Ridenour Likened to James Watt : Furor Accompanies New U.S. Park Chief Into Office

It was a chilly welcome.

James M. Ridenour, President Bush’s new director of the National Park Service, was sworn in earlier this month amid acrimony as environmental groups castigated him as another “James Watt,” more in love with buildings than with trees.

Before Ridenour even arrived in Washington, a top Sierra Club official went so far to call him “the worst” national park director in history, and Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) later cited the criticism in introducing legislation to make the directorship of the National Park Service subject to Senate confirmation.

“There is probably more confusion about Mr. Ridenour right now than there has been about any of the 12 former directors of the National Park Service,” said Paul Pritchard, president of the National Parks and Conservation Assn., a park watchdog group.

The controversy over Ridenour’s appointment, coming at a time when conservation groups are expressing growing disillusionment with Bush’s choices for environmental posts, may stem as much from this heightened sensitivity as from the appointee’s actual record.

A plain-spoken, owlish-looking Midwesterner who may owe his post at least in part to his first-name relationship with Vice President Dan Quayle, for whom he once raised funds as a county finance chairman of the Indiana Republican Party, Ridenour arrived in Washington April 17 unprepared for the furor and admittedly befuddled.

As a political appointee who headed the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, the approachable, informal Ridenour received high marks from state park officials for hiring more staff and expanding nature education programs. But he also infuriated conservation groups by occasionally supporting development plans that they said jeopardized wildlife and scenery.

“Ridenour seemed to think that the park system in Indiana was in competition for tourist dollars with surrounding states, and this led him into excessive advocacy on the development side of the parks,” said Thomas E. Dustin, environmental affairs adviser for the Indiana Izaak Walton League, a conservation group. “That is not to say he is totally insensitive (to the environment). He is not.”

Influence Over Parks

As national park director, Ridenour, 47, will help shape policies that profoundly affect the visitor’s experience at monuments and in parks and recreation areas. His views will in part determine whether parks are expanded or new parks added, whether programs are launched to reintroduce animals that are native to parks and whether mining or logging is permitted on park borders.

The park director is supposed to be an advocate for parks within the U.S. Department of Interior, which also administers agencies responsible for oil and mineral development. Former Park director William Penn Mott Jr., for example, often found himself at odds with Reagan-appointed Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel and publicly took positions that differed from Hodel’s.

Those who watched Ridenour in Indiana say he is not likely to buck authority. He was known as a “company man” who swallowed his differences and went along. When preservation interests clash with private interests, Ridenour can be expected to look for compromise.

“I guess I’m not very turf protective or (turf) conscious,” Ridenour conceded.

The new parks chief has never visited Yellowstone, Yosemite or the Grand Canyon, considered the premier parks of the service, but has spent time at several smaller national parks. He is not an avid outdoorsman. He plays golf “not particularly well” and has hunted on a rare occasion. “I would put myself in the category of a hiker and sometime-fisherman,” he said. “I go to the state parks, and generally my favorite thing to do would be hiking and maybe a little photography.”

Seated in an office at the National Park Service headquarters in Washington, Ridenour slipped off his brown Oxford shoes and, in a nervous gesture, pushed a pencil between his stocking-covered toes as he spoke. Stiff but unimposing, he looked more like a mild-mannered bureaucrat than a magnet for controversy. He wore a white shirt--his coat had been shed earlier--and a maroon tie sprinkled with buffalo, the symbol for the Interior Department.

Not a Preservationist

His views on national parks generally seem in tune with the philosophy espoused by the Interior Department under President Reagan. He considers himself a “conservationist,” and those who know him say his record is substantially more sensitive and less confrontational than that of former Interior Secretary James G. Watt, who advocated proposals to sell off federal lands and open up wilderness areas to mining and oil drilling. At the same time, he is not a preservationist, and in this respect, he will be more likely to pursue development or recreation than Mott, his predecessor.

Rather than emphasize the creation of new parks in grand, scenic settings, Ridenour said he would favor working with cities and states to develop more urban parks or playing fields near populated areas. He indicated that he may also try to acquire private land within park boundaries.

“I haven’t had a chance to study just exactly what lands . . . should be (acquired), but I know if the park service is like we were in Indiana, in-holdings--those lands that are presently inside the boundaries--are often important,” he said. “My philosophy is that I’m not for condemnation except as a last resort. I just kind of grew up with that philosophy--to try to work situations out, short of condemnation, if you possibly can.”

Ridenour generally favors charging fees for park services, although he says he has no immediate plans to advocate an increase or creation of new charges at parks. (Entrance fees at most national parks more than doubled during the Reagan Administration.) The new director believes people take more pride in a park they have paid to enter. Without paying, he said, many people may subconsciously feel that “the thing wasn’t worth going to.”

On park fires, Ridenour generally supports the environmentalist position in favor of letting naturally ignited fires burn. The park service’s fire policy is under review after a major fire at Yellowstone last summer that threatened nearby communities.

“I think there are some very beneficial uses to fire,” Ridenour said. “From a personal observation, it sounded like the situation got a little out of hand out West. That was kind of tied to unique climatic situations plus the fact that over the years there was a lot of deadfall.”

Protecting Borders

The new director also believes park borders must be protected from commercial uses that would pollute or interfere with park scenery, but he does not favor purchasing adjoining lands just to keep them pristine.

At times, mining or timber cutting occurs on adjacent lands owned by other federal agencies. Ridenour said he would “work on a neighbor-to-neighbor basis” to protect the land and, in the case of private owners, attempt to get “local easements or tax considerations” for those who keep their property undisturbed.

One of the more controversial wildlife issues facing the park service now is whether to reintroduce the endangered gray wolf to Yellowstone over the objections of nearby ranchers and the Wyoming Republican delegation.

Although his “mind is open,” Ridenour expressed sensitivity to the concerns of the ranchers. He recalled that an explosion of the deer population in Indiana caused a lot of public complaints. “So we had to get innovative. We had to go to certain farmers and say, ‘OK, even in the off-season if you find that animals are damaging your property . . . you have a right to take those animals to protect your property.’ ”

Ridenour was born in Wabash, Ind. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in parks and recreation from Indiana University and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Colorado. From 1975 to 1978, he served in Kentucky as director of state services for the Council of State Governments, which he described as a “states’ rights” organization that provided secretarial services, including the organizing of conferences, for state governments.

Private Sector Job

After leaving that post, he returned to Indiana to be near a racquetball club he had opened. He sought a job with a chemical company and became its administration director, responsible for budget and personnel.

In 1981, then-Indiana Republican Gov. Robert Orr, who knew Ridenour from the Council of State Governments, picked him as state natural resources director, with responsibility for parks, forests, reservoirs, fish and wildlife, coal mine reclamation and state museums and memorials.

Environmental groups say Ridenour was an accessible director, always returning calls and notes. They credit him with helping lead a campaign that led to a $10-million purchase of lands for nature preserves.

But on some key issues, they quarreled.

As a member of the Indiana Recreational Development Commission, Ridenour voted for a marketing study of a proposal to replace a parking lot with a 140-room hotel and conference center in Indiana Dunes State Park, which at one time had a 48-room inn.

Environmental groups said the hotel, which would have overlooked the shoreline of Lake Michigan, would have been substantially more intrusive than the parking lot. State park officials say they did not oppose the hotel because the site had already been developed for parking.

Ridenour said he preferred that private hotels were built outside the park, but with such accommodations unavailable, a hotel may be necessary.

“Not everyone can stay in a tent,” he said. “Not everyone has a camper, and I think there ought to be an opportunity for everyone.”

Ridenour also clashed with some environmental groups over plans to develop a recreational area on a reservoir in southern Indiana. Environmental groups say the large-scale development under consideration would threaten bald eagles, which are increasingly being sighted in the area.

Ambitious Development Project

The proposed development would include lodging, a marina, a tennis-racquetball-sauna complex, a wild animal park developed by Jim Fowler of “Wild Kingdom” fame and two champion-style golf courses.

Ridenour generally endorsed the plan but says he would have liked to “take a close look at the theme park.”

“I certainly didn’t want anything that would stick out like a sore thumb, like some of the theme parks that we think of around the country,” he said. “I’d have to see how they designed that in terms of good taste. Obviously, the Disney people can do some pretty interesting things.”

Jeffrey Stant, executive director of the Hoosier Environmental Council, a clearinghouse of state environmental groups, called the proposed development “Ridenour’s baby.”

“He is not the fierce ideologue that some protagonists of the environmental movement are,” Stant said. “He is more of an opportunist who isn’t aware of or doesn’t recognize the environmentalist philosophy--preserving the natural heritage of the land.”

Carl Pope, deputy conservation director of the Sierra Club, called Ridenour’s appointment “extremely distressing.”

“I believe this is the worst nomination we have ever had for the National Park Service,” Pope said. Park service officials generally give that ranking to Ron Walker, former President Nixon’s advance man who headed the agency.

Indiana park officials who worked with Ridenour are not so harsh.

“He is not going to be like William Penn Mott,” a preservationist, said Mark McKibben, superintendent of Indiana Dunes State Park. “But I don’t think he will be terribly pro-development. I don’t think Jim is going to go completely off the wall or anything.”

At the end of Orr’s term, Ridenour left the state job to become a research coordinator for a natural resources program at Purdue University. He also sent a resume to the White House and called Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) for advice on how to get a federal job. Ridenour said he was interested in finding a regional position outside Washington, possibly in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which also is a part of the Interior Department.

Met Quayle Years Ago

He believes Quayle wrote a letter of recommendation for him--”how eloquent and how long I don’t know.” The two men first met several years ago when Ridenour was Republican Party finance chairman in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, and Quayle was running for the Senate. As the state’s natural resources director, Ridenour worked on constituency problem’s for Quayle’s office, and the vice president called Ridenour to congratulate him when he was named to the top park post last month.

Although the two men are not close personal friends, “Were he not vice president, I would feel very comfortable in calling him Dan,” Ridenour said. Asked if he credits Quayle with landing him the post, he replied: “I’d like to think that my background in terms of natural resources and my degrees . . . were the primary factors.”

Ridenour said he was surprised and “confused” by the controversy over his appointment.

“I never really did understand it,” Ridenour said. “To me, I was a pretty environmentally oriented person in the state of Indiana in Gov. Orr’s Administration.”