Celebrate National Park Week

Celebrate National Park Week, this week, 22 April - 30 April, 2023. As has been said, our national parks are one of our "best ideas", one of our greatest assets, expansive public lands protected ".... for the benefit and enjoyment of all ....".  These public lands are managed by the National Park Service (NPS), and include 424 different areas/sites and over 85 million acres. The areas managed by the NPS include "true" national parks, as well as national monuments, historic sites, lakeshores and seashores, and more.  There are currently 63 national parks, the largest of which is Wrangell - St. Elias National Park in Alaska at 13.2 million acres (53,418 sq. km).  These 63 parks cover a total area of 52.2 million acres (211,000 sq. km).  And as many people know, these parks are popular; there were 88,662,181 visits to our national parks in 2022 (total visits to all NPS sites in 2022 was 311,985,998!).  These parks also contribute significantly to the economy of the United States.  It has been estimated that the total economic value of the NPS to the public is $92 billion per year, including value attributed to visitors, and "non-use" or "existence" value (indirect value) according to a paper by Haefele et al. (2016) in the HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series.  Our parks are valuable, as well as beautiful.  I have been fortunate enough to visit 40 or our 63 national parks, along with 3 of 3 national lakeshores, 7 of 10 national seashores, and many national monuments and other NPS sites.  These are special places, biodiverse, and most often with spectacular landscapes and awe-inspiring vistas.  Please celebrate these public lands, visit them, and work to protect and hopefully expand these amazing places.  Our national parks are just amazing.

A sample of our National Parks, all images taken by me during different visits to these incredible places.

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