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There are too many people coming to parks doing the wrong things. They treat the parks like popcorn playgrounds. They don't understand what the national parks mean.

Civilization in our time is driven by materialism and troubled by pollution, over-population, corruption, and violence. National parks can hardly be uncoupled from the society around them, but that only makes it more important to protect them and keep them whole and pure.

National parks are cathedrals of spirituality and emotion, and unfortunately, they are being loved to death by many of the same people who enjoy them the most.

What people ought to do is find out what a national park is to begin with.

The parks are our national treasures, and they must be shown more respect, not only by visitors but also the people who run them.

Parks are idealizations of nature, but nature in fact is not a condition of the ideal.

I don't know of a single park without serious environmental problems.

Typically, an historic site is considered by the National Park Service to contain a single historical feature, while generally a National Historic Park extends beyond single properties or buildings.

So when people go to the park this summer, they are not going to have the same quality of a visit. There is not going to be a ranger out on the trail to tell them about the important cultural and historic areas within the Olympic National Park.

It has always been, and still is, my intention to build a playground in Central Park.