Teddy Roosevelt was a very active president who established many public lands, including national parks, national forests, and national monuments. He was known as “The Conservation President”. He said the following:
“All life in the wilderness is so pleasant that the temptation is to consider each particular variety, while one is enjoying it, as better than any other. A canoe trip through the great forests, a trip with a pack-train among the mountains, a trip on snow-shoes through the silent, mysterious fairy-land of the woods in winter–each has its peculiar charm.”
“it is also vandalism wantonly to destroy or to permit the destruction of what is beautiful in nature, whether it be a cliff, a forest, or a species of mammal or bird. Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy forests, and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals — not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at last it looks as if our people were awakening.”
So how awake are we, as our national parks are in jeopardy, and they need a life line to be saved from indiscriminate cuts by the current regime in the Whitehouse. Let’s go into a little bit of history as to how our national park system came into being. It started with the the Act of March 1, 1872, when Congress established Yellowstone National Park in the Territories of Montana and Wyoming “as a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people” and placed it “under exclusive control of the Secretary of the Interior.” The founding of Yellowstone National Park began a worldwide national park movement. Today more than 100 nations contain some 1,200 national parks or equivalent preserves. Congress declared in the General Authorities Act of 1970 “that the National Park System, which began with the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, has since grown to include superlative natural, historic, and recreation areas in every region…and that it is the purpose of this Act to include all such areas in the System….” nps.gov The crowning jewel of the US, its National Park System, has been tarnished and put on the chopping block. It saddens me to say, but our national parks as we know them are about to be dirtier, less safe, and less accessible due to the purge and shredding by DOGE and the Orange King. Over 1000 park service employees have been fired, and the gem of the US has been targeted in a land grab to privatize public lands for the fossil fuel and lumber industries to decimate, as greed now rules the land. Victoria Alzapiedi co-founder of New Castle Healthy Yards and chair of the New Castle Conservation Boards joins us and gives us great information about National Parks, Birds (eBird), Big Nights (Vernal Pools), planting Native trees and plants in the Spring, and much more. For more info go to NewCastle Healthy Yards and
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