Our National Parks: The Next 100 Years

By John McKinney

I’ve been hiking about, and writing about, our national parks for 25 years and been fortunate enough to explore parks all across the nation from the Everglades to Acadia to Olympic to Yosemite. I can affirm that our national parks as a whole need many and major infrastructure repairs and upgrades. National parks need roadwork, bridgework, ecological restoration and improved visitor facilities. The backlog of deferred maintenance is both obvious and appalling and speaks of decades of under-funding.

Widespread bipartisan support for the parks. But if we taxpayers only write out a check for park improvements and do not demand more from the park service, the agency and citizens alike are squandering an opportunity.

The National Park Service must lead the way to a renewed interest among Americans toward the natural world in general and our parks in particular. We are fast moving toward a society that is out of touch with the natural world. Nature Deficit Disorder is fast becoming the norm among young people, who will be the future park-goers, park stewards, park funders and park conservationists.

Visits are down at almost all national parks, even at Yosemite and other high-use parks. Recent surveys suggest four reasons why a declining number of Americans are biking, hiking, paddling, camping and enjoying the great outdoors:
1) They don’t know where to go
2) They don’t know how to go (outdoor skills)
3) They don’t have anyone to go with
4) They’re too darn stressed out and distracted by other things

The National Park Service must reverse this visitation decline by taking the lead in showing Americans where to go outdoors; by partnering with nonprofits and the private sector to teach outdoor skills; by partnering with various groups to offer more guided tours and activities so people have someone to get outdoors with. As for our citizens being too stressed-out by modern life—well, if the park system doesn’t have a way to change the hustle and bustle or urban life, it can at least offer Americans a respite from it.

Thirty years ago, I made a film about American attitudes toward national parks and had the opportunity to interview at length park service founder and director, Horace Albright. Fascinated, I listened for hours to his stories about how the National Park Service was founded and the behind-the-scenes struggles necessary to establish each of the various parks. Each park had a champion--a private citizen or citizens group, or someone in government—pushing for it. “The parks had champions and will always need champions,” Horace Albright declared.

Our task is different. Yes, there are currently preservation campaigns and the possibilities of creating some exciting new parks. But mostly our mission now is less about setting aside new parkland and more about the stewardship and wise enjoyment of the 390 park units we already have. The contemporary mission is as important now as creating a broad network of parks was back then. We still need
Park champions, strong ones, are as crucial now as they were in the 1920s and 30s.

One of my prized possessions is a historical photo given to me by Horace Albright that shows he and the National Park Service’s founder Stephen Mather standing in front of their staff car. It had a custom license plate: NPS 1.

NPS #1. Exactly. The NPS is the lead conservation agency in America, and therefore the lead conservation agency in the world. If the National Park Service is not the national voice for nature, who is? If the National Park Service is not taking the lead in addressing our nationwide nature deficit disorder, who is? If the National Park Service is not developing compelling programs to get our nation’s youth into the great outdoors, who is? And why not start now?

Fortunately, the National Park Service does not need to start from scratch. The agency does not have to re-do its mission statement or tinker with its core values. Park leaders need to pick up their swords and show some leadership, the kind of innovation and leadership shown by early founders of our national park system when they preserved parkland and sold a doubtful nation on the very idea of national parks.

Inadequate funding has been a challenge for the National Park Service for nearly a hundred years. It may be a challenge for the next hundred years, too. However, the National Park Service must not use its centennial solely as a front for fund-raising or the agency will be viewed as just another plodding bureaucracy whining about having too much to do with too little money. As we’ve seen, a little money coupled with a lot of vision has resulted in a system of national parks unsurpassed in the world.

While The National Park Service fixes park plumbing, it needs to re-articulate its park philosophy or risk becoming irrelevant to the everyday lives of Americans. Our national parks could become like a college campus with declining enrollment that builds new classrooms but fails to attract more students by improving classes and reaching prospective students.

In this time of widespread public distrust toward government, the National Park Service remains one of the few widely admired and supported agencies and the parks are still regarded as one of the great expressions of our American ideals. The Park Service has the street cred—or nature cred—to help re-connect us as a people to nature. And that would be a good thing for our planet, or parks, and ourselves.