On July 10, we learned that the Department of Interior had pressured Glacier National Park officials into loosening motorized boat restrictions on park waters, based on an internal memo circulated to Glacier employees. But the next day, we were told … something else? Kind of?
In a puzzling July 11 press release, Glacier Park said it was “retracting the announcement made yesterday that the park will fully implement a third phase in its aquatic invasive species emergency response.” The wholesale retraction of a government press release is uncommon, to say the least, although it’s not clear what exactly was being recanted.
The statement continued: “The previous announcement that the park will release quarantine and inspection procedures for people living outside the park who would like to launch their boat on Lake McDonald was premature and was not directed by the Department of the Interior.” Apparently, only private landowners living within park boundaries, whose motorboats don’t leave Lake McDonald, would be allowed to launch.
Reading the statement up to this point is confusing enough, but then it concludes that the park, over the next few weeks, will indeed actually “release quarantine and inspection procedures for people living outside the park who would like to launch their boat on Lake McDonald.”
Of the many potential takeaways from these dizzying two days of proclamations, one line particularly stands out, simply by its inclusion and its pointed nature: “The announcement … was not directed by the Department of the Interior.” Somebody wanted to make that crystal clear.
Perhaps Glacier officials had misinterpreted Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s apparent mandate to “find ways for the taxpayers to be able to use their motorboats in our park waters” as applying to everybody. Or maybe, in altering course, they were staying true to their obligations to the public by announcing a universally applicable regulatory modification.
Giving Zinke the benefit of the doubt, that he was only referring to private landowners within the park, it’s still troubling to see anything resembling a bureaucratic breakdown in communication at a time when Glacier is bursting at the seams with visitors, especially when it involves an issue as critical as aquatic invasive species.
Stuck in the middle are Glacier Park administrators, who must walk the line between honoring the commands of higher-ups and addressing the specific needs of local lands that they understand so well. The question, then, is how confident we are in their ability to combat the dire threat of zebra and quagga mussels.
Personally, I have faith in both their intentions and their aptitude, so long as they’re given the resources and relative freedom to formulate and execute locally tailored response plans. In other words, memos that request sudden policy changes, or at least raise such a specter of pressure that Glacier resource managers believe they’re being asked to shift gears, make their already difficult jobs that much harder, at a time when we have aquatic intruders threatening to wreak havoc on our beloved and hugely valuable watersheds.
As the Beacon reported in its initial July 10 story, employees charged with managing the park’s aquatic invasive species inspection program were dismayed at having to rush a new phase into place. The stakes in fighting invasive species are high, the implications severe. Hopefully, next time, the memo’s author gets to write an email heralding the latest step of a response plan because the time is right.