Conservationist and author Wallace Stegner described our national parks as “the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” Funding national parks, however, has not always brought out the best in us.
It often reflect us at our worst. As beautiful as our parks are — think Yosemite Valley, moonrise over Devil’s Tower, or Blue Spring on the Current River — the ugly truth is that our parks have suffered for years, underfunded and understaffed at a time when visitation is rising, when increasingly urbanized Americans are losing access to green space and when we need them more than ever as an antidote to our wired, artificial world. The result has been closed campgrounds, reduced services, elimination of some popular programs and maintenance that gets short shrift.
On Monday, our underfunded parks got some overwhelming news. The National Park Foundation — created by Congress in the 1960s to support the parks — will receive a $100 million donation from Indianapolis-based foundation Lilly Endowment Inc. It is the largest grant in history benefiting U.
S. national parks, and it will be used to address the needs of the country’s more than 400 national park sites, Will Shafroth, president and CEO of the National Park Foundation, told The Associated Press. The foundation hopes to announce the first round of grants stemming from the donation later this year.
One of the goals for the money is to creat.