A Tour Guides View Of Soundscape

By: Glenn Wilsey, Sr.

Soundscape is just another way for OUR national parks to spend OUR hard earned tax dollars on something we do not need. It will also give the park service more power to stop us (the tax paying citizens) from enjoying and going to the areas in the park where we (the people) want to go. The park service seems to believe that no one knows anything about our wilderness areas. If we give the park service all of the power, they will soon take it upon themselves to tell us that we know nothing and that we have to do it their way or no way.

I can see it already. “Hey, you’re interrupting my soundscape.” So, No talking, no beepers, no cell phones, no radios (music or talk), no bikes (they make clicking sounds) no running or walking (that makes stomping sounds), no cars, no o.r.v’s, no boats, and the list WILL only get bigger and bigger.

The Park Service uses helicopters, airplanes, jeeps, trucks, speedboats, airboats, Jet Ski’s and o.r.v.’s to patrol throughout most of our national parks. I want to know why the Park Service feels that their vehicles don’t terrify or otherwise disturb the whole ecosystem BUT the taxpayer’s vehicles DO!

I don’t understand how the taxpayer’s noises will harm or terrify everything in the ecosystem, but the Park Service’s vehicles, radios, etc., won’t affect anything? I guess they must be using some kind of new stealth technology. I sure wish the Park Service would sell some of their stealth vehicles so that we too could use them in the national parks and thereby not disturb the ecosystem.

Only those who are not taught to make the most of their park experience by exploring away from the gift shops and parking lots are going to miss out on the nature experience. As I recall, most of the parks do have nature trails and many even offer guided excursions. We should not be constructing artificial zones where people can’t hear anything but the wilderness. That whole concept, itself, is unnatural.

As a native South Floridian, I have no problem finding a quiet place in Biscayne Bay or the Everglades. When I’m in the Everglades and I hear an airplane fly over or the sound of a car passing on the highway, I certainly don’t let it ruin my whole trip. All I do is immediately forget all about it. Is that so hard? It only costs me about 15 seconds of my time to tell the whole world how to enjoy the wilderness. It will cost the taxpayers of the United States millions and millions of dollars and years of construction to do soundscapes in our national parks.

As an alternative why not just mandate quiet hours in the park? It doesn’t take a genius to figure this one out! Let’s think for a moment, in the daytime most people and animals are awake and moving around. At night the people and the animals are mostly sleeping. Duhhhhhh!

Believe it or not, nature had all of this figured out already. It’s been called DAYTIME and NIGHTTIME for as long as anyone can remember!

Soundscape will limit our free access to the park. It will slowly but surely take away more and more of our rights to freely access our (the taxpayer’s) national parks. In the past, we’ve heard the Park Service say, “we are on your side and we sympathize with your position.” Then, when they make new policies, the park rangers say, “it’s not us, it’s the official policy.” The park rangers just pass the buck and the Park Service gets what they want. It’s only we taxpayers who lose. Proclaiming, “We sympathize with you,” is just an easy way out.

Our national park staff seems to think that education is the way and they act like we’ve never heard of this before! Well, what good is there in knowing about our ecosystems if we can’t go about seeing nature on our own? I don’t need a babysitter from another state to show me around in the state where I grew up!

The National Park Service says that, “ Soundscape is important for both the fitness and survival of the wildlife!”

Well, here we go again. Our national parks are trying to convince us that we are as dumb as they evidently must think we are. Why don’t we start with this fitness thing? While I’m not a scientist, I do know that nature has taken care of the fitness of the animals for millions of years. A fellow named Darwin wrote a book about it. What does the National Park Service have in mind for maintaining the fitness of our wildlife? I don’t know. Jane Fonda helped keep all of us fit with her workout videos. Maybe the park service can get Barney the Dinosaur to do a workout video for the animals so they can be fit too.

Sorry about the snide commentary, I couldn’t help myself. Let’s also talk about the survival of the animals! The National Park Service wants us to believe that sound is going to interfere with the survival of the animals and these accusations are totally false. If I were a kid, I might believe a statement like that. I am way passed being a kid and I know the Tooth fairy isn’t real either. As an adult I know this kind of thinking is wrong. I have personal experience as well as other examples as to why saying that sound interferes with the survival of the animals is wrong. I was kid, just 17, when I joined the United States Army and while in the army I was a crewman on an M-60 tank. We would shoot 105-mm artillery rounds 3 to 4 miles away. Between the tank and the target we could see deer grazing in the grass. The deer could care less about us shooting over them. Here in Florida we have Cape Canaveral. NASA Launches space shuttles and rockets over their bird sanctuary. As the space shuttle roars into space the birds and animals look into the sky and watch it disappear into space just like the people that gather to watch. The birds and animals go back to their normal daily routine, after the space shuttle disappears into space.

At our airports we hire people to rid the runways and surrounding property of birds. At MIA, (Miami International Airport) endangered ground owls have decided to make their homes between the runways. The birds don’t care if we work around them as long as we don’t harm them.

We might be able to stop all of these activities, but there is something not even the park service can stop and that is LIGHTNING! Lightning causes thunder which is, of course, one of the loudest natural sounds on earth. Here in Florida, we live in the lightning capital of the United States. I have had lightning strike so close to me that the vibration and resonance knocked the air out of my lungs and caused me to drop to my knees. I got back up and went on my way just like the animals do. SO… my next question has to be how will our national parks stop lightning?

I really would like the National Park Service to show us how they plan to stop NASA from launching the space shuttle; and how they will convince the lightening to stop producing all of that excessively noisy thunder, before they try to prevent us from enjoying our wilderness ecosystems.

Please, don’t spend our hard earned tax dollars on studies that mean nothing. My comments are in response to the Biscayne Bay conference entitled: “SHHHHHH NATURE IN PROGRESS” Narrated by Biscayne Bay superintendent Richard Frost and printed in the Miami New Times issue dated 5-6 through 5-13-1999 as written by Jacob Bernstein and from the Biscayne Bay soundscape program.

I am a naturalist and an environmentalist and I have been professionally involved in the Eco-tourism movement since before it had a name. I believe that people, animals and machinery can get along in any ecosystem anywhere!

NATURE RULES!!!

*This story or any part of it can not be used or reproduced with out written permission of the author!

Or Me At Gatorman1@aaof.us