National Public Lands Day, Saturday September 24th

National Public Lands Day is always the fourth Saturday in September.  It's not just in support of "national" public lands managed by various federal agencies (National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, USDA Forest Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation), but is supposed to encourage recognition of public lands of all types.

I finally finished reading The Power of Scenery: Frederick Law Olmsted and the Origin of National Parks ("How did our national parks come to be? A new book explores their rocky start," Washington Post) which is an interesting discussion of parks issues, starting with how Frederick Law Olmsted, the primary designer of Central Park in New York City, set the stage for the creation of national parks in the US.

Olmsted was commissioned to run a mine and estate in California, and he was brought into the process that led to the creation of Yosemite National Park (although technically, Yellowstone is the first land actually designated as a national park).  He wrote an analysis calling for the park to be kept as natural as possible, although his recommendations were rejected, and the paper never really saw the light of day until more than 100 years after it was written.

I got some ideas, and there are some great references deserving of further reading.  It's a breezy read.

Free entry to federal lands.  One of the ways that the federal government celebrates NPLD is by making entry to federal lands free on that day.  Although availing yourself of that opportunity can be problematic as parks and other facilities may be overrun.

Videos/Television.  There is a documentary, part of a series by PBS affiliated WTTW of Chicago, "Ten Parks that Changed America." Plus there is the Ken Burns PBS documentary series on the National Parks.

There are some PBS programs like "This American Land" and "America Outdoors."

many of the various state public television groups run localized programs like "Maryland Outdoors," "Outdoor Idaho," and "All Across Oregon."

NBC Bay Area (San Francisco) runs a program about area parks and open spaces called "Open Road with Doug McConnell."

Leveraging the day for marketing/promotion and volunteerism.  Too many parks agencies fail to put NPLD on their calendar as a day to celebrate and leverage to promote parks issues.  

For example, Salt Lake City approved their ReImagine Nature master parks plan earlier this year, and has a parks bond issue on the ballot for November.  But no promotions of either tomorrow...

-- NPS Public Lands Day webpage

Issues.  Last year's entry lists these issues.

1.  Scenario planning and planning for the possibility that federal and/or state parks can close, either for federal politically-produced shutdowns or budget cutbacks and that localities should plan for this possibility, so they can react quickly when circumstances change ("Federal shutdown as another example of why local jurisdictions should have more robust contingency and master planning processes," 2013).

2.  Facilitating access to parks for pedestrians and bicyclists, and adding transit services as appropriate ("A gap in planning across agencies: Prioritizing park access for pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users compared to motor vehicle access," 2015).

3.  Treating the urban forest in cities as a single entity, an urban arboretum ("Arbor Day").

4.  The tension in the National Park Service between big nature parks, mostly out west, and parks and sites serving urban areas ("Defining National Park Service installations in DC as locally or nationally serving") including National Heritage Areas, National Recreation Areas, Scenic Roads and Byways, and National Scenic Rivers.  

Blog commenter Edward Drozd made a great point about adding to the parks and open space portfolio to better serve the more populated areas of the East and Midwest.

5.  Federal parks agencies for the most part won't distribute non-federal locally produced brochures and other visitor materials.  This is a problem for cities especially, and DC.  The federal sites do not provide local information, and often don't even provide information on nearby sites run by different agencies.

6.  In the DC area, the National Park Service should have an overarching visitor center, the Greater Washington NPS Visitor Center, providing information on all the parks and sites, rather than rely on all the individual sites and more parochially-focused visitor centers

7.  Overuse ("Post-pandemic overcrowding of national parks causing bigger problems than just long lines," LiveScience, "How Crowded Are America’s National Parks? See for Yourself," New York Times, "Tourists Heeding Utah's 'Mighty 5' Campaign Overpower Moab," Wall Street Journal, "Utah Wanted All the Tourists. Then It Got Them," Outside Magazine).

8.  The tension between more passive and active access.  Senator Mike Lee aims to make all federal parks provide access to off road vehicles ("Mike Lee’s bill to allow off-highway vehicles in national parks is a bad idea," Salt Lake Tribune).

9.  Underfunding of maintenance.

10.  Greater diversity in access (Barriers and Strategies to Connecting Urban Audiences to Wildlife and Nature: Results from a Multi-Method Research Project, NC State Extension).

11.  Sound management and politics.  There is always oppositional tension between Republican and Democratic control of these agencies.  The Trump Administration looked at some privatization, reduced the size of certain sites ("Biden expected to reverse Trump’s order to shrink Utah national monuments," National Geographic), and moved the Bureau of Land Management HQ to Grand Junction, Colorado from DC--the Biden Administration is moving it back ("Trump Packed a Federal Land Agency Off to Colorado. Biden Is Bringing It Home," Mother Jones).

12.  Climate change (Adaptation to Climate Change in Public Lands Management, Resources for the Future, "Why we need a climate plan for our public lands," Wilderness Society). But also in how public lands are used for resource extraction, especially fossil fuels.

13.  Grazing etc.  As always, cattle users believe their interests are inadequately represented ("Mitigating Malheur’s Misfortunes: The Public Interest in the Public’s Public Lands," Georgetown Environmental Law Review).

Urban federal parks to complement the big Western parks.  I mentioned above that Blog commenter Edward Drozd made a great point about adding to the national parks and open space portfolio to better serve the more populated areas of the East and Midwest ("Defining National Park Service installations in DC as locally or nationally serving," 2019).

The Power of Scenery mentions that in the 1970s, the National Park Service studied this issue, not so much focused on East and Midwest but a set of urban parks, like the National Recreation Areas around Boston, New York City, and San Francisco. 

-- Recreation of the Nation's Cities: Problems and Approaches, US Department of Interior, 1968

-- A Preliminary Urban Parks Study, US Department of Interior, 1977

-- National Urban Recreation Study, US Department of Interior, 1977 (Technical Reports appendix, contains or lists quality resources)

Our Common Ground book.  Our Common Ground: A History of America's Public Lands, by lawyer John Leshy, was published this year.  I haven't tracked it down yet.  

Leahy served as solicitor for the US Department of Interior and is the author of a definitive casebook on federal public lands law.