Today, I am issuing a new report describing status of our country's national parks. This is an important topic because American's love their national parks.

The parks contain our most treasured national symbols like the Washington Monument and the Statue of Liberty. They connect people to history.

The parks feature the landscapes we all love: Yellowstone's geysers, Yosemite's waterfalls, the Everglades, the Great Smokies. My own family trips to Rocky Mountain introduced me to the outdoors.

Report details:

Budget for parks
How we are taking better care of our parks
State-by-state details about our activities-how much is spent in each state on repairing and restoring facilities

My job is to protect the parks. It is to inform the public. I want to give you an accurate and realistic picture of the parks.

I will discuss some of our challenges as well as our achievements.

We have a very simple message this morning. The national parks are enthusiastically welcoming more than a million visitors each day this summer. Our parks are open and ready to welcome visitors.

We have more money today per acre, per employee and per visitor in the National Park system than at any time in the history of the Parks.

Visitors to our national parks this summer will discover a park system that continues to be the best in the world and is getting better year by year. We are spending more money but we are spending it more wisely.

[CHART] National Park budget increases surpass any other non-defense agency in the federal government. You have a chart in the report (page 3) that shows that since 1980 National park operating funds have increased 352 percent compared to overall domestic increases of 138 percent.

" President Bush set and funded three priorities for the National Parks:

1. Improve repair and maintenance
(Overview on pages 4 and 5)

• The President is meeting his commitment to invest $4.9 billion over five years to address the national park maintenance backlog.

4,000 improvements completed, planned or underway in 49 states:

Improved trails
New and improved visitor centers
More accessible campgrounds
Better roads
Reduced environmental threats through better sewer and drinking water systems

Business-like system to keep track of maintenance records.

Roads: 6-year cycle on highway bills. Previous one passed in
1998.

FHWA Proposal: Nearly double--$165 to $300/310/320
(Chart for funding on page 4)

2. Preserve Natural Resources (page 6)

• National Park Service has nearly tripled funding to preserve and study the magnificent natural resources within national parks.

• Natural Resource Challenge has cumulative increases totaling almost $150 million
  In FY 2005, the Parks will spend nearly 3 times more than it did on this program in 2001.

Improves natural resource management by strengthening the scientific base of knowledge about plants, animals and ecosystems.

Exotic species: mellaluca in Everglades and Big Cypress

Endangered species: Kemp's Ridley sea turtle at Padre Island

• Forest Health (page 10, avoid catastrophic fires)

• Water quality (page 11, Yellowstone-violations)

3. Protect Visitors and Employees (page 7)

• To increase visitor and employee safety, the Administration has increased National Park Service law enforcement budgets by 23.5 percent under President Bush. The Park Police operations budget is up by 39 percent.

• National Park Service has largest staff ever:

FY 2005 will have 20,637-an increase of 839 over Park Service employment in 2000. The parks this summer have more employee positions than when we took office.

There are some who want to over dramatize this situation.

• We expect that our report will be attacked.

• Explain some of the things they say.

As we have increased the budget for the priorities described above, we have not uniformly increased every part of the budget.

• In a system as extensive and complex as the 84 million acres of our national parks, there are some parks that have challenges.

• People can go to parks and find things that are less than perfect.

• ½ way through 5-year project to improve parks-so not everything has been fixed.

" By nature of maintenance programs-never reach point where everything is done. True for major real estate management-and we are the country's largest managers of real estate. True for your own home. Always another project. Our goal is to meet visitor and resource protection needs and make sure they are acceptable.

Most recently our critics have focused on personnel:

• Like every other domestic agency in the entire federal government, the NPS budget had a 1.5% across-the-board cut for 2004.

• That meant some line items were slightly lower while some costs rose.

• When salaries go up, then the line item for personnel gets squeezed.

• Our critics imply that the number of employees has been cut to disturbingly low levels and the parks are in dire straits.

• Some parks may have fewer summer seasonal employees-but more scientists, law enforcement personnel and firefighters.

• Employment is higher than when we took office.

Set the record straight: the big picture is a bright one. Never before have our parks received so much care.

Our employees are enthusiastic about welcoming visitors and making sure we provide the services they expect. They are creative and innovative in finding solutions that will let them provide high-quality services and care for our resources. We will keep working hard to make improvements (page 9).

Conclusion:

There have been significant improvements in maintaining and repairing our parks, preserving natural resources and protecting visitor safety:

• Funding is at its highest point ever

• We are spending more and spending it more wisely. We are accomplishing more.

We look forward to welcoming America's families to our national parks this summer.