A small bone to pick with the National Parks Conservation Association

It’s a small bone, but a legitimate one, nonetheless.

As a member, I just got my 2007 NPCA calendar. (And we complain about Christmas in July? What about all these membership calendars?)

Anyway, on its monthly pages are pictures of several national parks, and one each of a national monument, national historic site, national preserve, and — a national recreation area, Amistad, here in Texas.

National recreation areas are the most controversial properties within the National Park Service, due to how most of them were created. That “how” was usually the construction of a large dam by the Bureau of Reclamation, impounding the waters of a western river. Ostensibly, the original reason in such cases was for either flood control or more commonly for irrigation. But Amistad’s International Amistad Reservoir offers no irrigation, at least on the U.S. side, and, while the Rio Grande can still occasionally flood downstream of the dam, and did so more frequently before it was built, these floods were nothing like those of the Missouri.

In essence, southwest Texas and northern Coahuila have a gigantic Chihuahuan Desert evaporation pond.

Given that this does NOT preserve nature “substantially unimpaired,” as the National Park Service’s Organic Act of 1916 mandates, I wish NRAs were placed elsewhere within Interior. Let Reclamation manage them.

Short of that, let’s not have the Park Service’s primary citizen support organization elevate them to the same level as other units.