SCENIC - Surrounded by wild, weathered beauty far from the postcard vistas most tourists know, Paige Baker speaks of developing the south unit of the Badlands National Park in terms that are realistic and austere.

"I want people to come and enjoy all this," Baker says, stepping carefully along a narrow hogback in an especially secluded section of Sheep Mountain, one of the most prominent geographic features of the south unit. "I just don't want too many of them to come."

Not all at once, at least, and not in ways that disrespect or damage a fragile landscape with great aesthetic and ecological value, as well as enduring spiritual significance to the Oglala Sioux Tribe and its members.

That is the challenge facing Baker, a Hidatsa-Mandan from the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota who now serves as superintendent of Badlands National Park. A former educator who came late to park management, the 58-year-old Baker is in his second stint as national-park superintendent, having previously worked at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument in Arizona.

This new management chore promises to be an especially delicate one.

The park staff is in the early stages of developing a management plan for the Badlands south unit, a slightly larger, lesser-known counterpart to the north unit that most visitors know through their car windows. Constituting two units of its own - Palmer Creek and Stronghold - the south unit covers more than 130,000 acres of a total of almost 244,000 acres in the park.

The south unit was part of the 341,726 acres taken by the U.S. Air Force for use as a bombing range during World War II. That taking sticks in the memory of the Oglala Tribe and Lakota people who lost land and homes to the bombing range.

After the war, the South Dakota National Guard used portions of the bombing range for artillery practice.

Most of the bombing-range land - scattered still with spent ammunition casing and unfired rounds, too - was declared surplus property by the Air Force in 1968. Some eventually was returned to its original owners. But 133,000 acres of the range were added to what was then the Badlands National Monument. In 1978, the north and south units together were upgraded to Badlands National Park.

The park's heavily visited north unit is what most tourists remember, and most South Dakotans know it well. It contains the park's most dramatic geography, as well as the 64,000-acre Sage Creek Wilderness Area, hiking trails, scenic overlooks, the park's visitor center and headquarters complex.

The south unit is a different world of similarly profound geographic and geologic features that is managed in cooperation with the Oglala Sioux Tribe. Rangers for the National Park Service and the Oglala Parks and Recreation Authority patrol the area regularly.

A number of area residents who know and understand the south unit say it should be more accessible to the public.

Dan O'Brien, a writer and buffalo rancher who leases federal grassland allotments abutting the south unit, said he is hopeful that the new management plan will allow more people to appreciate and explore the isolated landscape while still protecting the qualities that make it so valuable.

"The south unit is not as spectacular as the north unit. But it's still very special. There's no real good way to access the south unit," O'Brien said. "I think it would be a wonderful place to have a light-use management philosophy, certainly with no vehicles - a place where the quiet dominates."

O'Brien also wonders whether, over the long term, the Oglala Tribe might be the best steward of the property.

"I don't think it's really being utilized as a park. It's really out on a limb," O'Brien said. "And I think if the tribe or some entity of the tribe were to get hold of that land and manage for conservation and interpretive values, I think it would be the best thing that happened on that piece of ground."

A complete return of the south unit to Native American ownership is a complicated, controversial issue likely to be among the many discussed during the process to develop a management plan. So are other suggestions that arose during an initial public scoping process several years ago that led to a new management plan for the north unit.

Initially to be part of that overall management plan, the south unit was split off for a separate review. In the coming months, the National Park Service will present a draft management plan for the south unit, then open it up to public discussion and suggestions leading up to a finalized plan.

That's how the future of the south unit will be shaped, Baker said.

"I want the people's perspectives," he said.

O'Brien would like to see more wildlife management in the south unit, including elk and bighorn sheep.

"I'd love to see elk out there," he said. "And I'd love to see sheep on Sheep Mountain."

Baker said they end up there now, periodically, migrating out from the Rocky Mountain bighorn herd that has been reestablished in the north unit to replace the extinct Audubon bighorns that once lived in the park. The north unit also has a buffalo herd and a reintroduced population of endangered black-footed ferrets, along with more common wildlife species.

In previous scoping meetings, public suggestions included releasing ferrets, bison, bighorn sheep, swift fox and elk in the park. Even wolves were suggested, although the controversial nature of those large predators makes them unlikely candidates for reintroduction.

Baker studiously avoids discussing specific options at this point. He prefers to let them be defined in coming months in a draft management plan that will then become the focus of debate and discussion on the future of the south unit.

"There's all kinds of possibilities out here," he said. "That's the vision I want to hold: What's possible for the next 20 years and beyond? Who's going to be our audience? How do we make this park relevant to a larger community and manage the complexities to come?"

The south unit is seen by some park advocates as a political football that has been passed to Baker. He's not the first in the family to face management challenges in the National Park Service. His brother, Gerard, is superintendent at Mount Rushmore National Memorial - which Paige Baker jokingly refers to as the "west unit of the badlands."

Mount Rushmore seems a high-country world away from the harsh landscape of the badlands. That's especially true of the isolated south unit and the Stronghold District in particular, where some of the last Ghost Dancers worshiped in 1890 before the Wounded Knee massacre.

Today, the place holds strong spiritual significance to the Oglala Lakota and other Native Americans. Native people still come to worship, and their prayer clothes can be seen here and there in juniper and cedar trees.

Access to the most remote areas of the south unit is limited to foot travel or a few rutted, two-track trails that are impassable after rain. Baker has overseen an improvement of the one gravel road up onto Sheep Mountain. The work included the addition of protective boulders at the Sheep Mountain overlook, where the gravel ends.

Any additional improvements will be done carefully, Baker said.

"We don't want this place paved over," he said.

But they don't want it lost and forgotten, either. Finding a productive balance between the two is the future Baker hopes for the south unit.

"It's a special place, a spiritual place," he said. "You can feel a spiritual presence here. We want people to be able to experience that, with sensitivity and respect."

Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com