What's Next for Our National Parks?

Upper Yosemite Falls, Yosemite National Park, California, USA.

On March 1, 1872, the first national park in the United States, in fact the first in the world, was created when the US Congress approved the creation of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA. Then on August 25, 1912, President Woodrow Wilson signed the act creating the National Park Service, a new unit in the US Department of the Interior. Since then, the National Park Service has grown to include the management of 417 different units, including 59 which are officially known as "national parks", all of which encompass more than 84 million acres.  And 2017 was a banner year for the nation's national parks, as yet another record was set in terms of attendance, with almost 331 million people visiting our national parks. This breaks the record just set in 2015 when a then record-breaking 307 million people visited our national parks. The most visited parks, in order of attendance, are the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain, and Zion National Parks. These are impressive numbers. But, we have problems.

Recent reports have suggested that our national parks are actually in trouble. For instance, due to years of Congressional under-funding, our parks need around $11.9 billion USD to address needed repairs and upgrades, to provide for routine maintenance, ensure adequate staff to deal with the growing number of visitors, and adequately protect the amazing natural resources found in our national parks. More people are visiting our national parks than ever before, yet it seems as though there is never enough money to protect one of our most important resources, our beautiful public lands.

Our national parks are beautiful, diverse in terms of habitats and species, and obviously of importance to the citizen of this country, and the many tourist from other countries who also are frequent visitors. National parks in some ways are uniquely American, as important to the heritage and history of the United States as democracy itself. And yet in spite of their importance, funding is rarely adequate to maintain and protect these facilities, and the future actually looks bleak.

According to the National Parks Conservation Association, the Trump Administration FY2018 budget proposes serious cuts to the Department of the Interior and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The budget proposes a 12% cut for the Department of the Interior and a 31% cut for the EPA. And while the proposal for Interior does propose to increase funding for park maintenance, it cuts construction programs, and proposes deep cuts to land acquisition and historic preservation programs, both critical to the future development of national parks. And with a gutted EPA, there might be little effort to protect habitats adjacent to, or near national parks, from pollution and other impacts of human activity. 

Last January, in the early days of the Presidental primaries, a then candidate-Trump, in an interview with Field and Stream magazine, said that he was "very much into energy", and "very much into fracking and drilling." How long might it be before we see drilling platforms in Yellowstone, Big Bend, or other national parks close to current drilling activity? And what about our National Forests, our "Land of Many Uses", what might happen to these lands, many of which have already been abused by drilling and other forms of resource extraction?

We do apparently love our national parks here in the United States, but what can, or will we do to protect them? We created the whole concept of a national park system, a system which has served as a model for many other countries. But what is next, what will we show other countries about how to properly manage, and protect, our national parks? What is next?
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