[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 34 (Monday, August 28, 1995)]
[Pages 1453-1454]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on the 79th Anniversary of the National Park Service in 
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

August 25, 1995

    Hi, folks. Well, I'm sorry about the rain, but I want to tell you 
that Hillary and Chelsea and I are having a wonderful time here. I want 
to thank the Park Superintendent, Mike

[[Page 1454]]

Findley, and all the people who work at Yellowstone for making our visit 
so nice, even with the rain.
    I wanted to make a couple of points today: 79 years ago today the 
Congress established the National Park Service to organize and preserve 
our natural heritage and to preserve our common environment. Last year 
at the 369 national parks, 270 million visitors came. That is an 
astonishing number.
    Yellowstone is the symbol of our national parks because it's the 
oldest one and the first one in the history of the world. And I came 
here today basically to make two or three points: First of all, I am 
committed to preserving these parks. There was an effort in Congress--
[applause]--there was an effort in Congress to cut the budget in a way 
that could have forced the closure of 200 of these parks. That's wrong. 
There are some people who say we ought to just sell some of our natural 
treasures off to the highest bidder. And that's wrong.
    But I do think we need some reforms, and let me just mention two or 
three. Number one, I support keeping the fees that you pay when you come 
to the national parks in the parks. That's one of the things that we 
want to do so that the money can be used to preserve the parks.
    Secondly, we want to allow the national parks more flexibility to go 
out and raise money from private citizens to preserve, not to destroy, 
our natural heritage. And that's in the plan that we have given to 
Congress, and we hope that they will adopt it.
    And finally, we want to see the people who do business in our parks 
give a fairer share of that business back to the parks for the 
preservation of the people in the future, like the people who run this 
hotel do. And Mr. Findley's worked hard on that. We want more of that in 
the future.
    The last thing I want to say is this: We have a big stake in what 
you see around you here at Yellowstone. It's a part of what I call our 
common ground. And we should not do anything this year--anything--to 
weaken our ability to protect the quality of our land, our water, our 
food, the diversity of our wildlife, and the sanctity of our natural 
treasures. We can balance the budget without doing any of that, and 
that's the commitment all of us ought to make today on this anniversary 
of the National Park Service.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 1 p.m. at Old Faithful Lodge.