Visitors aren't welcome?

I wish that Glacier National Park officials would be honest instead of demonstrating the duplicity that has become their religion.

In talking to newspaper reporters, Chamber of Commerce gatherings, etc. they continually brag about the positive economic impact that the Park brings to Flathead County businesses.

But to others, like at the Glacier National Park Volunteer Associates meeting, they complain about the number of visitors that come up the North Fork to enter the Park’s northwestern boundary.

North Fork district ranger Scott Emmerich was quoted recently in the Hungry Horse news admitting that Park officials are “trying to stop change as much as possible,” and that efforts to reduce the amount of dust pollution entering the river and the air on Glacier Park’s western boundary from “the usually dusty and potholes North Fork Road” just results in attracting more visitors.

He admitted that the National Park Service has played a role in attracting more visitors by “promoting the North Fork online as one of the finest regions in the Park.”

The Park spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads across the country in 2010 promoting the 100th anniversary of the Park, and I believe in order to attract even more tourists, the National Park Service promoted Scott Emmerich as their ranger of the year.

Emmerich has now promised to make visits to the northwest corner of the Park even less attractive — by, among other things, continuing to oppose dust abatement on the North Fork Road, shutting down the campground at Hole-in-Wall between Bowman and Boulder passes, making the Quartz Lake Loop Trail one way, making the Inside North Fork Road one-way from Logging Creek south (not that it’s ever open very much as is), letting the roads to Bowman and Kintla lakes get even worse, and limiting towed units (i.e. campers) from using those roads during the summer.

But Park officials don’t want to measure air and water pollution (there is now a logging camp next to the Flathead River just over the border in Canada — what’s the impact to water quality? I’m told authoritatively we won’t know for years) and are supporting efforts to add tens of thousands of acres of wilderness in the Whitefish Range.

If that were ever to happen, the bragging from environmental groups would only bring thousands more visitors up that “dusty and potholed North Fork Road,” which is what Park officials say they don’t want.

But if that happens, be assured that they would be bragging about the positive economic impact that they are bringing to this area.

Maybe if they want to reduce the number of visitors coming here, they should monitor the air and water pollution from the dust and tell potential visitors that it’s unhealthy to come here thanks to their management practices.

Joe Novak lives in Polebridge.