Turret Arch and North Window are two of the massive stone arches at the Windows Section in Arches National Park. Photo Credit: NPS/Jacob W. Frank.
The National Parks Service celebrates its centennial this year!
Watch for Don Corrigan’s story this month on the National Park Service (NPS) and their 100th Anniversary, and why more and more people are planning summer trips to the parks to celebrate and to take advantage of some deals, both locally and nationally.
The NPS has many opportunities to learn and experience the country’s National Parks during this centennial year. One way to learn is to see what issues the NPS is currently focused on, like the nine parks the NPS says are in peril.
Information released by the NPS shows what specific elements could put nine National Parks in peril. For instance, the Mojave National Preserve is at odds with a new proposed industrial-scale solar installation, and the Colonial National Historical Park is at odds over a super-sized electric transmission line that threatens the historic landscape.
The list of parks named to be in peril includes: (click on each park name to learn more.)
- Arches National Park
- Biscayne National Park
- Colonial National Historical Park
- Glacier National Park
- Grand Canyon National Park
- Grand Teton National Park
- Mojave National Preserve
- Yellowstone National Park
- Yosemite National Park
Environmental Echo 
For the past 24 years, I have been a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park Oregon and Everglades National Park, Florida. Since the founding of the National Park Service, 100 years ago, our national parks have been our greatest national treasures and icons of America.
As we strive to protect these precious areas, they are also being threatened by oil and natural gas wells along their borders, pollution from cities and industry, over development from outside and inside the parks, and climate change. Many people seek these places as natural refuges to provide peace to our wearily fast paced civilized lives. Therefore, we must do all we can to protect them. Conservation of our national parks starts inside our own homes. Using less energy, becoming more energy efficient, driving less, using hybrid or electric cars, or at least buying more fuel efficient cars. It also means regularly engaging our members of Congress so that they know that issues like conservation, protecting the environment, and climate change are important to us and holding them accountable on election day. Yes, voting is vital for protecting nature, our environment and and national parks.
It is also vital to join with others looking to protect our natural world, our environment and reduce the threat of climate change. Do get involved with groups like National Parks and Conservation Association, the Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club especially their Beyond Coal Campaign, 350.org, Climate Reality Project and Citizens Climate Lobby.
As we celebrate the Centennial of the National Park Service in 2016, let’s work together to protect our national parks, our natural world and our planet from climate change to keep them sacred for the next 100 years.
As I like to say and have learned from working 24 years in the national parks:
Each and everyone of us can change the world (and protect our national parks). We do this by
1. The way we vote.
2. The products we buy.
3. The attitudes we share with each other.
In this interconnected world that we now live, it is also important to protect our national parks for future generations by Thinking Globally and Acting Daily.
Enjoy the Centennial of the National Park Service and your national parks!
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It’s kind of sad that we are getting advisories not to go to some parks during August out West because of the smoke from the increasing number of wildfires that can be traced to drought and climate change. And yet there continue to be the climate change skeptics… like some presumptive presidential candidates who say it is all a Chinese communist plot to hobble American productivity. Really?
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