Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar: “With the establishment of our 400th national park, President Obama has recognized Delaware’s important role as the first state to ratify the Constitution and the three centuries of the history of its people and their contributions to our country,” Salazar said. “In addition to helping tell the story of America and her people, the national monument we are celebrating today will also be an engine for economic development, creating jobs and driving tourism to the First State and the region.”

Translation: Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution. Historic things happened there. This monument is also effectively stimulus, which will bring jobs and tourist dollars to the state.

Delaware Senator Mike Carper: “Up until yesterday, the First State was the only state in our great nation without a unit of the national park system, and that was a loss not just for Delaware but for our entire country,” said Carper. “This national monument corrects that omission and tells a more complete story of our country by sharing Delaware’s early colonial settlement and involvement in the birth of this great nation. …”

Translation: Delaware needs a national park site. We’re the only state that doesn’t have one. Therefore we had to find something we could designate.

I’m not opposed to new national park sites per se, but the NPS has just received a 5 percent across-the-board budget cut for the remainder of the fiscal year. Other parks are furloughing staff, closing campgrounds, or failing to hire employees at all, thus making it more difficult to adequately preserve the resources we now have.

We are in trying economic times, and now isn’t the time to establish more national parks as a local economic stimulus program. It’s pork-barrel politics. Or “park-barrel” politics as former NPS Director Gary Ridenour wrote. Now is not the time for the NPS to take on more monuments to manage, with certainly no budget increase to match.

Were I king of the planet, I would put a moratorium on new park sites (both congress and the president can designate them), and take a careful look at the sites that exist now. I believe there are park sites of questionable national significance that could be returned to the states. Congress has abolished national parks and monuments in the past, and there’s no reason it can’t do it again. 

I believe in the idea of national parks and the preservation of natural and historic resources, but as the service gets larger, bloated and stretched thin, its ability to preserve the resources that have been imposed on it is impaired. I have hopes that the National Park Service can become a more effective and agile system of parks again. But my hopes may disappoint.