Under the radar: Bush takes on our national parks

While much of America is focused on the war in Iraq and more recently on the natural disaster along the Gulf Coast, the Bush administration is quietly destroying our national park system.

In typical Bush administration fashion, a person without any park service experience was tasked with revising the park system's basic management policy document. The draft revision that is circulating within the Interior Department will allow off-road vehicles, snowmobiles, and Jet Skis to roam about in nearly every national park under the guise of providing "opportunities to use and enjoy" the parks. Now that's what I'm looking for when I go to a national park to quietly commune with nature – the roar of such vehicles in the background. Since when did it become necessary for people to use a motorized vehicle to enjoy the national parks? Maybe it was when the obesity rate of our population began skyrocketing…

One of the reasons that Hurricane Katrina had such a powerful impact on the city of New Orleans is because the wetlands that protected that area for years have been destroyed over the past couple of decades. While Mississippi and Louisiana struggle to recover from this terrible natural disaster, the Bush administration will likely miss one lesson that could be learned from this tragic event – we must learn to protect and conserve the environment in which we live.

-This post was written by Cleveland Park Clipmonkey.