Our Nation’s Parks are at risk

By John P. Flannery

We are a local community in a State that cherishes its historic and environmental resources, and we have worked hard to preserve and protect entrusted treasures in land and gardens and streams.

We convey what we’ve learned to others, including our children, by our example and by the confidences we share with them; this handoff is critical, one generation to the next, for otherwise what we respect and honor may be fatally compromised if not lost forever.

There’s an old joke, playing upon any Virginian’s respect for history, when you ask how many Virginians it takes to change a light bulb, and the answer is three—one to change the bulb, and two to comment on the historic significance of the bulb replaced.

Among Thomas Jefferson’s correspondence with James Madison, on September 6, 1789, he questioned how one generation may bind another, indeed, how “one generation of men has a right to bind another …”

The idea is a legal principle going back centuries to roman times: Jefferson stated it this way—“that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living.”

“Usufruct” is a legal concept in two parts: first, of use (usus) and, next, of fruit (fructus); it is the right to use the land and streams, provided that at the end of such use one renders the fruit in the condition it was first received.

Jefferson concluded, “It is the right to make all the use and profit of a thing that can be made without injuring the substance of the thing itself.”

It goes hand in hand with Blackstone’s notion that we may not permit waste, prompt spoliation or destruction “in houses, gardens, trees or other corporeal hereditaments …”

In Loudoun County, we have regional and district parks and persons and commissions that preserve and protect the legacy of gardens, trees and open spaces.

While we may be doing well close to home, there are ominous threats impinging on our national parks at federal levels; and these forces are coming on fast and strong and are a clear and present danger to our national parks.

We owe an historic debt of gratitude to President Theodore Roosevelt.

In and around 1900, President Roosevelt thought to redress the abuse of our public lands, starting with the bad lands, and those spaces he found and relished when retreating from the losses and burdens of his life in the East; President Roosevelt found himself confronting an identity crisis, after his own hunting trips; he became concerned that, if things were not taken in hand, if the hunting continued so aggressively, the nation would suffer a loss of species and habitat.

Thus, he decided to act.

He had no illusions about the truth that our nation “became great because of the lavish use of our resources.”

But, he said, “the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers.”

President Roosevelt may have never used the term “usufruct” but he proved he understood the principle and embraced it vigorously; he said: “We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of good fortune.”

Roosevelt did his part; he created the United States Forest Service, national forests, bird reserves, game preserves, national parks and national monuments.

Our Commonwealth of Virginia is home to its share of parks; there’s Shenandoah National Park, Great Falls National Park, it’s reported there are 20 national parks in Virginia, we also have the Appalachian national scenic trail, and battlefield parks, monuments and memorials.

But the rub is our values to embrace and manage these remarkable places are at risk; and that is a shame and a disgrace.

A newly created agency, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), did blithely disregard Roosevelt’s directive; instead, DOGE ordered mass layoffs in the various agencies crippling their ability to function to the benefit of our natural inventory.

It remains to be seen if court efforts to save the lands will succeed; DOGE has been charged with having no authority unto itself to usurp the various agencies necessary to our national lands and parks including OPM, DOE, the Forest Service, BLM, NOOA, EPA, DAG, DHHS, NIH, and others.

Worse, the threat is more than staffing, as important as that is; it’s about drilling and mining the lands and closing visitor centers.

President Roosevelt told us that each one of us must do his or her part to preserve and protect this great natural fortune entrusted to our generation.

Accordingly, we must put an end to this shady attack on our nation’s natural legacy, and embrace the reasoning starting with Thomas Jefferson, concluding with dramatic initiatives of Theodore Roosevelt.