A behind-the-scenes struggle involving the National Park Service is reaching a climax.

Its outcome could affect the future of Acadia National Park, valued as Maine’s greatest natural treasure.

The trouble began when politically appointed leaders of the Park Service began to rewrite the agency’s book-length manual of management policies. A first draft by Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Paul Hoffman triggered such an uproar that it was immediately withdrawn. A new draft, now published on the Internet for public comment, still calls for drastic changes in the historic mission of the national park system.

Throughout the 275-page draft runs a new philosophy that plays down the protection and preservation of the environment and emphasizes public “enjoyment.” This shift in emphasis could, for example, ease current restrictions on motorized traffic, snowmobiling, dirt bikes and jet skiing. Snowmobiles are permitted in limited areas in Acadia and seem to be not much of an issue, but they are at the center of continuing disputes in Yellowstone. State law bans jet skis on some Acadia park lakes.

Criticisms by former Park Service directors and an overwhelming number of management retirees have focused on the omission of a key sentence that was prominent in the 2001 manual: “When there is a conflict between conserving resources and values and providing for enjoyment of them, conservation is to be predominant.” This language flows directly from the 1916 National Park Service Organic Act.

Oddly enough, the Park Service’s official Web site, in a current “Summary of Key Improvements” in the new draft, says that when there is a conflict, “conservation will be predominant.” Bill Wade, chairman of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees notes that the statement was described as one of a “set of principles [that] was first formulated to guide the process” but has not made its way back into the current review draft. Mr. Wade goes on: “So, on the one hand they say it’s a principle that guided them, but on the other, they evidently don’t think it’s important/significant enough to actually leave that statement in the policies themselves.”

Park Service Director Fran Mainella, reacting to the furor over the new draft, seems to be backtracking in an effort to restore crumbling morale among the Park Service professionals and retirees. In a recent interview with the Associated Press, she described the Organic Act as “sort of like the Constitution for us.” She said: “It’s served us for 90 years. We are not looking for any changes to it. … When there’s a conflict, conservation has to be predominant.”

Her best course would be to drop the whole rewrite project, which was never necessary in the first place.