Following orders from Washington, BLM offices around the West worked to accelerate the pace of domestic energy production and won key concessions that placed oil and gas projects near and within national parks.
Interior veterans said ratcheting down the BLM's power to overrule the park service could be accomplished only by new rules of engagement set out by Salazar.
Some park service veterans argue that commercial projects crowding parks violate the 1916 Organic Act, which mandated that parks' air, water and other resources be preserved "unimpaired" for future generations.
"You cannot save parks, you cannot meet the mandate of the Organic Act simply by managing within park boundaries," said Denis Galvin, a 38-year park service veteran who was the agency's acting director during Bush's first year. "So, oil and gas leases next to Arches -- you've got to have some say what goes on outside parks."
The first blow to parks, critics say, came in the early months of the Bush administration, when Interior overturned the Clinton-era ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park. The issue has ping-ponged around the courts the last eight years, with judges repeatedly ruling that snow machines impair park resources.
In another controversial act, a Bush appointee, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior Paul Hoffman, tried to weaken environmental rules and allow more commercial enterprises in parks. Interior backed away from most of the proposed changes, but Wade, of the park service retirees group, said the episode was telling.
"It was a boldfaced attempt to change the mission of the National Park Service," Wade said, adding that the Obama administration -- by its selection of a parks chief -- could reaffirm the agency's dedication to preservation.
More recently, Bush appointees approved a rule change allowing visitors to carry concealed weapons in parks -- a decision decried by every living former park service director, the agency's law enforcement employees and members of the public who sent comments.
All of this occurred as visitation declined and soul searching began about how to make parks more attractive to an increasingly multicultural society, a task that will continue under the Obama administration.
"I think that we've had to expend tremendous energy over the last few years defending the parks and rejustifying their importance to the country," said Stephen Martin, superintendent at Grand Canyon.
But some say the most challenging task for new park officials will be to restore confidence to the battered agency.
"When you look at the cumulative effect of all of these things," Wade said, "it's going to take a long time to dig out from under the rubble."
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julie.cart@latimes.com
