A developer wants to build a road through Yosemite National Park land, prompting concerns about conservation and future precedence.
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A private developer has its eye on one of America’s oldest and most iconic national parks.
Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a Las Vegas-based real estate investment firm with upward of $2.8 billion in assets, wants to build a road through part of Yosemite National Park to connect one of its properties to a major thoroughfare.
In exchange, the firm is offering the National Park Service “an environmentally sensitive property of choice within the State of California,” according to a company statement shared with USA TODAY.
Here’s what visitors should know about the proposal and what it could mean.
Where is the land? What is proposed?
The land in question is along the western edge of Yosemite near Big Flat Oak Road (Highway 120), a major access road for the park.
Kingsbarn owns a roughly 83-acre property just outside the park’s border, known as Hazel Green Ranch. The company said it hasn’t nailed down plans for the land yet, but “believes the highest and best use will be a development similar to plans created by the property’s former owner, which included a lodge and cabins built in a sustainable and environmentally friendly fashion.”
The company’s statement notes the property is “just a few hundred feet” from Big Flat Oak Road, but currently, there is no direct access, only a longer 11-mile option on forestry roads.
Kingsbarn wants to gain access by building a road through “less than two acres” of Yosemite.
“They have an option,” Don Neubacher, Yosemite’s superintendent from 2010 to 2016, told USA TODAY. He worked in the Park Service for 36 years and is now on the executive council of the nonprofit Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks. “It would take more time, but then it would not destroy sort of part of the park.”
Potential impacts on Yosemite
Kingsbarn said the area they’re interested in is “a far distance from any part of Yosemite National Park” frequented by visitors.
“This small road has no impact on Yosemite at all – none,” added Lanny J. Davis, an attorney representing the company. Davis is co-founder and partner at the law firm Davis Goldberg & Galper PLLC and public relations firm Trident DMG. He also served as special counsel to then-President Bill Clinton.
Neubacher confirmed that the backcountry area is not a visitor attraction, but he called it a beautiful, spectacular part of the park with rich forest habitat.
“It is a critical part of park resources, and remember, the Park Service, their number one mission is to protect resources for future generations, unimpaired,” he said. “I just don’t see how you can rationalize this transfer of ownership to a developer.”
On Instagram, the union representing Yosemite workers said, “As stewards of Yosemite, the ceding of public lands for private interests is antithetical to what we stand for as employees of the National Park Service.”
National Federation of Federal Employees Local 465 added: “The Union is incredibly concerned about the implications of this private development for the working conditions of an already overwhelmed staff, who will have to address the cultural, resource, and visitor safety ramifications of this area.”
Why now?
Neubacher said he faced a similar proposal from the property’s previous owner during his time at the park.
“This has been going on for 20 years,” he said. “Three different administrations said no, it wasn’t in the public interest.”
“The Trump administration, generally speaking, I think it’s fair to say, has a different perspective on what is a benefit to the Park System,” said John Leshy, a public lands expert, emeritus distinguished professor of law at UC Law San Francisco, and author of “Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public Lands.” He served in the Interior Department during the Carter administration and as the department’s solicitor under Clinton.
As recently as Aug. 24, President Donald Trump stated, “My Administration is committed to protecting every acre of our lands and preserving the cleanest air and water in the world.”
However, since the start of his second term, the administration cut park staffing, approved border-wall-related bulldozing at Big Bend National Park, and encouraged energy exploration and production on public lands, among other measures decried by conservationists.
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What has the National Park Service said?
The Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service, told USA TODAY:
“There has been no political pressure to reach a predetermined outcome, and claims suggesting the Department is secretly working to hand over National Park Service land to a private developer are false.
“Any land exchange or access proposal involving National Park Service lands would be subject to all applicable federal laws, regulations and Departmental policies, including required environmental review and public notification processes. No final decisions have been made.
“If a proposal advances, the Department will follow established procedures to ensure appropriate coordination, transparency and public involvement consistent with federal law. Anonymous speculation does not change those facts.”
How does a land exchange work?
Leshy told USA TODAY: “The National Park System actually has narrow authority to exchange land. Very, very limited.”
The Park System is composed of 433 sites managed by the National Park Service. They range from national parks to national monuments, battlefields and seashores. Leshy noted that land exchanges involving the Park Service are quite rare. “Deliberately so, because Congress did not want to have a lot of back and forth in terms of what land’s in the Park System or not,” he said, noting that Congress usually sets the boundaries of national parks, unlike some other types of public lands.
To move forward, he said, the exchanges must be equal in value, but “Generally speaking, the Park Service can only exchange land where its overall benefit is to the Park Service.”
Neubacher said, “The only interest that I can see (here) is that the developer gets a great access road into a park to promote his business.”
Kingsbarn said future visitors to its property would not only benefit from the safety and convenience of the new road, but it would be “an environmentally superior alternative to the property’s current access route.”
Davis added, “It is good for the environment, keeps cars off the Forest Service roads, and helps ease congestion in, and around Yosemite National Park.”
Potential impacts beyond Yosemite
When President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant Act of 1864, which first protected the park, one of its key terms was the land “shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation” and “shall be inalienable for all time.”
“I think a lot of people think Yosemite is safe forever,” Neubacher said. “These fights for conservation values continue.”
If the proposed land exchange goes through, he and Leshy expect to see more requests like it.
“That precedent would be devastating,” Leshy said. “That would mean everybody who owns land around a park that wants to get access to a park, the Trump administration is saying, ‘We’re open for business.’ … I mean, they’re just signaling all bets are off.”