Producer Rick Wilkinson and Associate Producer Matthew Chin discuss the making of Views of Yosemite, a story on the park’s mission to preserve its natural splendor while maintaining millions of visitors every year.
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This segment was made available on Thursday, July 27th, 2006.
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Commentary: Views of YosemiteProducer Rick Wilkinson and Associate Producer Matthew Chin discuss the making of Views of Yosemite, a story on the park’s mission to preserve its natural splendor while maintaining millions of visitors every year. One Response to “Commentary: Views of Yosemite”Leave a Comment |
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July 27th, 2006. Stories from the Current Episode |
November 29th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
I felt your piece on Views of Yosemite was skewed toward the supposed “environmentalists” like the girl representing part of the Sierra Club. I consider myself the most strict of all environmentalists and I whole-heartedly disagree with the slant this story took, presenting the Yosemite Plan as pro-business and trying to increase visitors to the Valley. This is not the actual case. The Yosemite Plan is a way to restore parts of the Valley that were overused, like the riverside campsites and the meadows, while improving the access to otherwise abused areas. The riverside campsites were removed due to the desire to adhere to the Natural and Scenic River legislation which demands a river have the ability to ebb and flow with it’s natural “flooding”. Those campsites were causing massive erosion and were in danger of being overflowed with natural river flows in the future. The guy talking about his desire to “restore” those campsites should have been presented with a view stating: It is not restoration to further or continue initial 50 year old abuse on the Valley. This point was not made by your commentators who seemed to agree with these mistaken views of “restoration”. Of course, the upper river camps have not been “restored” back to a natural state either - why? Because, the “Plan” has had constant injunctions halting work on Valley projects. The sewer system is routinely failing and needs to be replaced. How is this work to be done if so-called environmentalists constantly interrupt the process? Stopping these repairs is doing untold damage to the Valley environment. What’s worse?
I feel you should have presented a more complete view of the huge amount of public involvement that went into the final Yosemite Plan, resulting in the best possible plan to both restrict visitors and their impact on a pristine area and improve the environmental qualities that everyone loves about Yosemite.
Regards.
Teri Alexis