Last summer, while backpacking with
friends in Glacier National Park, Mont., a familiar “whup, whup,
whup” filled the air. The helicopter dropped over Kipp Peak towards
us, its make and color belonging to a local — and booming —
helicopter-tour company. Our solitude was disrupted; helicopter
noise drowned out nature’s sounds.
Despite being
closer to 50 than 15, I responded in a juvenile fashion: My friends
and I turned around and dropped our pants. We demonstrated our
wilderness ethics and we made our stand, in a manner of
speaking.
It was not the first time. This practice began
several years ago when repeated low-flying helicopter tours
interrupted a high-elevation hike. Exasperated, in unison,
we’d moon the next chopper.
In a park deemed 95
percent wilderness, air traffic almost always seems hostile as well
as intrusive. Our three-month summer is crammed with nearly1,500
scenic flights, disturbing people and disrupting wildlife denning,
migrating, mating, nesting and feeding. Biologists are the ones who
have to tell us this; Canada lynx, gray wolves, and grizzly bears
cannot utter their thoughts.
For these reasons,
Glacier’s management seeks to ban or limit the air-tour
business. Although the National Park Service regulates every
concession in the park, including hotels, boats, guiding operations
and bus tours, the Federal Aviation Administration supervises air
space. Above the park the Park Service lacks the power to regulate
the number of flights, or their duration,location and altitude.
Only an act of Congress would allow the agency to dictate a natural
soundscape.
I know that mooning helicopters gains me no
points in the book of adult behavior. And I know my own behavior is
not flawless; I, too, have succumbed to temptation. Last September,
my job one day as a guide entailed hiking with several guests to
Hidden Lake, then driving them to catch a helicopter ride across
the park. When I was asked to accompany tourists on the flight, I
leaped into the cockpit like a grizzly going after a carcass.
Noisy? Yes. But I confess I relished every minute flying
back and forth over the magnificent Continental Divide. We soared
above a high route I’d hiked and flew beside a glacier only
distantly seen from a trail. I cringed, hoping no climbers stood
atop Mount Jackson as we cruised under its summit — the very
summit where I had mooned offending helicopters.
I
justified my ride with: “I had to do it for work.” But the thrum of
helicopter blades muffled this hollow excuse.
This
summer, the Park Service seems to face a similar quandary in the
air. Glacier’s current increase in administrative flights
clashes with its philosophical stance regarding commercial air
tours. “Although the agency’s General Management Plan seeks
to ban scenic air tours,” explains Mary Riddle, Glacier’s
environmental protection and compliance Officer, “it does not ban
administrative flights.”
The difference? Riddle says:
“While longer scenic air tours fulfill a recreational desire,
short-term administrative flights are essential for operations.”
Park Service flights also come with stringent review, she
adds.
But now the Park Service wants to more than double
its flights, saying many projects need to be completed quickly. In
May 2003, the agency released an Environmental Assessment proposing
to bump up its 50 annual airplane and helicopter flights to 112.
After public comment, the park found that 10 flights
could be eliminated, while the remaining flights would result in no
significant impact. In June, the agency sent aircraft to remove
human waste from ineffective composting toilets at Granite Park
Chalet, and delivered crews and supplies to rehabilitate historic
Porcupine Lookout and repair and maintain radio towers. Flights
also monitored wildlife, especially endangered or threatened
species. All seem reasonable purposes.
Removing human
waste from the chalet by mule, for example, would require over 40
trips on a popular hiking trail. Porcupine Lookout has no trail for
safe employee access or mules, and speedy radio communication
repairs are vital to maintain safety throughout the park and
security at Goat Haunt, the entry point from Canada.
I
believe the Park Service strives to be conscientious about its
flights over the park. By avoiding sensitive wildlife corridors,
scheduling flights when tourists are few, and engineering loads for
minimal trips, the park will minimize the damage. Yet though the
impacts may not be as big as the glaciers which gouged the
park’s sediments, every flight sunders the
wilderness.
As the summer season opens wide and tourists
take their flights over the park, I think about my own
shortcomings. While the ironies of a decision to fly linger in the
air, two facts remain: Moral foibles are intrinsic to humans, and
flights disrupt the wilderness.
Becky Lomax is
a contributor to Writers on the Range, a syndication service of
High Country News (hcn.org). She is a hiking guide in Glacier
National Park and lives in Whitefish,
Montana.
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