European Day of Parks: May 24th

I just learned about the European Day of Parks, sponsored by the EUROPARC Federation. It's a day for the celebration of parks and open spaces across Europe.

National Parks Week is held the last full week in April.

One reservation I have, is that while great, it focuses only on national parks.

There is National Public Lands Day, which is held on the fourth Saturday in September, focuses theoretically on all public lands, but more on federal public lands--not just NPS parks, but also lands of the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service of the US Department of Agriculture, recreation facilities associated with dams and other waterworks managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

(Interestingly, the parks department in Salt Lake City is titled the Department of Parks and Public Lands.)

Because lots of places still may have bad weather the last full week of April, to me it makes sense to move the event to May or June and to expand it to Parks Month and to carve out opportunities to include all parks and open spaces as part of the recognition, not just installations of the National Park Service.

Oops, apparently July is Park and Recreation Month.  I would venture it is not well publicized since I didn't know about it.  One week should be focused on state parks.  Another week on county and city parks.

It would also be a good time for parks departments and friends organizations to hold an annual conference and training on parks issues, like the annual Parks and Greenspace Conference that Park Pride, the parks friends organization in Atlanta, does every year.

Even though I revile the methodology, that would be a good month to release the TPL Park Score ("Washington DC has lots of parks and open space, but it's not the #1 City park system in the US").

In any case, it's a good example of needing to promote a national annual calendar of events in the "parks space" to bring better attention to parks and open spaces, e.g.

Event	Date
Free National Park entrance	January, MLK Jr. Holiday
Earth Month	April
Earth Day	April 22nd
National Parks Week	last full week of April
Free National Park entrance	first day of National Parks Week
National Bike Month	May
National Historic Preservation Month	May
National Trails Day	first Saturday in June
free fishing without a license events*	summer
Park and Recreation Month	July
Free National Park entrance	NPS anniversay, August 25th
National Public Lands Day	last Saturday in September
Free National Park entrance	National Public Lands Day
Free National Park entrance	November, Veterans Day
Etc.

This year, Utah had a free fishing day, where people could fish without a license, but still had to follow other rules ("Free Fishing Day: 15 places in Utah to go fishing," Salt Lake Deseret News).