April is an especially significant month for America’s national parks. This is because it marks a trifecta of observances, each designed to educate the public about environmental issues. Two of the events focus specifically on national parks. One of those promotes awareness and support for their conservation mission. Another seeks to inspire the next generation of national park stewards and supporters. In this post, I’ll review the promise and history of April’s conservation trifecta, as well as some of its problems.
Earth Day
April 22 is Earth Day, a call for collective action on behalf of the environment. Planned as a grass-roots movement in 1970 by Senator Gaylord Nelson and Denis Hayes, a Harvard University student, Earth Day initially was conceived as a series of campus teach-ins about pressing environmental problems. But it had to compete with other campus causes of the period, including the Vietnam War and civil rights. So the vision shifted from teach-ins on college campuses to organizing grass-roots community events that encouraged people to take action to solve environmental problems.
Earth Day’s name was proposed by a Madison Avenue marketer named Julien Koenig who had created Volkswagen’s successful “Think Small” advertising campaign. Early on, organizers had realized that the teach-in model popular in the 1960s was not striking a sympathetic chord with the larger public. So Koenig volunteered to develop several mock-up ads for the event that included names like Ecology Day and Environment Day. But his favorite was Earth Day. Hayes, the Harvard student, agreed, and the rest is history.
An early idea was to hold Earth Day every ten years. But fueled by a full-page ad in the New York Times, the movement proved so popular in its first year it quickly became an annual observance. In 1990 it went global with Earth Day events in 141 countries. The attention-grabbing issues that inspired the first Earth Day included water and air pollution, the widespread use of harmful pesticides such as DDT, an expanding ozone hole in the upper atmosphere, unconstrained population growth, nuclear power safety, and urban decay.
Another issue attracting attention was the need to protect untrammeled nature in national parks and similar preserves. Even then, national parks were seen as being “loved to death” by crowds, a situation that persists as visitation rates to the most popular parks have increased.
But despite the national issues, Earth Day has always been about the grass roots. Each community is encouraged to identify environmental problems in its area that can be improved through local action. In my town, a regional land trust suggests planting milkweed for monarch butterflies, volunteering for clean-ups and environmental restoration activities at its preserves, bringing a friend to visit a preserve, or contributing money to support land trust activities.
Measuring a movement’s influence on national policy is tricky, but it’s fair to state that Earth Day gave a grass-roots voice to a growing concern that the planet needed help, and this provided political cover to Congress and presidents to do something about it.
The years after the first Earth Day witnessed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Concerted international action repaired the ozone hole, saving the planet from slow death by ultraviolet radiation. Air and water in the U.S. became demonstrably cleaner than a few decades earlier. Species on the brink of extinction, including bald eagles, American alligators, and humpback whales, were brought back. Solar power, an energy source which emits no greenhouse gases, is now on track to become one of the country’s dominant sources of electricity. Popular national parks are turning increasingly to rationed-use systems, such as reservations, to reduce overcrowding and improve visitor experiences.
In 2022, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Earth Day to protect the old growth forests that play a disproportionately large role in carbon capture, crucial for reducing the impacts of climate change. So the political influence of Earth Day continues to percolate up to higher levels of policy-setting. In fact, the observance often serves as an annual benchmark for governments and citizens to mark progress, assess actions, and commit to a better world for all living things.
National Park Week
Despite occasional political pressures to downplay environmental issues in its programming, the National Park Service boasts a strong record of environmental education dating back to the earliest days of the national parks. One of its more recent programs is National Park Week. In 2022, the “week” ran from April 16th to 24th, making it nine days long. The first National Park Week was observed in 1991, the year the National Park Service celebrated its 75th anniversary. As part of that observance, on August 21st President George H. W. Bush proclaimed the week to recognize the “inestimable value of our national parks.”
Since August 25th is Founders Day–the date in 1916 when President Woodrow Wilson signed the legislation creating the National Park Service–the original scheduling of National Park Week to include Founders Day made sense. Even so, for the next two years, there were no observances. But in 1994, President William Clinton resurrected the week as an annual event, shifting the celebration from August to the third week in April. This meant National Park Week would incorporate Earth Day on April 22, thus reinforcing the importance of the agency’s environmental conservation and education missions.
Each National Park Week has a theme. In 2022, it was “sPark Connections.” In addition, every day within the week has its own sub-theme around which activities and programs can be organized. Daily themes in 2022 included programs on the National Park Service’s national and international work in environmental conservation and historic preservation, the innovative application of technology to those activities, and the relationship between human and environmental health.
However, except for the symbolic value of including Earth Day in National Park Week, the current scheduling is less than ideal. Some of the best known and popular national parks can’t offer in-person activities during the week. Because it’s in April, high-elevation parks such as Yellowstone, Glacier, Mount Rainier, Rocky Mountain, and the Alaskan parks are still covered in snow or just beginning to clear road access. Also, much of the front-line staff at those parks is seasonal and isn’t yet onboard. To make up for those difficulties, podcasts keyed to each day’s theme are available on the Internet. Although the podcasts are well-done, the essence of a national park experience has always been first-hand exposure in situ to the topics and resources being interpreted.
A National Park Week scheduled around Founders Day in August would more fully achieve its potential to introduce visitors to the national parks and to their value as laboratories for environmental research, education, and conservation.
Even in April, there is one National Park Week activity that many parks offer. A widely advertised feature of the first day of National Park Week is a waiver of park entrance fees. Because the week begins on Saturday, the fee waiver has the potential to attract many visitors to parks who otherwise might not go. Some might even choose to visit a new park. But most of the 424 units in the national park system don’t charge an entrance fee, and an additional number only charge during peak season when it makes financial sense to do so. So entrance to those parks is free anyway. Even so, free entry remains an established part of each year’s kickoff to National Park Week.
Having National Park Week designated by presidential proclamation certainly highlights the parks’ importance. But the observance remains a work in progress. If one purpose of the week is to use onsite programs to demonstrate the value of parks as environmental laboratories, then the current dates are not optimal and should be shifted to a time when more parks are accessible. If the purpose also includes attracting visitors to educate them about their potential as environmental stewards and good citizens of the Earth, that’s something most national parks do every day. But a third purpose could be to offer opportunities to actively engage in environmentally helpful activities, such as clean-ups, perhaps in partnership with nearby communities or national forests. It will be interesting to see how National Park Week evolves in future years. As it now stands, the week essentially consists of three activities: the entry fee waiver on the first Saturday, Earth Day, and this third observance. . . .
National Junior Ranger Day
National park interpretive programs for youngsters have existed since the 1930s, but National Junior Ranger Day is a relatively new creation, announced by First Lady Laura Bush during an event in Zion National Park in 2007. Although national parks had offered junior ranger activities for a number of years, the effort was uneven. But on the heels of the adoption of national standards in 2005, Laura Bush announced a revitalized program. She also agreed to serve as national chair. This was fitting because the First Lady had been a huge fan of the national parks for years and was one of their strong supporters during her husband’s presidential administration.
A typical Junior Ranger Program consists of a workbook that’s usually free and contains park-specific learning activities that kids can complete during their visit. Those may involve playing a game about fossil formation, drawing a picture to describe a birdsong, or completing a wildlife scavenger hunt. Most booklets rate activities by difficulty, so children can participate in those appropriate for their age.
A completed booklet is presented to an adult ranger, who checks it and makes the child an official junior ranger during a ceremonial oath-taking. The child also receives a coveted wooden badge (replacing the earlier plastic badges which were discontinued as not being Earth-friendly). It’s not unusual in a park to see kids wearing vests covered with the badges they’ve collected. Some parks make the swearing-in ceremony a low-key event, but others announce it on their visitor center’s public address system. If asked, many rangers will tell you that one of the favorite parts of their job is administering the junior ranger oath to children.
Today, almost all units in the national park system offer a Junior Ranger Program. The program can also be completed by mail. Targeted age groups range from around four to about 13. But many parks now have a Senior Ranger Program as well. One adult I’m aware of has completed over 100 of those. He says he likes them because they make him slow down and learn more about the park than he would during a quick windshield tour.
Because it’s so strongly associated with the national parks, people might be surprised to learn that the National Park Service modeled the current version of its junior rangers on a U.S. Forest Service program. Several state parks offer similar programs. So junior rangers as a way to educate and inspire the next generation of stewards and supporters continues to grow in popularity and promise for the future.
Concluding Thoughts about the Conservation Trifecta
Earth Day, National Park Week, and National Junior Ranger Day have immense potential to inspire dialogue and action about our environment and ways to exist harmoniously with it. Even without the complications of climate change, some argue that this is too big an issue, that human nature is too entrenched, to find a workable solution to the conflict between short-term economic efficiency and long-term environmental sustainability. So the value of the Conservation Trifecta is that it shows that others believe differently. Moreover, it gives those people an opportunity to express their beliefs and their solidarity. Presidents announce new actions. Seasoned naturalists, ordinary citizens, and young stewards of the future come together to learn more about their environment and how to make their spot on the planet healthier.
It’s true that many of today’s environmental issues are huge and can’t be addressed by a single group or community alone. But participation in a grass-roots event provides one way to join a community of people, each doing their part to achieve small successes. Those small victories can lead to bigger successes, and those may lead to a more healthy partnership with the wild.