GATLINBURG, Tenn. — Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne found a receptive audience in the Great Smoky Mountains as he began a national listening tour to promote a Bush administration plan to give the national park system a $3 billion gift for its 100th birthday in 2016.
Kempthorne issued a call for special projects tied to the centennial during an overflow meeting Tuesday of nearly 200 supporters and neighbors of the Smokies national park.
"Mr. Secretary, you have said we need to go after the big ideas and I really appreciate that," said Don Barger, regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association. "We shouldn't squander this opportunity."
Barger's organization says the park system has been operating with a shortfall of more than $800 million, resulting in a backlog of maintenance work and land acquisition. Barger said both areas should be priorities now.
Warren Bielenberg, a retiree who worked for the park service for 31 years, urged the secretary to increase park staff. "We need to get more park staff in the parks. We are depending too much on volunteers," he said.
Several people said creative ways must be found to broaden the parks' appeal to young people and to new citizens, reaching out to them through everything from iPods to interpretative programs.
"People can't love what they don't know," said Mark Singleton, executive director of American Whitewater in Sylvan, N.C.
The one issue on which people were divided was the completion of the North Shore Road, otherwise known as the "road to nowhere," around Fontana Lake on the North Carolina side of the park.
Smokies Superintendent Dale Ditmanson said the park service will issue a decision on a preferred alternative — either to build the $600 million road or not build it but pay Swain County $52 million in compensation — in four to six months. He wouldn't say which way the park service is leaning.
Kempthorne said President Bush wants recommendations by May 31 on the Interior Department's plans for the park system's 100th anniversary and wants action soon.
"The president has been very clear that he would like to use these 10 years as the time of preparation," Kempthorne said. "It is not simply to roll out a master plan in 10 years. But instead it is to roll up our sleeves right now and get to work."
The goal is to have "actual projects on the ground, new programs that have been implemented that are in place" by 2016, the former Idaho governor said.
National Park Service Director Mary Bomar joined Kempthrone on Tuesday in the first of 17 public sessions planned this month from Anchorage to Los Angeles.
The administration has proposed a $258 million increase in national parks' funding in fiscal 2008 to $2.4 billion — the largest increase in history.
But beyond that, the proposal offers a 10-year plan of an additional $100 million each year for operations, including restoring some 3,000 seasonal park rangers, and $100 million more annually in federal money to match $100 million in new private giving for special centennial projects.
Kempthorne picked the Smokies for this initial session because the park is so popular — some 9.4 million visitors came to the 520,000-acre preserve on the Tennessee-North Carolina border in 2006, more than double the second-most visited park — the Grand Canyon.
But he said good projects can happen anywhere.
"We have 390 national park units. Any of the 390 over the course of these 10 years can be a viable candidate for a signature project," he said. "The opportunity here is to inspire and to involve the American public in our parks."
Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican with a home near the Smokies and membership on the Senate appropriations subcommittee overseeing the parks, is a supporter. So is Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., chairman of the House Interior Appropriations subcommittee.
Support groups like the Friends of Great Smoky Mountains, which has raised more than $17 million for Smokies projects since 1995, and the Great Smoky Mountains Association, which has raised another $15 million since 1953, have helped cover the parks' funding shortfalls.
Jim Hart, president of the Smokies Friends group, said he was impressed with Kempthorne and Bomar and encouraged by the president's plan.
"I'd say until they show us otherwise, we are going to move ahead with extreme enthusiasm and assume they mean what they say," Hart said. "And if they don't, shame on them."