Matthew Wolpert
Bush's Biking An Exercise In Effrontery
By Marc Fisher
Tuesday, May 17, 2005; Page B01
When the wayward Cessna approached the White House last week, the
president was out riding his mountain bike on the winding trails of
Patuxent Research Refuge, 12,790 acres of woods and ponds where
endangered whooping cranes live, migratory birds make their pit stops,
and hikers, hunters and bird-watchers spend their leisure hours.
But don't expect to follow President Bush's example in the late
afternoon or evening, or on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July or any
other national holiday, because the same president who repairs to
Patuxent for his recreation has saddled the refuge with budget cuts
that have forced a sharp reduction in its public opening hours and
other services.
=20
May 17, Noon ET: Call in and Talk Live with Marc Fisher in
washingtonpost.com's new live audio discussion about the issues and
people in the news in the Washington area and beyond.
Download the May 10th show or subscribe to the XML podcast.=20
=20
Even as the refuge faces sharply rising energy costs and deferred
maintenance demands, the facility has been hit with a 2 percent
midyear budget cut, a decline in staffing and steadily increasing
responsibilities, including post-9/11 mandates that it hire more law
enforcement officers.
"It's been a pretty stressful, trying year here because we just don't
have the resources to maintain the facilities," says refuge director
Brad Knudsen. "We're definitely in a downward trend."
"It's a good thing that the president didn't arrive for his ride after
4 o'clock, because that's when they have to close now," says Evan
Hirsche, president of the National Wildlife Refuge Association, a
nonprofit in Georgetown that lobbies for the country's 545 wildlife
preserves. "National parks are seeing significant increases in
funding, while the refuges are cut year after year, making it harder
for millions of Americans to use them for fishing, hunting and
bird-watching."
The president bikes on Patuxent's Central Tract, which is not open to
public visits, but rather serves as home to scientists who conduct
experiments on soil and animals. To save money on staffing, Patuxent's
20 miles of trails on its North Tract now close four hours earlier, an
especially tough blow for fishermen whose only access to a prime
fishing pond had been during those later hours (it's closed during the
day because it's next to a National Security Agency shooting range).
Two of the scientists' major facilities at Patuxent have been
shuttered recently because the refuge lacked money to maintain the
buildings, Knudsen says. One closed facility, Stickel Laboratory,
became famous as the site of the studies on the pesticide DDT that
inspired Rachel Carson's classic work of environmental journalism,
"Silent Spring."
"The building had so many failing systems that we really had no choice
but to shut it," Knudsen says.
To make its budget, Patuxent also has ended its long-standing Boy and
Girl Scout camping programs
Bush has used Patuxent, east of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in
Prince George's and Anne Arundel counties, for bike-riding jaunts for
several years, according to volunteers and staffers. Knudsen says he
is not permitted to comment on the visits.
Some scientists on the site grumble that they are required by Secret
Service agents to vacate their laboratories when the president is
coming.
But what volunteers and staffers find most galling is the disconnect
between the president's personal behavior and his administration's
policies. A coalition of refuge supporters across the ideological
divide -- including the National Rifle Association, the Audubon
Society and 18 other environmental, hunting, fishing and birding
groups -- has pressed the government to pull wildlife refuges out of a
situation so dire that about 200 refuges have no staff at all, and a
majority have so few workers that a backlog of more than $2 billion in
maintenance projects has developed.
Now, "the system is facing cuts of 300 staff positions in the next
year," Hirsche says -- a loss of one in 10 slots.
The sight of Bush pedaling through the Central Tract has struck even
some of his political critics as sad -- the image of a man being taken
in his security cocoon into a park swept clear of other human beings
just so he can ride a bike drives home the old line about there being
no lonelier job than the presidency.
"You almost feel sorry for the guy," says refuge volunteer Sue Darcey.
"Except that if he understands the need for recreation, how about
funding the refuges so we can all go biking in the woods?"