A strong and proud gray wolf running swiftly and silently on its smooth paws, leading its pack across the endless terrain of Yellowstone National Park, thriving after years of extinction within the park boundaries. A regal grizzly bear standing tall in the mountains of Glacier National Park, its roar heard for miles through the chilling wintry air. An unmovable soldier facing a raging storm to protect the final resting place of his unknown fallen comrade at Arlington National Cemetery. A single flag waving in the wind over the sunken USS Arizona decades after one of the most terrible attacks against the country at the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii. A magnificent bald eagle soaring over the tall mountains of Grand Teton National Park, screaming through the wind as if to say “this land is my land.” America.
These images all symbolize the United States of America, they are the embodiment if the country’s strength, resolve, and fortitude. As the centennial of the National Park Service (NPS) nears in 2016, the condition of the parks, monuments, memorials, and other areas of national significance needs to be addressed to ensure the NPS’s successful maintenance and care of sites under its control. The NPS budget has hovered right around 2.6 billion dollars for the past ten years; now locations have fallen into disrepair due to the lack of funds to maintain and repair NPS sites (Weeks). While the 2015 NPS budget is higher than last year’s, the small raise is not enough to relieve the system from the deficit it’s currently suffering. In addition to repairing the damage of NPS sites, money needs to go to studying the effects of global warming in the country and protecting the flora and fauna that call the national parks of the United States home. Some areas in the country are already at risk or in danger; these need to be addressed urgently to prevent the destruction of the unique species that flourish in the protected lands our nation provides them. A budget increase would ensure that the sites under the NPS are well cared for, protected, and prepared for the system’s hundredth birthday. The NPS has been established for ninety nine years, and with the right actions, it will be for another hundred years.
The federal government plans to spend trillions of dollars every year. Critics argue that supporting the NPS has simply grown too expensive; however, the 2015 NPS budget is only 2.6 billion dollars, not even one percent of the total federal budget (Weeks). In comparison to the NPS’ approximate three billion dollar budget, the financial figures of other government activities for 2013 are displayed. It can be seen that the National Park Service receives one of the lowest amounts of money in the federal government. Because of the approximately constant dollar amount given to the NPS even as the system has expanded, there is now over twelve billion dollars in miscellaneous maintenance and repairs that need to be done on many NPS sites (Weeks). The citizens as a whole of the United States are letting the most historical and environmental significant areas, areas that they should be proud of, fall into disrepair. Filmmaker Ken Burns said of a national park, “It is like liberty itself. Once you’ve created it, it doesn’t mean it is assured forever.” Hundreds of thousands of brave men and women have given their lives to honor the commitment and bravery of our founding fathers, to defend our liberty. One hundred years ago, the National Park Service was formed to protect lands of our nation and leave them unimpaired so that future generations could experience and enjoy the greatness our country has to offer. The citizens of the United States must band together to honor founders of the NPS; they saw the need to set aside land for their descendants, and we must do the same. To do this, the system needs a larger budget to be able to maintain and repair the current parks. The construction budget of the NPS fell from 406 million in 2003 to just 120 million dollars in 2013 (Weeks). The NPS cannot hope to keep the parks and monuments it watches over in good conditions with just 120 million dollars. As Americans, we feel a rush of pride and enthusiasm seeing our flag wave in the wind, the same rush we should be feeling for our national treasures. The parks, monuments, and memorials under the NPS’ care are the greatest our country has to offer; it’s imperative that they are kept in good condition, but that cannot be done without a budget increase from the federal government.
Instead of increasing the budget, critics argue that the NPS has grown too large and the way to fix the problem is to stop creating new NPS sites. One such critic is Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma, who says that the main reason for the system’s unsupportable growth is because members of Congress award parks as political favors (Weeks). As a senator, Coburn is a member of Congress, someone he claims responsible for the unchecked expansion of the system. If the legislators of our country stopped placing locations under the NPS as part of their negotiations, then the system would stop expanding quicker than the government could fund it. The people responsible for the size of the system being as large as it is are the same people planning the federal budget. They continue to add new sites to the system but barely, if at all, allocate more money to supporting it. Instead of ceasing the designation of new parks and monuments all together, the unnecessary additions by congressmen need to stop so that true areas of importance can be added and still be supported. These unnecessary additions aren’t only the fault of our legislatures; the president is also to blame. The Antiquities Act allows the president to “designate unique places, structures, or resources as national monuments without congressional authorization” (Weeks). Over the years of the Antiquities Act’s existence, presidents have named dozens of national monuments without the approval of Congress, causing the size of the NPS to grow without anyone being able to say that the land designated by the president didn’t deserve to be a national monument. The answer is not to stop creating national parks and monuments; the answer is to stop creating them frivolously.
Coburn states another possible solution to fix this problem without giving the NPS any more money is to stop funding certain NPS sites, or to just eliminate their NPS designation all together. He claims that diverting funding from unpopular parks to more popular ones will ensure that the parks that draw in the most visitors get the most money and are in the best condition. One such site he suggests demoting is the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial in the San Francisco Bay. This monument was created in 2012 to honor a World War II accident that claimed the lives of 320 soldiers. In 2012, the monument only had 533 visitors, less than two a day (Weeks). Coburn says that cutting the funding of places like this would allow more money to go to “treasures” like the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone. Removing places like the Port Chicago Memorial’s NPS designation would be incredibly disrespectful to the soldiers who lost their lives during one of the world’s most gruesome wars. Additionally, one cannot define a “treasure.” To some, the Port Chicago Memorial, and other places that receive few visitors, are treasures. Another reason that dropping sites from the NPS is not the right solution is that many places that receive little visitors are of historical significance to minority groups, like the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail (Weeks). The trail commemorates the struggle of the Cherokee people to survive after being forcibly removed from their native home in the southwestern United States and sent to live in what is now Oklahoma. Over the course of two years, from 1838 to 1839, over 15,000 Cherokees were forced to travel across nine states, causing unbearable suffering for their people (“Trail of Tears”). One park advocate, Joan Anzelmo, formerly a park superintendent, said “US history started way before European settlers began to move onto this continent, and we need to tell the whole story,” and she could not be more correct (Weeks). Humans were living in what would become the United States for centuries before 1776; Native Americans like the Cherokee were the first citizens of this great country, and their story deserves to be told just as much as any others’. In addition, there’s more to the United States than beautiful and magnificent sites like Yellowstone or Mount Rushmore; the country has had its dark moments in history that cannot be ignored. As Anzelmo said, the whole story must be told. The United States has existed for over two hundred years, and it has had a great history. Sites of national significance cannot lose their NPS designation and be ignored because they do not draw enough visitors to turn a profit. Instead of only protecting the country’s areas that make money, increase the NPS budget to protect everywhere that is truly significant.
A number of possible solutions to the budget issue exist, all with varying degrees of practicality. The first is simple, allocate more funds to the NPS every year. The National Park Service accounts for about one fifteenth of the federal budget; surely more money can be diverted from other sources to support this cause (Weeks). The main issue with this strategy is that disagreement among the legislative bodies is all too common when it comes to the federal budget. The country spends trillions of dollars every year to defend and protect our lands from overseas threats; a percentage of that could be made available to defend and protect our nation’s homeland from ourselves. A second possible solution is creating an entity that decides whether or not a site earns an NPS designation. Currently, either the president or Congress is capable of creating NPS locations. As stated earlier, the Antiquities Act and legislatures designating parks as political favors have helped to increase the size of the NPS at an alarming rate. A separate decision making body affiliated not with Congress, but with the NPS itself, could make the final decision on the addition of parks. For example, if the president wishes to use the Antiquities Act to bypass Congress, he would still have to appeal to the NPS designation board for the final call. This body would not decide whether or not a new park could be supported or funded, that would still be Congress’ task; they would only decide if the area truly deserved the honor of an NPS site. This solution seems slightly more likely than permanently raising the NPS budget, but it still does not guarantee that the corruption of awarding parks as favors would stop. In addition, it would eliminate the executive power that the Antiquities Act gives the president. One last solution, arguably the most likely of success, is to temporarily raise the NPS budget for the sake of purchasing inholdings, privately owned lands within park boundaries. If a private operation exists within park boundaries, the park itself must pay to provide services normally provided by a city or government (Weeks). The NPS spends thousands every year to support lands that are not under the control of the service. This forces the NPS to pay a certain amount every year, leading to a linear increase of the total money spent on inholdings as years go by. If the budget was increased for a small number of years, the NPS could afford to buy more inholding properties. While being more expensive in the short run, this strategy would actually save the NPS money in the long run. After the service has bought enough inholdings that they are no longer a burden, the budget can be reduced to its original amount and used for repair and maintenance of parks memorials. There are several possible solutions to this issue, some of which are not discussed, and it is imperative that one is chosen in the near future to solve this problem.
Protecting the country’s greatest areas does not stop at increasing funding. A new threat to country, specifically national parks, has emerged in the last decade and is already devastating our nation’s most beautiful and unique locations. One of the nation’s largest and most populated national parks, Yellowstone, one of Coburn’s “treasures,” is feeling the impacts of global climate change, and we as a nation must work to counteract these detrimental effects. Yellowstone National Park is one of the most studied areas in the country when it comes to climate change, and scientists have found some very concerning facts. First, the daily average temperature of the whole park is warmer than it was in the past, and nighttime temperatures are increasing much more rapidly than daytime temperatures. Second, the park’s growing season is thirty days longer than it was for the past half century. Third, there are now eighty more days above freezing temperature than in the past. That rough number may not sound like a lot, but it’s over twenty percent of the whole year. Lastly, there are about thirty fewer days with snow on the ground than there was fifty years ago; that’s an entire month (Herbert). One of the nation’s most well-known and oldest national parks is already feeling the impact of a climate that is different than it was for most of the park’s history. It’s not enough to merely study Yellowstone’s climate anymore; action must be taken to prevent or reverse the effects of global climate change harming the land. If these changes are allowed to continue, the park will experience the consequences, consequences that will drastically effect the ecosystem that is Yellowstone, as well as all of the park visitors. Without a stable climate, the plant and animal populations will be thrown out of balance; this cannot be allowed to happen. One of the biggest draws to Yellowstone is the enormous amount and variety of wildlife that call the park home. In order to ensure that future generations can experience the incredible plants and animals in Yellowstone, the ecosystem must be preserved. Another severe consequence will be the augmentation of the fire season and intensity of the fires (Herbert). Again, Yellowstone’s ecosystem must be preserved. Global climate change is already imposing drastically different conditions on the flora and fauna in the park; it cannot be allowed to continue.
One of the parks most affected by climate change is Denali, where glaciers have moved over the Alaskan terrain for millennia. Every spring and fall, the park’s research teams venture out onto the massive glaciers of Traleika and Kahiltna to re-measure glacial flow and the net gain or loss of snow and ice held within the glaciers. This measurement began in 1991, and twenty years after that, 2011, both glaciers hold less water than they did during the initial measurement. Additionally, both glaciers’ water amount has been dropping drastically since about 2008, the steepest loss of water since 1991 (Burrows). Global climate change can be seen affecting our glaciers in just the past twenty years; a solution to this problem must be decided upon to protect what remains of Denali National Park. While large glaciers like the two previously mentioned are retreating due to climate change, the effects can be seen even better in smaller to medium sized glaciers. Using various mapping techniques and technological instruments, scientists have tracked the retreat of one such glacier, the Middle Fork Toklat Glacier, since 1954. It has been determined that the glacier has been retreating at a rate of approximately eighty two feet every year (Burrows). It’s clear that the glaciers of Denali are feeling the forces of global climate change, just as Yellowstone and every other national park is. Alaska’s glaciers have been around for thousands of years, since the last Ice Age. All but a handful of Denali’s glaciers are experiencing a significant loss of mass due to climate change. These relics from the Earth’s past cannot be allowed to perish.
After looking at two examples of global climate change affecting entire national parks, it’s important to note that climate change is affecting individual species just as much as it is whole ecosystems. One of the nation’s unique animals that live nowhere else in the world is the desert bighorn sheep. Known for the males’ dramatic show of strength of head battering during the mating season, these animals live in the steep mountains of California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. For the past five years, the NPS has been monitoring bighorn sheep herds’ responses to changes in climate such as increasing temperatures and decreasing precipitation, and it has been found that the herds are adversely effected by these two conditions in particular (“The Adverse Effects”). Desert bighorn sheep are animals exclusive and unique to the United States; they do not live anywhere else in the world. Climate change is already hindering the prosperity of one of America’s most spectacular creatures, one that could be hindered enough to become endangerered or extinct. The NPS is currently practicing a management strategy that allows different herds to interbreed, but it does not provide a solution to portecting the sheep from climate change (“The Adverse Effects”). A plan must be devised to address global climate change and how to protect our plants and animals from it. The desert bighorn sheep are just one example; there are dozens of other species unique to the United States that the country needs to protect from climate change to ensure the species’ survival. Too many amazing creatures have already vanished from the world; we cannot allow any more to disappear as well.
Solving the issue of global climate change will prove much more complex than the NPS’ budget issue. After all, it is a global issue. The simplest solution is to limit the amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted in the parks. Several national parks have driving loops covering miles, and most have roads through them. While the roads are a necessity for a visitor’s experience, some of the shorter loops could be converted to hiking trails that prohibit automobiles. Additionally, some national parks offer activities that actually require the emmision of greenhouse gases. For example, Yellowstone National Park offers snowmobiling in the winter. Activities like these could be removed in order to further limit the amount of gases expelled into the air above the parks. While this is a possible solution, it poses an important question. How much conservation is too much conservation? The NPS is not solely about protecting land; it’s about allowing people to enjoy the land as well. Snowmobiling over Yellowstone is a beloved acitivity by thousands, one that lets visitors see the park in a whole new way. Cutting this program could hinder the visitor experience to the point that it causes irritation and annoyance. The National Park Service is all about allowing its visitors to experience our nation’s amazing places. If too much emphasis is placed on conservation, would visitors still be able to fully experience what the national parks have to offer? As of now, global climate change has no definitve solution. If the NPS were to abide by its mission of protecting lands, it might have to ignore its mission of allowing visitors to enjoy them. This sensitive topic needs to be figured out before it’s too late to save our nation’s unique and wondrous lands.
In order to further promote the success and mission of the NPS, two things must be accomplished. First, the budget must be increased to allow parks to repair and maintain current parks as well as to ensure that the current NPS sites remain NPS sites. Second, national parks must be guarded against global climate change so that they will continue to support ecosystems and attract visitors. The National Park Service has been around for almost a century. Our ancestors had the foresight to set land aside for the future of America, and we cannot let their dream die due to our negligence to what the sites need. If we as a nation take the right steps, the National Park Service will not only survive, but thrive, for years to come.
Works Cited
Burrows, Rob. Glacier Monitoring (2012): 1-2. Glacier Monitoring. National Park Service, 2012. Web. 26 Mar 2015.
Herbert, Neal. “Yellowstone National Park.” National Park Service. 24 March 2015. Web. 26 Mar 2015.
“The Adverse Effects of Climate Change on Desert Bighorn Sheep.” National Park Service. 28 Mar 2015. Web. 28 Mar 2015.
“Trail Of Tears National Historic Trail (U.S. National Park Service).” National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the Interior, 12 Mar. 2015. Web. 24 Mar 2015.
Weeks, Jennifer. “Naitonal Parks.” CQ Researcher (2014): 49-72. Web. 18 Mar 2015.