Anyone watch the Ken Burns series on the National Parks this week? He did a great job! My list of parks I just have to visit just got a whole lot longer.
A couple of weeks ago, when I posted about Walmart, and the problem of inappropriate development on lands adjoining the parks, Cathy posted a comment asking about the sellers' responsibility for protecting the land. That brings up a really important issue concerning the parks. The park service's budget does not include money for land acquisition, even for acquiring privately-held lands within the boundaries of the park. Money for land has to be authorized through a separate Congressional authorization for each particular parcel, and it can take years, sometimes decades, to get those appropriations. There is one national park in Texas that was not actually open as a park for more than 40 years after Congress authorized it, because it took that long for Congress to dole out the money to acquire the land. A willing seller may not be able to wait that long, and ends up being forced by financial concerns to sell to another party. And, when a big corporation like Walmart is buying land for a store, they generally do the purchase through another entity so that the seller does not know who the buyer actually is.
Some parks are mostly or entirely donated lands: most of Acadia National Park and all of Virgin Islands National Park were donated by the Rockefeller family, and most of the Civil War battlefield parks were purchased by state or non-profit organizations and donated to the Federal government as parks. Many of the big parks in the West were carved out of Federal lands managed by the Forest Service, and they're still mad about that!
A while back (1960s, I think,) a separate fund called the Land and Water Conservation Fund was established which can be used to purchase park lands (and lands/water rights for other federal agencies to manage) without going through the whole Congressional appropriations process for each land. It's supposed to be funded from revenues from oil/gas/mineral development on the continental shelf, but those funds are frequently repurposed by Congress. If that fund got the revenues designated for it, that would go a long way toward preventing the really egregious cases of inappropriate development in or near the parks.
Okay, if you've read this far, you deserve pictures!
This is Calypso Cascades in the Wild Basin section of Rocky Mountain National Park. I went up there last Sunday. It's an easy and very social hike - loads of other hikers with their cameras out every step of the way, just like me.
Friendly wildlife, too.
Umm, actually, I'm not sure this one was friendly so much as demanding. My sis would NOT have been happy about how close he got.
And....last but not least:
The aspen are turning.