WASHINGTON, D.C. – The country is in need of “a major course correction” to conserve public lands and prevent harm from climate change, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell said Tuesday in Washington, D.C., to mark National Park Week.
A record number of visitors came to national parks in 2015, with 307 million tourists visiting sites across the country. But the $12 billion maintenance backlog for national parks also is a record, with budget cuts leaving parks and public lands “understaffed and struggling to keep up with day-to-day operations,” Jewell said.
The change in course, she said, must come with more money for national parks and associated conservation efforts, including permanently extending the Land and Water Conservation Fund and financing “green infrastructure” initiatives to better protect against the impact of climate change.
“Our nation needs to make serious investments in our national parks, wildlife refuges, forests, public lands and waters to ensure that they are prepared for the next 100 years,” Jewell said.
She said efforts to conserve public lands for the future were reaching a critical juncture, especially with generational shifts and attitudes toward preservation.
“The majority of visitors to national parks, they look like me,” Jewell said. “Older, and whiter. Which means we haven’t found a way to connect with the young people of today, who are more diverse, more tech-savvy and more disconnected from nature than ever before.”
That, along with the “emergence of an extreme movement” that seeks to sell off public lands “for a short-term gain to the highest bidder” are cause for concern, she said. Earlier this year, an armed group of protesters took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon and demanded that the federal government cede control to private ownership.
“This movement has propped up dangerous voices who reject the rule of law, put communities and hardworking public servants at risk, and failed to appreciate how deeply democratic and American our national parks and public lands are,” Jewell said.
Jewell said that national parks and public lands are significant economic drivers for local communities that rely on tourism. According to a soon-to-be-released report from the Department of the Interior that Jewell cited during her speech, national parks spurred $32 billion in economic activity for the nation in 2015, even as the federal agency’s total budget was around $3 billion.
“Even though we’re not necessarily in the business of making money, we drive money to local economies through our parks and public lands,” she said.
Jewell said that climate change, which she called “the most pressing issue of our time,” is having a significant impact on the preservation of public lands in the West. She cited longer and more damaging wildfire seasons, droughts and more prevalent superstorms as symptoms of the problem. Brian O’Donnell, executive director of the nonprofit and Durango-based Conservation Lands Foundation, called Jewell’s speech “a breath of fresh air.”
“Secretary Jewell called for a landscape-level approach to conservation and land planning, something that is essential to ecosystem health and the survival of wide-ranging wildlife,” O’Donnell said. “She also sounded the alarm at the increasing loss of open space and the unacceptable rate of extinction facing so many species of plants and animals.”
egraham@durangoherald.com. Edward Graham is a student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald.
