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 create opportunities for young people to visit national parks. “This grant will allow us to supercharge our efforts to ensure our national parks are for everyone, for generations to come,” he said. The foundation, by the way, is in the midst of its “Campaign for National Parks,” a $1 billion fundraising effort to support parks.
The gift comes on the heels of the Great American Outdoors Act, which established the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund to provide the National Park Service with up to $1.3 billion per year for five years to make significant enhancements in national parks. Among other things, that money funded the restoration of the historic rock wall cemetery at George Washington Carver National Monument, helped restore the Green Tree Tavern and the Jean Baptiste Vallé House at Ste.
Genevieve National Historical Park south of St. Louis, and has been used for road repairs throughout many of parks in in the region, including Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, Pea Ridge National Military Park, Fort Scott National Historic Site, Ozark National Scenic Riverways, Buffalo National River, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, and others. Passed overwhelmingly in 2020 by a Democratic House and Republican Senate and signed by former President Donald Trump, it proved there are some things that even our divided nation agrees on.
However, that five-year funding will soon come to an end unless it is renewed. We urge Congress to renew it, to make the funding permanent..
