Preserving & Protecting National Parks & Public Lands Video. This 1987 program, Take Pride in America, narrated by Lou Gossett, Jr., seeks the American people's help in reducing litter, vandalism, etc., in and around the national parks and public lands. The management of America's extensive system of national parks, monuments, forests, and public lands is an ongoing compromise between conservation and use. The multiple purposes for which these lands were designated include preservation of ecosystems and wildlife habitat, recreation, and commercial development. When these purposes conflict, they can ignite long-running Congressional and public debates over policy. In general, national parks and monuments consider preservation to be their priority, and do not permit activities that harvest or remove resources, while public lands are devoted explicitly to commercial use such as mineral development, and national forest policy straddles the line between. The federal government owns 655 million acres of land in the U.S., 29% of the total 2.3 billion acres. It administers its public lands through four agencies: the National Park Service (NPS), which runs the National Park System; the Forest Service (FS), which manages the National Forests; the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which manages public lands; and the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which administers the National Wildlife Refuge System. National Monuments are assigned a managing agency at the time of their designation by the President. The Forest Service operates out of the Department of Agriculture, while the other three agencies are in the Department of the Interior. The National Park System includes 56 parks that together contain 84 million acres of land, spanning terrains from forest to grassland to alpine to desert. These wilderness lands provide habitat for wildlife, including endangered species, absorb pollution, and conserve ecosystems in their natural state. They are of intrinsic value to the public because of their scenic beauty and recreational opportunities, and to the scientific community because of their biological and geological features. National Parks are also important tourist attractions that stimulate local economies. Nearly 285 million visitors flock to the parks each year. Two major issues currently affecting the national parks are funding for maintenance and use of motorized vehicles. Other ongoing issues include protection of the parks from habitat degradation due to land use in surrounding regions; administration of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, through which new park lands are acquired; creation and maintenance of heritage areas on non-federal land; and funding for anti-terrorism activities. Maintenance costs for keeping the thousands of miles of roads, trails, bridges, and tunnels, thousands of buildings, and scores of water and waste systems in the National Parks in good condition have outstripped the maintenance budget for decades. The shortfall is attributed to years of under-funding, increased numbers of visitors, and the natural aging of structures. President Bush has requested funds from various sources over the next five years to eliminate the estimated $4.9 billion dollar maintenance backlog, and has requested a total of $663 million from Congress to cover all regular and deferred maintenance for the current year. He has also suggested that the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program, a temporary program that allowed the parks to charge visitor fees to defray expenses, should be extended for two more years and perhaps made permanent. Digitization Date: 1997. Digitizing Organization: Carnegie Mellon University Informedia Project. Sponsor: Bureau of Reclamation. Contributing Organization: Carnegie Mellon University, Informedia Project. Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
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Invaders of the National Parksby workinsync1,715 views
really good one
thank you
backwoodsgps 2 years ago
backwoodsgps, thank you!
rosaryfilms 2 years ago