Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility:
Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give
an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due
to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a
prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was
created by Noah’s flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three
years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale
at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees
for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).“In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our
National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in
geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is
disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the
geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment.'”In a letter released today, PEER urged the new Director of the
National Park Service (NPS), Mary Bomar, to end the stalling tactics,
remove the book from sale at the park and allow park interpretive
rangers to honestly answer questions from the public about the geologic
age of the Grand Canyon. PEER is also asking Director Bomar to approve
a pamphlet, suppressed since 2002 by Bush appointees, providing
guidance for rangers and other interpretive staff in making
distinctions between science and religion when speaking to park
visitors about geologic issues.In August 2003, Park Superintendent Joe Alston attempted to
block the sale at park bookstores of Grand Canyon: A Different View by
Tom Vail, a book claiming the Canyon developed on a biblical rather
than an evolutionary time scale. NPS Headquarters, however, intervened
and overruled Alston. To quiet the resulting furor, NPS Chief of
Communications David Barna told reporters and members of Congress that
there would be a high-level policy review of the issue.According to a recent NPS response to a Freedom of Information
Act request filed by PEER, no such review was ever requested, let alone
conducted or completed. Read on…
::Tullycast:: 