Save Our Parks
By Kurt Repanshek
While the national parks are under serious threat, the good news is that it’s easier than ever to help protect them.
You needn’t brave gale-force winds and stand with ice axe and crampons firmly anchored atop 14,411-foot Mount Rainer to help the national park system negotiate its financial abyss.
But you could.
"That’s our biggest fundraiser," Amy Walgamott says of the climbs Washington’s National Park Fund hosts to raise money for the state’s three national parks—Mount Rainier, Olympic, and North Cascades.
The Roosevelt Arch is located at the North Entrance of Yellowstone. Theodore Roosevelt laid the arch's cornerstone. The placard reads "For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People."
Each year the climbs, which leverage matching funds from Microsoft Corp., generate about $100,000 for the foundation. Since 1993, when the first climb for the parks was staged, more than $1 million has been raised and funneled back into the three parks to underwrite an array of projects and programming.
"We think it’s a good way to raise money for the parks," says Walgamott, the foundation’s event manager.
The donations are badly needed. Despite the appeal and grandeur of parks such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Acadia, and Great Smoky Mountains, the park system is mired in red ink and a well-worn infrastructure. Years of tight federal budgets have saddled the park system with a maintenance backlog of roughly $8 billion, a morass built upon ailing sewer systems, dilapidated buildings, pothole-chocked roads, run-down campgrounds, and poorly maintained trails.
And, according to the National Park Conservation Association, each year the National Park Service operates at an $800 million deficit, compounding the problem.
With hopes of muffling some of the resulting impacts, the more than 160 park friends groups across the nation are resorting to innovative fundraising efforts. You can climb Mount Rainier with such notable guides as Eric Simonson, Phil Ershler, and George Dunn, buy a commemorative Blue Ridge Parkway license plate for your car in North Carolina or Virginia, purchase another North Carolina license plate that supports the reintroduction of elk to the Great Smoky Mountains, or spring for one that honors Washington state’s three parks. You can also use a credit card that funnels a portion of your purchase to the park of your choice.
You can even help the parks by dying, if you first sign up for one of the growing number of planned giving programs.
"I can tell you that just since we launched our planned giving effort we have received a number of inquiries and documentation of probably a dozen bequest intentions," says Lisa Diekmann, director of development for the Yellowstone Park Foundation. "We don’t know the value of all those bequest intentions, but we do know a few of them. One, if the estate were to be exercised tomorrow, would be worth $3 million, and another would be worth $1 million."
In North Carolina, at the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, Executive Director Houck Medford says his group’s license plate program produces between $400,000 and $500,000 each year, revenues that help close land purchases for the parkway and teach youngsters about the park system.
"The education outreach program for the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina is the largest such education outreach program in the entire National Park Service," says Medford. "Last year this program reached over 39,000 children in 29 counties."
If you’re going places—and we mean a lot of places—consider purchasing the America the Beautiful: National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Annual Pass. The pass gives you access to virtually all national recreation sites that charge entrance and day-use fees, including ones run by the National Park Service, Forest Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and the Bureau of Reclamation. The cost is $80 and 90 percent of the purchase price goes back to the agencies protecting our natural heritage. Visit the America the Beautiful: National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Annual Pass Web site for more details.
In Maine, the Friends of Acadia use a variety of programs to raise money for Acadia National Park. Along with a planned giving program similar to that offered by the Yellowstone Park Foundation, Friends of Acadia seeks contributions between $35 and $10,000 for its annual fund, takes gifts to honor someone who loved Acadia, and even accepts stock.
Just by staying at a national park lodge you can help the parks, as many lodging concessionaires offer a check-off program through which you can donate a few dollars.
"The bookstores that are in many of the national parks are run by nonprofit organizations that donate their profits back to the national parks, and so shopping in one of the cooperating association’s bookstores is a big help," adds John Piltzecker, who heads the partnership office at the National Park Service.
While the National Park Foundation typically works with corporations, national park friends groups, and foundations to generate funds for the parks, it also takes individual donations.
And if all you have is time to offer, well, that’s welcome, too.
In 2005 nearly 140,000 volunteers donated more than 5 million hours of their time to the park system, according to Piltzecker, who estimates the value of that time at $91 million.
"That’s a major contribution," he says.
Writer Kurt Repanshek lives in Park City, Utah.
Posted on July 19, 2007