Pro & Con: Funding parks

YES

Helen Preston Tapp, Georgia state director, Trust for Public Land

Wallace Stegner was right: National Parks are “America’s Best Idea.” Through them we are restored, invigorated, inspired, connected. Thanks to more than a century of hard-fought protection and stewardship of America’s iconic natural, cultural and historical places, it is easy to take these public spaces for granted. In fact, there is nothing inevitable about our national parks. Without ongoing commitment to the notion of commonly held and publicly accessible landscapes, our legacy can erode as surely as the land carried away by the Colorado River.

National parks are a work in progress, and we are not done. As our population grows, especially in our urban areas, the need for more parkland is ever more urgent.

This requires investments in land, facilities, staff and maintenance that are commensurate with public demand and parks’ societal worth. With visitation increasing and NPS budgets falling short of basic needs, we are at risk of loving our parks to death.

NO

Rep. Paul Broun, Republican from Athens and member of the House Natural Resources Committee

The federal government already owns over 650 million acres of land, which amounts to 30 percent of the total land area of the United States. That is an enormous amount of land that is off limits to citizens and companies for ownership. While I would prefer to see more of this land released for private ownership, I do believe that properly managed public lands can simultaneously contribute to wildlife conservation, outdoor recreation, energy independence and the advancement of science and technology.

The problem is that we are not properly taking care of the federal land that the government already owns. Funding backlogs are part of the problem — exemplified by the $9 billion backlog that our current national parks system faces. Even America’s federal land crown jewels — Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks — are struggling.

Until we can maintain the lands we already own, the national parks system and federal land ownership certainly should not be expanded.