Yosemite’s new park superintendent
Owen Hoffman
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Owen Hoffman
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On May 12, 2026, at 8:02 AM, 'Owen Hoffman' via parklandwatch <parklan...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Regarding the administrative decision to rescind the reservation system to prevent overcrowding in Yosemite.Yosemite’s newly “sworn in” superintendent, Ray McPadden, claims that having lots of park visitors is a good thing and that claims of ecological damage from perceived overcrowding lacks scientific supporting evidence.Here is what I have found on this topic using Perplexity.ai
Ed Rizzotto
Ed Rizzotto
On Tuesday, May 12, 2026, 9:15 AM, 'Owen Hoffman' via parklandwatch <parklan...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
More from Perplexity.ai
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bi...@summitco.us
Owen,
Your post presents many thoughts.
Perhaps most important is the reminder of how many times we have been down the path where we who have had the observational experience with visitors on park resources as well as visitors on park visitors that noticed there is a disconnect between having more visitors and also respecting the service organic-act requirement to provide enjoyment and preservation not only for now but also for the future. The question of how many visitors versus how many visitors, and how many visitors versus how much resource to preserve or impact, is and has always been difficult to answer, but with many attempts at determining carrying capacity for various resources and experiences. I and probably we have watched this interaction be probed many times and many ways-and even probed it unofficially and even officially ourselves, but it seems the pendulum carrying the balance between these issues keeps swinging to and fro. Just when we take one course, it swings to the other.
For my money, the pendulum has swung the wrong way again at Yosemite. I first made attempts to keep the pendulum on the “not too many” side on my first assignment as an Olympic NP ranger, having watched what happened when thousands of park visitors arrived on holidays for a campground of 100 sites and only a few rangers with poor equipment and poor training. Then at Yosemite, we staffers would get the pendulum swinging more to my preferred side when along would come a new superintendent, as now again, who would opt for more people, often with enough resultant problems as to push the pendulum back toward my preference. Here we go again. Will it ever stop? While it is true that planning with attendant redevelopment of facilities has the potential to provide increased visitation and enjoyment without increased impact on resources, or minimal impact, the park agency should do the planning before allowing the potential impact from increased people. My goodness, that aspect of planning was going on long before I participated in that quest. My hope has long been that we consider a situation before adopting a solution, but that is not our present course in America and even it seems at Yosemite.
I only wish that a Serra Club that focused on the Sierra and Yosemite still existed and that the club let another organization or organizations taken on Earth. Perhaps then there would have been a better chance to influence actions of new superintendents. I once thought that might be a role for the Yosemite Natural History Association/Yosemite Association if set a bit freer from government control, but that may not have been practical and now is lost anyway with the Yosemite Conservancy which appears to be even more internally supportive of the government. While the coalition of park retirees is valuable, persons more local to parks would probably be more effective on local issues. When the Sierra Club changed focus I thought of a Sierra Magazine with an advocacy following, but someone else started such a magazine but then it changed focus and has now merged or flopped.
Another aspect is, what is the role of the park superintendent? One approach is for the Service to provide a conceptual master plan for each park (I did several of these) with the idea that park significances, purposes, relationships, and uses would result in an interpretive theme that would be a controlling framework for the master plan and any descending actions, including development and operational management. After Director Hartzog abolished all NPS handbooks, including the planning handbook, I was on WASO tasks to resurrect first a handbook on handbooks and then a handbook on planning. I was dismayed that the director of the Harpers Ferry interpretive/exhibit center, who once advocated conceptual interpretive significance to guide a park, now saw interpretive prospectuses as nothing but a work directive for his operation. We had long discussions on these differences. At the same time, or probably they always had and still do, superintendents came to identify themselves as having better ideas about their parks than the approved plan did and went off on their own, often down different paths and with little hindrance from their regional managers. And some parks, like Yosemite, brought planning from the central Denver operation, where it was for most, to be under the superintendents, leaving management to the whims of new superintendents over the whims of the former ones and whatever plan existed or didn’t. In my experience I noticed there was often the feeling among some if not most superintendents that they are commanders and know best what their parks and its visitors need. Superintendents have important responsibilities in parks, a bit like corporate managers but without corporate boards and only a distant regional office too busy with all the parks in its region plus its own mandated programs, in absence thus allowing superintendents extra power. Having responsibilities encourages personal identification with outcomes and thus creates desires to act and direct in ways that provide a “legacy” that they feel will be best for them. But had the notion of having interpretive-themed master plans direct and control development, operation, and management, divergent personal influences of superintendents and even their staffs could be better controlled and directed. There would even be a better defense against political pressures both from local citizens and their organizations and legislators but also state and national legislators and even agencies and federal executives above the park service. But we didn’t do it that way and are probably too impulsive as a culture to do it. (A chance where this more centralized control and continuity of park purposes and operations might have been effected was when Director Hartzog hired a displaced Yosemite concessioner manager to be the director’s overseer of superintendents to ensure they were carrying out team-developed/regionally or nationally-approved management plans for their particular parks. There would be the natural tension between on-site management and top-down directives, but at least the tension would have a chance to produce pre-thought results and there would be closer overseeing of compliance and continuity or thier lack. The idea never got a chance for a good test, for the person selected for this position quit and went to work for the developing Keystone Ski Resort and was not replaced.
Will we ever read the NPS organic act (and its further refinements) as John Lemons would have had us, who wrote quite a piece about it? And Carl Sharsmith, who lived a life for it? And many others? And even Owen Hoffman?
Although I have seen the pendulum on this use issue swing many times, often if not always for new or non-reasons, I wonder if I will see what I consider sense in my government’s approach to this and some other issues again, for factors discussed above. And even for the way my government is evolving—or has evolved.
Bill Jones
From: 'Owen Hoffman' via parklandwatch <parklan...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2026 7:13 AM
To: PLW <parklan...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [PLW Update] Yosemite’s new park superintendent
More from Perplexity.ai
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Owen Hoffman
On May 12, 2026, at 12:43 PM, bi...@summitco.us wrote:
Owen,
Your post presents many thoughts.
Perhaps most important is the reminder of how many times we have been down the path where we who have had the observational experience with visitors on park resources as well as visitors on park visitors that noticed there is a disconnect between having more visitors and also respecting the service organic-act requirement to provide enjoyment and preservation not only for now but also for the future. The question of how many visitors versus how many visitors, and how many visitors versus how much resource to preserve or impact, is and has always been difficult to answer, but with many attempts at determining carrying capacity for various resources and experiences. I and probably we have watched this interaction be probed many times and many ways-and even probed it unofficially and even officially ourselves, but it seems the pendulum carrying the balance between these issues keeps swinging to and fro. Just when we take one course, it swings to the other.
For my money, the pendulum has swung the wrong way again at Yosemite. I first made attempts to keep the pendulum on the “not too many” side on my first assignment as an Olympic NP ranger, having watched what happened when thousands of park visitors arrived on holidays for a campground of 100 sites and only a few rangers with poor equipment and poor training. Then at Yosemite, we staffers would get the pendulum swinging more to my preferred side when along would come a new superintendent, as now again, who would opt for more people, often with enough resultant problems as to push the pendulum back toward my preference. Here we go again. Will it ever stop? While it is true that planning with attendant redevelopment of facilities has the potential to provide increased visitation and enjoyment without increased impact on resources, or minimal impact, the park agency should do the planning before allowing the potential impact from increased people. My goodness, that aspect of planning was going on long before I participated in that quest. My hope has long been that we consider a situation before adopting a solution, but that is not our present course in America and even it seems at Yosemite.
I only wish that a Serra Club that focused on the Sierra and Yosemite still existed and that the club let another organization or organizations taken on Earth. Perhaps then there would have been a better chance to influence actions of new superintendents. I once thought that might be a role for the Yosemite Natural History Association/Yosemite Association if set a bit freer from government control, but that may not have been practical and now is lost anyway with the Yosemite Conservancy which appears to be even more internally supportive of the government. While the coalition of park retirees is valuable, persons more local to parks would probably be more effective on local issues. When the Sierra Club changed focus I thought of a Sierra Magazine with an advocacy following, but someone else started such a magazine but then it changed focus and has now merged or flopped.
Another aspect is, what is the role of the park superintendent? One approach is for the Service to provide a conceptual master plan for each park (I did several of these) with the idea that park significances, purposes, relationships, and uses would result in an interpretive theme that would be a controlling framework for the master plan and any descending actions, including development and operational management. After Director Hartzog abolished all NPS handbooks, including the planning handbook, I was on WASO tasks to resurrect first a handbook on handbooks and then a handbook on planning. I was dismayed that the director of the Harpers Ferry interpretive/exhibit center, who once advocated conceptual interpretive significance to guide a park, now saw interpretive prospectuses as nothing but a work directive for his operation. We had long discussions on these differences. At the same time, or probably they always had and still do, superintendents came to identify themselves as having better ideas about their parks than the approved plan did and went off on their own, often down different paths and with little hindrance from their regional managers. And some parks, like Yosemite, brought planning from the central Denver operation, where it was for most, to be under the superintendents, leaving management to the whims of new superintendents over the whims of the former ones and whatever plan existed or didn’t. In my experience I noticed there was often the feeling among some if not most superintendents that they are commanders and know best what their parks and its visitors need. Superintendents have important responsibilities in parks, a bit like corporate managers but without corporate boards and only a distant regional office too busy with all the parks in its region plus its own mandated programs, in absence thus allowing superintendents extra power. Having responsibilities encourages personal identification with outcomes and thus creates desires to act and direct in ways that provide a “legacy” that they feel will be best for them. But had the notion of having interpretive-themed master plans direct and control development, operation, and management, divergent personal influences of superintendents and even their staffs could be better controlled and directed. There would even be a better defense against political pressures both from local citizens and their organizations and legislators but also state and national legislators and even agencies and federal executives above the park service. But we didn’t do it that way and are probably too impulsive as a culture to do it. (A chance where this more centralized control and continuity of park purposes and operations might have been effected was when Director Hartzog hired a displaced Yosemite concessioner manager to be the director’s overseer of superintendents to ensure they were carrying out team-developed/regionally or nationally-approved management plans for their particular parks. There would be the natural tension between on-site management and top-down directives, but at least the tension would have a chance to produce pre-thought results and there would be closer overseeing of compliance and continuity or thier lack. The idea never got a chance for a good test, for the person selected for this position quit and went to work for the developing Keystone Ski Resort and was not replaced.
Will we ever read the NPS organic act (and its further refinements) as John Lemons would have had us, who wrote quite a piece about it? And Carl Sharsmith, who lived a life for it? And many others? And even Owen Hoffman?
Although I have seen the pendulum on this use issue swing many times, often if not always for new or non-reasons, I wonder if I will see what I consider sense in my government’s approach to this and some other issues again, for factors discussed above. And even for the way my government is evolving—or has evolved.
Bill Jones
From: 'Owen Hoffman' via parklandwatch <parklan...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2026 7:13 AM
To: PLW <parklan...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [PLW Update] Yosemite’s new park superintendent
More from Perplexity.ai
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To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/parklandsupdate/024701dce236%24c342f990%2449c8ecb0%24%40summitco.us.
Jerry Mitchell
On May 12, 2026, at 1:50 PM, 'Owen Hoffman' via parklandwatch <parklan...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Thank you very much Bill Jones for responding.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/parklandsupdate/BDE6013F-963B-492C-A14D-11F3E36159B1%40aol.com.
Owen Hoffman
On May 12, 2026, at 9:48 AM, Ed Rizzotto <tree...@pobox.com> wrote:
Thank You Owen!
It is terrific to see you in my “morning news” for a number of reasons.It confirms or at least suggests that you are well, safe and continuing to be concerned about our parks and colleagues.It at least partially restores a type of sharing which many of us have missed since Rick’s passing (apparently you cleverly went into one of his messages, chose reply all and inserted a new item for the benefit of the rest of us).Regarding the “benefit”, your message reinforces the impression that many likely got when the new superintendent was “sworn” in that he might be more Trumpian than true conservationist and certainly not say a Mike Finley or Jack Morehead!Thank you for helping reframe and focus the challenges ahead.First we need to insure fair and accessible voting to restore and strengthen our now damaged and fragile democracy and then work to revive important pieces thereof including a renewed, adequately resourced and well-led National Park Service.I’ve thought of creating, ala James Carville, buttons that proclaim “It’s Our Democracy, Stupid” but I don’t think that many would get it, particularly as there are logically so many smaller but important issues in play and fragmenting our energy and attention.
Ed Rizzotto
ps We did create a different button “I Value Government Service” and my town clerk, her election workers, librarian friends, postal workers, etc. have appreciated it. : - )On Tuesday, May 12, 2026, 9:15 AM, 'Owen Hoffman' via parklandwatch <parklan...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
More from Perplexity.ai
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/parklandsupdate/14784283.692191.1778597274649%40mail.yahoo.com.
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