Drifter Smith is correct that interest in floating
the Grand Canyon has increased dramatically in the last three
decades (HCN, 2/21/05: Let’s not ram more boats through the Grand
Canyon). There are many reasons for this. Rafting equipment has
become safer, more reliable and less expensive. Opportunities to
learn boating skills, low-impact camping skills, and wilderness
medicine have increased. Most importantly, the mythical aura of the
“Grand Canyon River Guide” has been debunked: Private boaters have
known for decades that they are quite capable of running safe,
low-impact river trips in the Grand Canyon without need of
for-profit corporate “concessionaires.”
The 1,100 people
who floated the Grand Canyon prior to the completion of Glen Canyon
Dam didn’t need a corporate outfitter. And nobody needs one
today. No corporation should be allowed to deny a private citizen
access to a public river. Not in the Grand Canyon. Not on any river
in America.
For-profit concessionaires have enjoyed the
privilege of operating in our national parks when it was
erroneously believed to be “necessary and appropriate for public
use and enjoyment of the park,” according to the National Park
Service. Since there are some 8,000 individuals (representing well
over 100,000 private citizens) who paid to get on a 25-year wait
list in order to gain access to the Colorado River, it is clear
that for-profit corporations are neither “necessary” nor
“appropriate” in Grand Canyon National Park. These corporate
entities are asserting that their traditional public-resource
welfare benefits have become a private-property right. And they use
that claim of a private-property right to deny public access to
what they openly refer to as “their” river.
Mr. Smith is
absolutely correct: “(T)he canyon, and the experience, are too
precious to destroy.” If Mr. Smith and the Grand Canyon River
Guides truly want to protect this national treasure, then they
should advocate first for the elimination of corporate/ motorized
allocation of user days, and then for a complete elimination of all
corporate-controlled boating in the Grand Canyon.
Mick Ondris
Pine, Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Let’s not ram corporations through the Grand Canyon.
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