A watchdog is accusing federal environmental stewards of granting preferential treatment to a corporate fundraiser.
Japanese carmaker Subaru was given special permission last year to shutdown parts of Shenandoah National Park, the group says, to shoot an advertisement using unmanned aerial vehicles—activities that are prohibited by the US National Park Service (NPS).
Records obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) show that an exemption was granted to Subaru after the company became a sponsor of the upcoming NPS Centennial celebrations. The festivities are set to be held in August.
An NPS official claimed that the footage could also be useful in promoting park service campaigns.
“The permitting of commercial filming with a drone could be potentially controversial by seeming to set a precedent in the park,” wrote Shenandoah’s superintendent in a memo approving the activities last October.
The directive went on to say, however, that Subaru’s “centennial partnership relationship and focus on the Find Your Park campaign warrant special consideration.”
PEER’s executive director Jeff Ruch disagreed in a statement released on Monday. He pointed to a recent proposal by the NPS–to soften rules on corporate sponsorships–to warn of creeping commercialization of National Parks.
“If the Park Service is granting these sorts of corporate favors even before relaxing its fundraising restrictions, Katy bar the door because the line between national parks and the soundstages of Universal Studios will become increasingly hard to find,” Ruch said.
Under the NPS’s proposal released in May, some park superintendents would be asked to raise millions of dollars in corporate gifts in exchange for commercial use of park names and images.
“This episode illustrates how corporate donations can affect the way parks operate and for whose benefit,” Ruch added on Monday. “This is not philanthropy; it is merchandising. These corporate tie-ins give new meaning to panhandling in the park.”
PEER reported that NPS officials approved Subaru’s drone shoot in just one day, with “paperwork being hand-carried to expedite the process so to enable filming to begin on the company’s requested schedule.”
Documents show that that with the help of park rangers, Subaru had traffic stopped at 13 different locations along Shenandoah’s Skyline Drive in order to record park vistas and, as described by PEER, “road stretches emptied except for Subaru vehicles.”
The records also show that the company provided assurances that the fly-over areas would not violate Federal Aviation Administration rules, nor cause damage to park resources.
