Today, 25 August, marks the 101st “birthday” of the National Park Service, managers of one of the grandest ideas the world has ever seen – National Parks set aside to preserve some of the country’s most precious geography and treasures of the natural world.
Of note, this isn’t the “birthday” of the first national park; Yellowstone was officially protected as a national park by the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act, signed into law by then president Ulysses S. Grant (damn, one of those pesky civil war guys again) 1 March 1872.
To celebrate, entry into all National Parks is free today 25 August, and there are a host of special activities being held in parks across the country you can find here.
Trigger Warning: A Lesson in Perspective
Impressively, we note that a host of advocacy groups yesterday and today have failed to note this annual milestone for the NPS, instead choosing to focus on the National Monument review currently underway.
After months of hearing predictions of utter catastrophe for public lands held in the National Monuments around the country, yesterday’s reporting revealed no monument’s designation would be challenged/revoked, though some might be altered in size, prompting a flood of clucking, chucking, and yet another fervent round of Zinke-bashing.
Never mind long-published reports suggesting monuments have been altered in size over a dozen times (a casual search today didn’t yield an exact count): notably Wilson reduced Mount Olympus National Monument by nearly half to allow more logging; Eisenhower reduced Great Sand Dunes by 25%; and Taft reduced the size of the Navajo National Monument – that he himself had granted three years earlier – by almost 90%.
The point – take the time to celebrate today the wonders contained in the National Parks around the country; take your kids, grandkids, the neighbor kids down the way to a Park, leave the iPads and phones at home, throw rocks in whatever water feature is handy, eat a picnic lunch under the shade of big tree, and get them a National Parks passport and their first stamp.
Those of us who love public lands will need to forever remain vigilant, but it’s past time to stop jousting at windmills and tackle the hard issues facing public lands today – i.e., funding their care (see fire-fighting costs in the West as a current example), responsible multi-use, the crushing economic burdens facing states (driven by health care costs and pension liabilities principally) prompting their greedy reach to capture and sell public lands, and so on and so forth.
Get out there and get a sunburn today.
