Recently, a directive was handed to the U.S. National Park Service from the maliciously ignorant office of the U.S. president. The order opens national park roads to ATVs.
It is certainly a culminating insult/injury to a public agency beset by employee shortages, infrastructure breakdowns of all sorts and record visitation numbers. Both the Park Service and the visiting public are given slaps in the face by our president, whose ability to destroy is surpassed only by his willingness to do so.
ATVs do not belong in national parks. Many Western parks are congressionally designated wilderness areas. To allow ATVs anywhere near them is disaster aborning. They are actively destructive and they have hundreds of miles of their own trails on which to drive.
Here in Utah, they have amply demonstrated their contempt for law by driving in illegal areas with the acquiescence of local law enforcement officers. It is not likely that poorly patrolled national parks will escape their renegade activities once they are allowed in.
Please, Mr. President, please rescind that order. Allow the visitors from busy suburbia or the big city a little time and space for reflective contemplation. That, after all, is one of the big reasons people come to parks, and for which the parks were established.
Marcel Rodriguez, Springdale