks and Conservation Association, which released its list of endangered parks in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. "It's an example of all the problems in our national parks rolled into one." Yellowstone was the only park on the list noted for its deteriorating infrastructure, although Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico and Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania were both included for deterioration of archaeological sites and historic artifacts. Grand Canyon made the list due to air pollution and overcrowding and Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota made it due to the "noisy intrusion" of snowmobiles. But Yellowstone especially stood out because of the specter of sewage spills in the first national park, Peterson said. "I think when the American public hears about a national park, they think of an area that's preserved and protected," he said. "If you and I treated our properties the way Congress treats our national parks, we'd be thrown out of the neighborhood." Yellowstone Assistant Superintendent Marvin Jensen said he was not surprised that Yellowstone made the "most endangered" list, which NPCA began this year in the same spirit as the list of the nation's 10 most endangered rivers announced by the conservation group American Rivers. "We obviously have problems with wastewater treatment and we have systems that need substantial upgrade and replacement," he said. Wyoming environmental officials have issued the park a formal Notice of Violation for repeated sewage spills into Yellowstone Lake and the Firehole River and have threatened fines if park officials do not commit to remedying the failing sewers. Jensen said park officials are working with the state to come up with a plan for preventing future spills. The plan will depend on funding from within the National Park Service and, for larger projects such as replacement of failing treatment plants, from Congress, he said. And there is always a possibility that an unexpected breakdown could force an emergency closure of some visitor facilities. Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., recently secured $280 million to fix Yellowstone's potholed roads over the next 19 years. But Jensen said the sewage problems should not overshadow the longstanding threats posed by exotic lake trout in Yellowstone Lake, where they could wipe out native cutthroat trout. Although park netting crews are trying to control lake trout numbers, there is probably no way to completely remedy the invasion. "This sewage spill problem is episodal - it's happened a few times in the past," Jensen said. "We can fix that. The lake trout are going to be with us for a very long time." He also said there are uncertainties about wide-ranging habitat protection for grizzly bears, a threatened species. While grizzly numbers appear to be on the rise, some biologists remain unsure whether the bears have sufficient, secure habitat for the long term. Peterson agreed that Yellowstone faces many more problems than just leaking sewage and said that's why NPCA felt it warranted inclusion in the list. He said cutbacks in funding have forced Yellowstone officials to cut back on interpretive programs that were once a hallmark of national parks and which helped visitors appreciated the special values of parks. "Yellowstone should be one of the premier interpretive parks in the country," he said. "Instead, they're just scraping by."
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