Bi-lingual visitor’s centers, iPod-ready games and even commercial development may be coming to a national park near you – and soon.
In an attempt to stem declining visitations, the National Park Service is devising ways to make America’s parks more attractive. And it’s focusing particularly on youth, seniors and minorities, groups that have turned away from the parks in recent years.
Parks across the country have started pilot programs and initiatives that range from technological, such as adding MP3 player-ready park tours to their web sites, to no-brainer simple, like installing more tables in picnic areas for larger Latino families.
And in May, Interior Secretary Dick Kempthorne announced that expansions of some of those programs – as well as more changes – are likely on the way.
“This is a time for a thoughtful review of what needs to be done over the next decade,” Kempthorne said last year. “This is a time for great creativity and imagination.”
Kempthorne has laid out several goals for the NPS to accomplish before its 2016 centennial celebration, including boosting visits at lesser-know parks by 25 percent, hiring more diverse park rangers and signing up several million children for its “Junior Ranger” program.
To accomplish those goals, the park service will likely look to expand programs that have already proven successful at select parks, such as California’s “Sequoia for Youth.”
A program aimed at bringing inner-city youth into the great outdoors, “Sequoia for Youth” works with inner-city schools in the Los Angeles area to coordinate day and overnight trips in Sequoia National Park.
“At first no one wanted to go,” Ellen Sachtjen, a seventh-grade teacher in L.A., told the Los Angeles Times. “Now, it’s encultured in the school. They go on a night hike, where they experience the night without the sirens and boom boxes and police presence. Those are life-changing experiences for them. I bring them back and the kids say they want to be rangers.”
Other initiatives that might be expanded include programs at several parks that have allowed visitors to download park-related games, tours and other information to their MP3 players for use when they visit.
Bi-lingual visitor’s centers, the first of which opened last year in California’s King’s Canyon National Park, and exhibites featuring the roles of minorities in the development of the parks may also end up spreading through the system.
A better marketing plan for all parks is also in the works, officials say, including efforts to make more information available through the parks’ web sites.
While most are happy the NPS is beginning to deal with a problem that has plagued it for years, others are only cautiously optimistic.
Bill Tweed, former chief resource ranger at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, told the L.A. Times he hopes the park service doesn’t end up going too far. Congress members and other officials have, in the past, gone so far as to suggest more commercial development in the parks and the possibility of opening more areas to recreational vehicles.
“When you put technical contrivances in, it replaces nature, and what sets the parks apart is their authenticity,” Tweed said. “The next generation will challenge the national parks. They might ask, ‘Why do we need parks when we can simulate them?” In a rush to make parks relevant, we will end up destroying what makes them unique.”