Source: Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, Professional Report Series - Number 4, October 10, 2008
Since the first national park, Yellowstone, was set aside 136 years ago, fewer than 400 of more than 80,000 places have been preserved in perpetuity through the extraordinary means of adding them to the National Park System. The parks are not capital assets and not real estate; they are inalienable national treasures held in trust for 281 million Americans and their descendants. Yet sustained efforts are being made to remove them from the commonwealth and put them into private hands.
Today, as in the so-called Gilded Age of the last third of the 19th Century, this commonwealth belonging to all Americans is in danger of being converted to private assets due to sustained efforts to turn over public lands and sites to commercial entities. Efforts are also being made to contract out work normally done by highly-trained and dedicated National Park Service employees and to seek corporate support for park projects and initiatives once funded by the American people as part of their shared heritage.
