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Just before I became director in December 1991 there was a push to find places, particularly along the coast, where we could charge fees and were not doing so. There has been some rethinking. We backed off on some places on the north coast, and we now allow our superintendents to lower fees, or to eliminate them altogether, especially during nonpeak seasons. We have tried to focus our fees on areas where some service is provided. Of course, people who walk into parks [instead of driving] don't have to pay anything.
Do you foresee further fee increases?
No, I don't think so. We recently raised some fees selectively: for RVs, and to bring a dog into a park. We also raised entry fees for prime times of the year because we have all these people coming in the peak season and missing the tremendous opportunities during the shoulder seasons, the beginning of spring to Memorial Day, and after Labor Day. Many people have children in year-round school now, but they still plan their vacations in the summer.
I understand you may soon have corporate sponsorship for parks.
The ideal thing would be for corporations, especially California corporations that benefit from the beauty of the parks, to support and sponsor what we do without any great need for recognition. Wells Fargo [Bank], for example, has just been great in that way. PG&E has given lots of money to State Parks and you'd never know. The sponsorship would make us more self-sufficient in time. One hundred percent support from the taxpayers is not on anybody's agenda, nor is it on mine.
Would corporations be allowed to have signs in the parks?
The legislation we got last year for doing sponsorship expressly forbids that. There would not ever be any signs in parks. An organization could say in its literature and advertising that it is a sponsor of State Parks [or some State Parks program]. But it can't say that within the parks. The legislature also gave the director ultimate veto power. The director can veto all sponsors, or particular sponsors. It definitely will be a challenge, dealing with corporate sponsorship. It will require careful attention to assure that it helps, rather than in any way harms, the park's purpose.
Have you had to cut back a lot on services and staff?
Five years ago we went through draconian cuts. We eliminated all our regions and many mid-level supervisors. But that was an efficiency move. Having five regions plus 57 administrative districts was the epitome of bureaucratic redundancy. We now have 22 administrative districts, no regions, and a smaller headquarters staff. As for rangers, that's complex. In many areas we used to hire seasonal rangers. The minute we required that rangers become peace officers also, in the 1970s, the costs went up tremendously. Nobody wanted to hire a seasonal ranger and pay all that money to send him to cop school, and that high salary. We are now suffering the consequences.
Many rangers quit at the time because they didnt want to carry a gun.
Some did. We've put together a team to evaluate all our classifications to clarify roles and responsibilities. A culture has grown up around people being peace officers. I try to remind people that this isn't the Justice Department, this is a resources agency.
So you would have also gotten a different kind of person, over time, who wanted to be a ranger?
That's the problem. I have complained and written about that, but for a long time we were getting people who had a criminal justice background. They'd get an A.A. [degree] in criminal justice and think they were qualified to be rangers. But what about interpretation, resources management, and all the other things that make up our jobs?
What are some major changes you have seen in the parks since 1976, when the Coastal Act was passed?
One of the biggest changes came with the decision to get into law enforcement to the degree that we have. It built in a conflict between our ranger service and our maintenance service. We used to have a kind of homogenous group, and now we have ranger peace officers and maintenance people. And the maintenance people were treated like second-class citizens, Ill be honest with you. I think we became less effective in giving our interpretive programs, our campfire programs, hikes, and tours. Some rangers started feeling: Ive got to be on patrol, and to the degree I have these law enforcement duties, I can't do these other things.
Quite a few new parks were opened in the past two decades, thanks to bond funds provided by voters earlier, right?
Even these last four years, with the residual bond funds and working with private entities, we acquired a tremendous amount of parkland. But there has been a sharp decline in the past decade. The crisis now is in maintenance. We now need bond funds for deteriorating facilities. System-wide, every single park has a backlog of maintenance, from putting roofs on restrooms and visitor centers to repairing roads, worn-out campgrounds, and deteriorated parking areas. Surprisingly, we don't get a lot of complaints. Daily maintenance keeps things patched up. But that takes a tremendous amount of time and money, and eventually things will fall apart and we will need entirely new facilities.
There are citizen support groups that try to help?
They help. They do a tremendous job, but the problem is so enormous.
With the population continuing to grow and no bond money to keep up with the pressures, what should Californians expect for their parks 20 years from now?
Even if we bought every piece of land that was available and desirable, the population increase would still outrun the need. We will have to manage the land differently. It is already happening in Yosemite [National Park], they're talking carrying capacity--limiting the number of people who come in.
Are any parks underused?
Sure. Campgrounds in the north coast redwoods generally don't get the same kind of pressure as the beaches of southern California, San Onofre, the Sierra parks, Folsom Lake. The rural counties need the economic help; the campgrounds can take more people. It's a matter of working with the Department of Tourism to profile these parks, letting people know the best times to go camp there.
Turning back to 1976 again, where were you then and what were you doing?
I was on the coast. In the latter part of 1976 I was a graduate student in a Ph.D. program in biochemistry at [the University of California] Irvine. I had graduated from the University of California, San Diego, in 1975 and gone into the physiology/pharmacology program at La Jolla. I was a research assistant at the Salk Institute. It's right on the ocean. The Torrey Pines State Reserve is right next door. One early morning I was coming up from the laboratory after doing radio immune assays all night and I just decided that this wasn't what I wanted to do the rest of my life, I wanted to be a ranger. I started out right there, figuring out how you get on the state civil service list. I got on the list and stayed on it until I finally got picked up in 1979. In the meantime I transferred to Irvine.
Has your biochemistry background been useful to you?
Absolutely. Most of life's processes are rooted in molecular and cellular biology. When people began to be concerned about biodiversity and species protection and degradation of the environment, I immediately thought in terms of the whole system. The single species approach never made any sense to me. People are coming to understand now that you have to deal with whole systems.
Many people feel much more at home in an artificial environment now than in nature.
Yes, and that's dangerous. During my time with Coastwalk, when I saw people in the campgrounds again, I was thinking that folks who interact with the natural environment are healthier than citizens in society as a whole. A bonding takes place because they're out there. George Foreman, the boxer, was on the radio the other day, saying that he was headed for a life of crime in Houston, where he was growing up, but he joined the Job Corps and was sent to Grant's Pass, and, he said, "It changed my life . . . for the first time I saw there was another part of the world."
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VOLUME 12 / NUMBER 3 / AUTUMN 1996
tate Parks Director Donald W. Murphy had just come home after a seven-day hike along the northern coast, having walked 81 miles from Pelican Bay Beach in Del Norte County to Patrick's Point in Humboldt County with some intrepid Coastwalkers bound for the Mexican border. He was back home to spend the last days of his vacation writing and reading, and was in a reflective mood when he sat down to talk with Coast & Ocean. Among the memories he had been mulling over was a remark by hiker Bill Kortum that the coast was the commons for all the people of California's. It led him to "a significant insight," he said, and he was to draw upon that insight during our talk.
Many mathematical physicists believe that beauty points to truth, or ultimately reveals some aspect of truth. Well, parks, you know, were set aside because they are beautiful places. Soon from that beauty we discovered all sorts of truths about ecosystems and biological diversity. We were attracted to these places by their tremendous beauty, and then discovered underlying truths, not the least of which have to do with who we are and our sense of place in the world. Now that is a value, a tremendous value to society, and it doesn't get articulated by politicians and people associated with government in a larger context. To use a biblical analogy, when people were raving about how beautiful the temple was because it was inlaid with gold and silver, Jesus said to them that it wasn't the gold that sanctified the temple, it was the temple that sanctified the gold. So yes, we can talk about the fact we serve tourists, and millions of dollars are generated by the state park system, and it creates jobs; all that is wonderful, but the biggest challenge is to get people to understand the fundamental values of the parks and why they as citizens need to continue to support the park system.