WASHINGTON, DC – Yesterday, in a speech before members of the National Parks Conservation Association, United States Senator Ken Salazar outlined what he believes is next for America’s national parks, including what challenges lie ahead for America’s natural treasures.

In his remarks, Senator Salazar spoke of how his own personal experience growing up on a ranch in Colorado’s San Luis Valley instilled a sense that we have a responsibility to act as stewards of our land, water and wildlife habitat. Senator Salazar also posed two key questions that he believes will determine what shape the parks will take over the coming century: how do we protect our country’s national treasures for future generations, and how do we continue to make the national parks relevant to Americans and to the challenges we face as a country?

Senator Salazar’s full remarks, as prepared for delivery, are included below:

“For over 85 years, the National Parks Conservation Association has led the fight to protect our nation's natural and historic treasures. You have helped our national park system grow and mature, and with it Americans’ love and appreciation for our national parks.

“I have been proud to work with you over the last three and a half years. Shortly after my election to the Senate in 2004, the Subcommittee on National Parks, of which I am a member, had to confront one of the largest tests our national park system has faced in recent decades. In a draft rewrite of the National Park Service’s management policies, the Administration proposed to discard the principle – established in the 1916 National Park Service Organic Act – that, first and foremost, the Park Service must preserve the resources in our parks so that they remain ‘unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.’

“The Administration’s proposed management policies would have been death by a thousand cuts to the park service’s preservation mandate. The proposal systematically deemphasized the importance of preservation throughout the management policies – loosening standards that protect air quality, natural soundscapes, scenic vistas, clean water, and so many other values that make the parks what they are.

“For those of us who know and love our national parks, the proposed rewrite of the management policies was a fight worth fighting, it was a fight we had to win, and it was a fight that, with your help, and with the support of millions of Americans who understood what was at stake, we did win.

“We defeated the effort to undermine the Park Service’s mandate and, in the process, reaffirmed and reinforced the National Park Service’s preservation mission for the next century. Thank you again for all your leadership on this front.

II.

“This evening, I want to spend a few minutes talking about what I think is next for our national parks – including what challenges lie ahead and how we should focus our work.

“But I also want to talk more generally about the sentiments that led to the creation of our national parks, and how this creation is still a work in progress.

“We often forget that the national parks are a relatively new idea. They are also a distinctly American idea. James Bryce, the British ambassador to the U.S. in 1912, claimed that “the national park is the best idea America ever had.” (He was apparently still unwilling to concede the merits of the Declaration of Independence!)

“But you can understand his enthusiasm. It was a powerful idea that led President Ulysses S. Grant to sign a bill, in 1872, to designate over two million acres of land in northwestern Wyoming as Yellowstone National Park. And it was a powerful idea that led to the passage of the 1916 Organic Act and the establishment of the National Park System.

“For their early advocates, national parks were islands to be protected from the onrush of European civilization and westward migration. They were wild landscapes that were unique to the New World and fundamental to the American experience. They were settings that inspired reverence of the sublime and stirred artists like Ansel Adams to record their beauty. They were places where humankind could reconnect with the perceived simplicity of a previous time, and restore strength of mind and character.

“The sentiments that fueled the movement to establish national parks are still relevant today, but these sentiments, and the idea that emerged, were also a product of a particular time.

“In many ways, the national parks emerged from the view that civilization and nature –specifically, humans and nature - stood in opposition and confrontation. Because civilization would soon overtake the wild places of the continent America, they thought, needed to set aside wild lands for protection and preservation.

III.

“My family’s experiences in the West were somewhat different from those that inspired early park proponents to lobby for the creation of Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon.

“I grew up in the San Luis Valley, in southern Colorado, on land that my family has farmed and ranched for five generations. My family came to the Rio Grande valley in the 16th century, helping found the city of Santa Fe – the city of Holy Faith – in 1598.

“As farmers and ranchers, our livelihood depended on the health of our land. Our parents taught us, and their parents taught them, that we had a responsibility to be good stewards of the water, soil, and wildlife around us, in order to preserve the balance that had allowed us to work the same land, generation after generation.

“Rather than seeing mankind as isolated from the landscape, we were members of it – neighbors with a stake in the health of our surroundings.

“This sense that we are stewards of our land, water, and wildlife has stayed with me through each chapter in my career - as a natural resources lawyer, as the director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, as Colorado’s Attorney General, and now as a United States Senator.

“I have pushed reforms for oil, mining, and gas operations to better protect the environment and the public. I have fought to uphold Colorado's interstate water compacts. I created Colorado’s Youth in Natural Resources program to educate thousands of young people about Colorado's natural resources. And I authored the Colorado constitutional amendment creating Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO). I was GOCO’s first chairman, and helped make it one of the most successful land conservation efforts in the United States.

IV.

“I am particularly pleased to continue this work on the national level, as a member of the Subcommittee on National Parks. My position allows me to bring the values of stewardship that I learned on our ranch to the challenges that are facing our parks.

“In particular, I appreciate the opportunity to help shape what the next century holds for our national parks. The national parks are still a work in progress – an idea that we can continue to perfect.

“I think there are two questions that will determine what shape the parks will take over the coming century.

“The first is the same question that the proponents of the national park system were trying to answer almost a century ago: ‘how do we protect our country’s national treasures for future generations?’

“I would suggest that the answer to this question is relatively straightforward: we uphold the 1916 Organic Act and ensure that we are managing our parks so they remain unimpaired for future generations.

“This is why our work on the management policies was so important. By winning that fight, we have ensured that preservation will remain the guiding principle for the management of our parks for decades to come.

“But sound management policies aren’t enough by themselves: we need to be putting adequate resources into the management of our parks, so that park service professionals can carry out their mandate.

“This means securing adequate funding in the annual appropriations process. But it also means trying to find creative ways of supporting our parks.

“I was delighted to hear Secretary Kempthorne’s announcement of the Centennial Challenge Initiative, and to hear him propose the establishment of a $100 million fund in the federal treasury to be used to match philanthropic contributions to the parks.

“To make Secretary Kempthorne’s vision a reality Senator Collins, Senator Baucus, Senator Coleman, Senator Tester and I have introduced the National Park Centennial Fund Act which we hope to be able to pass this year. The bill creates a conservation royalty from unexpected oil and gas revenues to provide up to $100 million a year until 2016 for ‘signature projects’ in the national parks. These projects can involve anything from trail construction to an education program at a local elementary school, provided that the Park Service and Congress agree on their value.

“I appreciate NPCA’s support for the bill and all your work to help advance it.

V.

“The second question that will help shape the evolution of the idea behind our national parks is: ‘how do we continue to make the national parks relevant to Americans and to the challenges we face as a country?’

“I think we can answer this question if we see our parks not just for the treasures they protect, but for the shared values they help us forge.

“For those who helped establish the first national parks at the end of the 19th century, America needed places like Yosemite and Yellowstone to keep the man-made world from overrunning the most wild and spectacular lands on the continent.

“Today, we still value the parks for the wild and open spaces they protect. But the parks have also come to occupy an increasingly valuable role in helping Americans shape a set of common experiences and values.

“Last year, there were over 275 million visits to national park units. As you all know, each time we visit a park we gain a deeper appreciation for natural wonders like Long’s Peak or the Great Sand Dunes. We develop a more complex understanding of the changes in our environment. And we come to see ourselves as a part of our landscape, rather than separate from it.

“These values are of growing importance when you consider the challenges we will be facing in years to come. We will only be able to tackle environmental problems like climate change, habitat loss, endangered species, fire, invasive species, and water shortages if we have a common set of experiences that allow us to work together and productively. Our shared love for the parks gives us a strong basis from which to start these conversations, a more sophisticated understanding of the problems, and a venue for working on them where we all share the same basic goals.

“For these reasons, we need to continue to try to make the national parks more accessible to more people.

“First and foremost, this means bringing more kids into the parks. I’ve introduced a bill with Senator Conrad that would create a small grant program to help school districts incorporate the national parks into their curriculum and get students out to explore their parks. I believe this pilot program will have great success, if we give it a chance to work.

“Second, expanding access means that we need to make our national park system representative of a broad range of experiences and histories in this country. I was proud last week that the Senate passed a bill to study the possible creation of a Latino Museum in Washington, DC. We also passed a bill to study how the Park Service might be able to protect the sites associated with Cesar Chavez’s life, so that future generations can know the story of this great American. In the coming days, I will introduce a bill to protect the Ludlow Massacre site in southern Colorado, a site that helps tell the story of industrial development and industrial conflict in the West.

“These are small steps we can take to make the history that the Park Service tells more inclusive and more accurate.

“Third, we can make the national parks more accessible by bringing them into local communities. I have been a steadfast supporter of the Land and Water Conservation Fund stateside grant program because it is a terrific way for the federal government to support open space, recreation, and conservation projects in communities across the country. The National Park Service should continue to view the LWCF stateside grant program as a part of its mission.

“I have also been an advocate for our national heritage areas. I have introduced two bills to create national heritage areas in Colorado – one in Park County and one in the San Luis Valley. When done right, these modest federal investments are able to leverage large local, state, and private investment in preservation projects. They give structure and organization to local historic preservation, recreation, and land conservation efforts, they capitalize on the expertise of National Park Service professionals, and they allow Americans to experience and access their heritage.

“Each of these steps will help make the national park system more accessible, more relevant, and more able to help forge the shared values and experiences we will need to confront the challenges ahead.

VI.

“One of the most exciting things about celebrating the centennial of the national park system is the opportunity to look ahead and to dream of what the coming century holds for our national parks.

“I predict that the fundamental idea that led to the creation of our national parks – the idea that we should preserve and protect America’s national treasures for future generations – will remain as compelling at the end of the 21st century as it was at the dawn of the 20th century.

“What will continue to change, though, is our relationship to our parks.

“In their early years, the national parks lived only in the imagination of most Americans. Today, because so many Americans can visit and experience the national park system first-hand – often in and near their own communities – the parks are no longer simply a set of pictures in the imagination. They are real places that generate a set of shared experiences and shared values in our society. They help us understand our own relationship with the natural world. They help us see that we are a part of the landscape, not isolated from it, and that we have a responsibility to act as its stewards. This is of utmost importance in light of the environmental challenges we will face over the coming century.

“With your help, and with your leadership, we will continue to perfect what Wallace Stegner called ‘the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, [the national parks] reflect us at our best rather than our worst.’

“May our parks continue to reflect our best, and may they continue to inspire, educate, and amaze us for another hundred years.

“Thank you.”

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