Yosemite Will Get New Boss Interior secretary hopes to energize valley plan. by Glen Martin, Carl Nolte San Francisco Chronicle - October 7, 1999 The slow pace of efforts to protect Yosemite National Park from overcrowding has apparently cost the park's manager his job. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt is making a special trip toYosemite today to announce he is replacing National Park Service veteran Stanley Albright, 68, as the park's superintendent. In his place, Babbitt is expected to name David Mihalic, 53, an American Indian who is currently superintendent of Glacier National Park in Montana. It is highly unusual for an interior secretary to get directly involved with personnel decisions of this kind, but Babbitt is evidently unhappy with a series of management problems at Yosemite and decided to replace Albright. The core of the problem was delays in implementing a 20-year-old general management plan to control cars and restore natural portions of the park. In an interview yesterday, Babbitt said he ``pleads guilty to an intense personal interest in Yosemite and to getting the general management plan under way on my watch.'' Like other Clinton administration officers, Babbitt will be out of office by January 2001. Babbitt praised Albright's ``long and illustrious career.'' Noting that Albright had intended to retire after serving a term at Yosemite, Babbitt said, ``There was some flexibility in his retirement date, but that day has arrived.'' Albright is a member of the park service's ``Old Guard.'' He is the nephew of Horace Albright, co- founder of the National Park Service, and has held a number of important jobs, including a term as director of the service's western region. He was sent to Yosemite two years ago to jump start long-stalled plans to restore Yosemite Valley and protect it from overuse and rising traffic. But Albright's efforts to implement the changes have only delayed things further, and Babbitt grew increasingly concerned about the management of the park. Mihalic is considered a rising star in the park service. He had been picked for special executive training and in the past six months has been on leave from his Glacier job to be resources adviser to Montana Gov. Mark Racicot. Racicot is a friend of Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush and is considered a good bet to be secretary of the interior in any Bush administration. Mihalic is also a member of the Cherokee Indian tribe and is the highest ranking American Indian in the park service. However, in taking the high-profile Yosemite post, he is walking into one of the toughest jobs in the park service. Yosemite, which attracts nearly 4 million visitors a year, has a number of very active constituencies, ranging from commercial interests to environmentalists to recreational users such as rock climbers and hang-gliders. All of them have strong opinions on how the park should be run. Mihalic's record in Glacier park was immediately challenged by Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, who said his organization had ``serious problems with Mihalic, since he consistently sided with resource users over preservationists in Glacier.'' Pope said Mihalic was ``completely silent'' when a road into prime habitat of grizzly bears was paved, allowing an increased number of people and vehicles into bear country. ``That's not the kind of vision we need for Yosemite,'' he said. By the same token, the Sierra Club also had ``major problems'' with Albright, Pope said. The club sued the park service over its plans to widen Highway 140, one of three major roads into the park. The club alleged that the park service project was damaging the Merced River canyon, which is protected under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. ``The widening was a disaster, and by the time we won (the suit) the damage had been done,'' Pope said. Albright also got into difficulties with a major plan to restrict cars in Yosemite Valley. Under this plan, visitors would have to leave their cars in a parking facility to be built near a rock formation called the Taft Toe. Another idea was to impose severe restrictions on cars in the valley and require visitors to use a bus system to get into the park's most heavily visited areas. Albright called this idea, announced in late 1997, ``a vision for the 21st century'' and ``a comprehensive blueprint for reducing traffic.'' However, defenders of continued automobile access to the valley denounced the bus system plan on one side, and environmentalists opposed the Taft Toe parking facility, which they said would be a huge garage in the middle of the park. ``It was an across-the-board disaster,'' said Janet Cobb, president of the Yosemite Restoration Trust, a watchdog group. She said that public hearings on the matter were only ``public relations'' efforts and that the reaction was so negative nothing happened. In the meantime, Babbitt intervened to direct the park service to combine its various plans into a single document. The deadline was May. The deadline has come and gone and no plans have been announced.