Private lands threaten sanctity of national parks

By CLEVE WIESE, Media General News Service
Published: April 9, 2008

Millions of privately held acres within the boundaries of national parks threaten some of the country’s most scenic and sacred places with hotels, conference centers, even casinos, according to a report released Tuesday.

In Virginia, the report identifies privately held land at four Civil War sites: 230 acres near Fredericksburg where the Battle of the Wilderness was fought in May 1864; five acres at Appomattox Courthouse; 10 acres at Manassas; and 356 acres inside the boundaries of Richmond National Battlefield Park, according to the Newport News Daily Press.

On the outdoor recreation and wilderness side, the report identifies 765 acres at two sites along the Appalachian Trail; 1,900 acres at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park (which stretches into Tennessee and Kentucky); and 180 acres at Prince William Forest Park, a popular camping spot in Northern Virginia.

The National Parks Conservation Association study found 4.3 million acres of private property within park boundaries. The National Park Service has earmarked 1.8 million of those acres - known as inholdings - for purchase, but Congress has habitually failed to provide sufficient money for the acquisitions, opening the door to more commercially minded buyers, according to the report.

“Once lost to incompatible development, private inholdings can disrupt or destroy park views, undermine the experience of visitors, and often diminish the air and water quality while simultaneously increasing light and noise pollution,“ according to the report.

National parks have an ultimate responsibility to acquire private property within their boundaries, said Ron Tipton, a senior vice president with the National Park Conservation Association, and most move gradually toward that goal. There are no inholdings left in Shenandoah National Park, a spokesperson for the park said.

But with 14 Civil War battlefields spread across the cities, suburbs, towns and farms of the Shenandoah Valley, the necessity of working with private property owners to preserve the integrity of historic sites in this region that do not belong to the federal government goes beyond straight-forward land acquisition, conservationists said.

“By and large, these battlefields are owned by individuals or corporations,“ said Howard Kittell, executive director of the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation. “We can’t acquire land through condemnation or eminent domain. So we work very closely, or attempt to work very closely, with private owners.“

Kittell said that of about 30,000 acres of core battlefield in the Valley, where fighting was most intense, between 16,000 and 17,000 acres could still be preserved - that land has not yet been subsumed by an urban area or otherwise developed beyond reclamation.

With such a huge quantity of land at stake, and limited funding at hand, the foundation has had to adapt its goals as well as its techniques: For instance, rather than trying to purchase all 17,000 acres and turn area battlefields into complete, self-contained public spaces, it attempts to preserve characteristic landscapes near parks that already exist. With this goal in mind, the foundation buys easements to limit what adjoining property owners can do with their land and encourages agriculture by leasing fields to farmers for less than market rates.

National forests also have to reach creative accommodations with private landowners, in part because they lack the mandate to aggressively acquire private property afforded to national parks. Most national forest land on the East Coast was purchased from private landowners in small parcels - as opposed to the majority of forestland in the West, which the government acquired in large blocks - and contains considerable inholdings, said JoBeth Brown, a spokeswoman for George Washington and Jefferson National Forest.

That can create problems such as increased illegal, all-terrain vehicle traffic, Brown said. The presence of private property also forces firefighters to aggressively suppress wildfires they might otherwise allow to burn, she said. And landowners requesting road access or other services creates an administrative burden.

To cut down on inholdings, The George Washington and Jefferson National Forest maintains a list of desirable private properties within its bounds and on its periphery, and another list of parcels of land it would be willing to part with, Brown said. Sometimes “swaps” are arranged, she said.

But inholdings in national forests and privately owned portions of battlefields in the Shenandoah Valley are not likely to disappear.

“It’s private property,“ said Brown. “Owners have rights.“

Cleve Wiese is a staff writer for The News Virginian in Waynesboro, Va.