Horowitz: National Park System Turns 100

Tuesday, May 03, 2016

Rob Horowitz, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, established to ensure the protection and smooth running of our national parks, seashores, recreation areas and historical sites.

This centennial that truly merits celebration. “National Parks are the best idea we ever had,” said Wallace Stegner, the novelist and wilderness advocate. “Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst." Nearly 300 million people visit our national parks each year, realizing the restorative powers of nature and wilderness and witnessing our nation’s stark natural beauty. Due to the hard work of the more than 20,000 employees of the Park System and a national commitment to protect our invaluable national treasures, America’s great outdoors remains accessible and by and large affordable.

President Wilson signed into law the Act that created the National Park Service in 1916. The Service was formed to “promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments and reservations…which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

In words that still ring true today, President Theodore Roosevelt, who did more than any other national leader to forge a consensus for the need to protect our then rapidly vanishing wilderness and put 230 million acres of it under federal protection as President, explained the importance of national parks.. "Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us."

The public support for wilderness protection, forged more than 100 years ago by Roosevelt’s use of the Presidential bully pulpit, has only gained strength. More than 8-in-10 registered voters view a "strong stand in support of policies to protect and strengthen national parks", if taken by their member of Congress, favorably with more than half indicated they would have a very favorable view, according to a recent online national poll conducted by Hart Associates. This solid support cuts across party lines and demographic groups.

There is also overwhelming majority support, according to the Hart survey, for the actions needed to meet our generational stewardship obligations, such as providing funding for the $12 billion backlog of repairs and upgrade that our national parks need and preserving areas adjacent to national parks when they are essential to protecting the park itself.

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul,” said John Muir, founder of The Sierra Club. That is what our National Park Service works every day to provide. That is why this anniversary is truly worth our attention.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.

Horowitz: National Park System Turns 100

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