For more information on climate change and national parks, see NPCA’s research on climate change and the parks and wildlife most affected by it, as well as the Park Service’s Climate-Friendly Parks Program.

-Elizabeth Meyers, Information and Outreach Manager for NPCA’s Center for Park Research

Everglades and Biscayne National Parks bring millions of visitors to Florida. Keeping these parks healthy is not just ecologically sound; it also supports thousands of jobs and a strong state economy. Yet 2011 was a dismal year for Everglades restoration in the state legislature. Lawmakers dismembered laws intended to discourage urban sprawl, diluted water quality protections, and drastically cut critical funds to park restoration projects.

Was it just the economy, or were other issues to blame? Here’s what I’ve learned: It’s hard to win the Super Bowl with a team full of rookies.

In January 2011, newly elected Governor Rick Scott was sworn in, along with 43 freshman representatives and 12 new state senators. The sea of fresh faces in Tallahassee meant less institutional knowledge about the economic and ecological benefits of America’s Everglades to Florida’s economy. Just a dizzying 16 weeks after the start of the session, the legislature had already passed damaging laws and a devastating budget. 

Compounding the problem, Florida is a large state, spanning nearly 60,000 square miles. This can create a challenge for reaching lawmakers on the issues facing the Everglades’ vast ecosystem. It’s not only difficult for advocates to travel to representatives in every corner of the state, but it also means that some lawmakers are physically disconnected from the natural riches in South Florida.

NPCA’s Sun Coast team is working with Florida lawmakers during the 2012 session to establish an annual Everglades Day to underscore the state’s dependence on a healthy Everglades for a clean water supply and strong economy. This day would be a special observance of Everglades activist Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s birthday on April 7th that could help bring conservationists and citizens together to educate elected officials in Tallahassee every year. This effort would ensure the Everglades ecosystem remains a top priority for elected officials and all Floridians while honoring Douglas’s legacy of protecting the “River of Grass.”

Senator David Simmons of Orlando and Representative Steve Perman of Boca Raton have recognized this need and spearheaded legislation to designate Everglades Day to elevate awareness, restore historic funding levels of $100 million annually, and protect America’s Everglades for our children and grandchildren to enjoy.  

Live in Florida? Help us bring this important bill across the finish line to secure critical Everglades funding. Click here to write to your legislator in time for the final vote on March 9!

-Jennifer Errick, Editor, Online Communications

Fortunately, the Park Service has a Night Sky Team that has worked for years with agencies and local residents to help preserve dark nighttime skies. Just last week, the International Dark-Sky Association designated Big Bend National Park in Texas as a Dark Sky Park–the second U.S. national park and one of just ten parks in the world to achieve that distinction.

The photo above gives just a glimpse of what we gain from preserving the darkness.

-Bryan Faehner, Associate Director of Park Use

It’s hard to wrap your head around a number as large as 123 million. Yet this represents the number of items in the museum and archival collections held in trust for us by the National Park Service. Letters and diaries kept by Civil War soldiers now held at Pea Ridge National Military Park, thousands of fossils at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, hand tools used to carve the presidential visages at Mount Rushmore National Monument—these important items represent just a small fraction of the treasures held in more than 1,800 facilities located within nearly 400 parks, curatorial centers, and partner organizations throughout the country.

Imagine being responsible for inventorying and cataloguing all these priceless artifacts and documents, safely storing or displaying them, conserving those that are damaged or fragile, using them to create interpretive programs and inform project plans and management decisions, and making them available to researchers and park visitors. It’s a monumental job, and it’s one that the Park Service has been trying its best to do with limited resources.

At best, parks are able to share only a small portion of their collections with the public due to limited exhibit space and insufficient staff and funds to prepare exhibits, while many artifacts and the information they hold are stored away from public spaces, difficult to access and use. At worst, dismal storage and display facilities force the parks to relocate their collections to distant facilities that have the capacity to conserve and protect the collections—which are then out of the reach of park rangers and managers, researchers, and the public.

Some parks have reached beyond the museum walls by taking advantage of technology to create virtual museums that expand public access to their collections; others are using images or replicas of collection items as the basis for school programs in science, history, and the arts. These parks are examples from which to learn, but ultimately, addressing poor storage facilities, lack of trained staff to manage and care for collections, and inadequate public access to collections will require innovative thinking and creative solutions on a system-wide basis.

NPCA’s Center for Park Research is launching research to find out how many collection storage and display facilities need upgrading or replacement, understand how these problems restrict public access, and investigate new technologies and new realities in visitor expectations to better care for collections and make them accessible to the public. Stay tuned for updates as this work progresses.

Read a recent National Parks magazine article on some of the National Park Service staff who care for these artifacts, and visit the National Park Service’s Museum Management Program website to tour a number of virtual museum exhibits and learn more about the kinds of objects and archival materials found at each park.

Have you wanted to travel to our national parks? Did you know that NPCA has a ParkScapes travel program? Check out some comments about traveling with NPCA from of our past ParkScapes participants:

“Our guides were the best. This was my second trip with them and I hope not my last.” – Mary F.

“We really enjoyed the guide’s wolf knowledge and spotting ability, our first snowshoeing experience, and the spectacular scenery.” – Gary A.

“Though I have been a member for a while, I expanded my knowledge of just what NPCA does thanks to the trip.” – Sloan H.

NPCA’s ParkScapes program offers you the chance to get out and explore the national parks by participating in one of our annual small-group tours or by helping you to design a custom trip. Most trips are limited to 16 participants, maintaining an eight-to-one participant-to-guide ratio. This allows participants to have a more engaged and educational travel experience, including more time with expert guides, flexibility in daily activities, and smaller vehicles to go where the action is within the park. Our guides are chosen for their natural, historical, and cultural expertise, both of the park and the broader region around the park, allowing participants to ask questions and gain a fuller understanding of the park, the wildlife within the park, and the larger ecosystem. 

We work with partners who have strong environmental practices in their offices as well as their low-impact travel services. We use local guides and local vendors to support a stronger economy in and around the national parks. Furthermore, NPCA’s travel partners have committed to make a donation for each participant who travels on a ParkScapes tour, allowing NPCA to advance our mission to protect and enhance the parks for future generations.

Our extensive pre-trip information packets will fully prepare you for your national park journey, with park background information, NPCA program updates, reading lists, packing lists, and many other items. We make it as easy as possible, so you can relax and enjoy your trip.

Want more information? Join the NPCA travel team on February 21st at 1:30 p.m. EST for a one-hour live chat to discuss NPCA’s nine upcoming tours in 2012, respond to your questions, and take park trip requests to help develop the 2013 collection. 

Register for the live chat today.

This Live Chat will be hosted on NPCA’s Facebook Page. You do not need a Facebook account to participate in the Live Chat.

Photos (from top left): Hiker Traversing the Rocks in Arches National Park, Utah © Ben Blankenburg/IStockPhoto. Midway Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming © Stephan Hoerold/IStockPhoto. Hudson-Athens Lighthouse near the City of Hudson, New York © Hudson Valley Tourism; Courtesy of American Cruise Lines. Alpenglow on Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, California © Mike Norton/Dreamstime. Keiki “Childrens” Hula, Hawaii © Courtesy of Hawaii Visitor and Convention Bureau.  Brown Bear in Kelp Bay, Baranof Island, Tongass National Forest, Alaska © Ralph Lee Hopkins; Courtesy of Lindblad Expeditions.

Today marks the sesquicentennial of the major Civil War battle fought at Fort Donelson in Kentucky and Tennessee. Fort Donelson National Battlefield protects 559 acres surrounding the fort near Dover, Tennessee, including the earthen fort itself, upper and lower batteries, the Dover Hotel (site of Confederate surrender) and two miles of outer earthworks. It also includes Fort Donelson National Cemetery, final resting place for 670 Union soldiers. While this site commemorates a significant battle and the first major victory for the North, many people don’t realize what a compelling rise to power it marked for one of the war’s key personalities.

In February 1862, the Union Army was floundering and being pummeled in the east, but a rumpled young brigadier general named Ulysses S. Grant was keeping hopes alive for the North by winning gritty battles against the Confederates along the Mississippi River. President Lincoln knew the importance of the Mississippi: Whichever army controlled the river could send men and supplies throughout the nation’s interior. Part of the Union strategy was to attack Confederate-held forts along the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers, which are large tributaries of the Mississippi, but the positioning of forts high atop riverbanks and the winding, narrow approach of the river itself meant that these battles were not for the faint of fighting.

Thankfully for the Union Army, Grant was not afraid to fight. Grant had just taken the nearby Fort Henry a few days earlier with little resistance and an eye toward controlling the central portion of Tennessee, including Nashville. On Feb. 14, 1862, he led 24,000 Union troops and four of the Navy’s new ironclad gunships and attacked the heavily fortified Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River near the Tennessee-Kentucky border. Though the Fort’s superior positioning allowed it to nearly neutralize the gunboats, Grant was able to trap the Confederates in the Fort and force their surrender. When the request for terms of surrender reached Grant, he replied that “no terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.” The fame achieved after this important victory–and his new nickname of “Unconditional Surrender” Grant–propelled him to commander of the entire Union Army.

Fort Donelson National Battlefield is commemorating the sesquicentennial with a number of programs, including a monthly film series, speaking events with authors and historians, and a book club. Be sure to check out the park’s special sesquicentennial newsletter (PDF, 4 pages, 1.3 MB) for upcoming events, including a walk around the grounds with famed historian Ed Bearrs. You can also learn more about Fort Donelson and other nearby parks in NPCA’s 2009 report, Tennessee’s Civil War National Parks.

This portrait was taken by a Farm Security Administration employee named Jack Delano in 1941. Delano traveled to the Virgin Islands for ten days to document the agency’s efforts to assist poor farmers, much like Dorothea Lange had in the continental United States just a few years earlier. The trip resulted in numerous portraits of sharecroppers trapped in cycles of poverty. The man pictured above was an FSA borrower in the vicinity of Frederiksted, St. Croix.

Read about about Delano’s photos on this informative blog post by John Edwin Mason. And learn more about Virgin Islands National Park by watching NPCA’s slideshow or visiting the Park Service website. The park often offers special tours of plantation sites in February as part of Black History Month.

-Jennifer Errick, Editor, Online Communications

Read the recommendations at http://www.npca.org/assets/pdf/18066Book.pdf (PDF, 260 pages, 2.2 MB).

-Jennifer Errick, Editor, Online Communications

National parks are among the most popular federal benefits and services the American people enjoy and they don’t cost us much in the grand scheme of things. Read NPCA President Tom Kiernan‘s recent article in the Huffington Post on why Congress should find better ways to balance the budget than to allow an across-the-board cut to take effect next January that could devastate National Park Service resources.

Read the article, “Taking Care of America’s Best Idea,” on the Huffington Post website.

-Jennifer Errick, Editor, Online Communications