With a new year dawning across the National Park System, here's a look at some things we'd like to see in 2015/NPS photo of sunrise from the Flamingo Visitor Center in Everglades National Park

A new year is just beginning to shed its first blush, so the time couldn't be better to compile a list of things we'd like to see happen across the National Park System in 2015, so let's jump right in!

* Recognition by, as well as action, by Congress that the National Park Service deserves more than one-fifthteenth of 1 percent of the federal budget to maintain "America's Best Idea." 

If the Park Service is to truly grow, and move beyond just maintaining the status quo, at many of its units, it needs more resources, both in terms of staff and budget. As just oe example, the budget and human resources are so tight at Mount Rainier National Park that just one person calling in sick or heading home to deal with an emergency can affect whether the Paradise area is open for snow play during the winter months.

* A quick and speedy pinpointing, and blocking, of the source of pollution flowing into the waters of Congaree National Park in South Carolina.

* Caution by Park Service officials in instituting fees. 

Four dollars to sleep on the ground in a park's backcountry. Five dollars per person to see a natural phenomena along the shores of Lake Superior. Fifteen dollars per person to enter an urban park. These are some of the fees enacted, and proposed, across the park system. They point back to our first item, that the parks are underfunded. As a result, they're looking to raise existing fees, and come up with new ones, to make ends meet.

Some smaller units of the park system are bucking the push to higher entrance fees. At Fort Laramie National Historic Site in Wyoming officials have asked for permission to do away with their entrance fee, rather than to charge $15 per person, as they believe such a move would be a money loser, not a money maker.

At a time when the National Park Service is trying to build visitation to the parks, higher fees are a disincentive.

* Hope that Wild, the film starring Reece Witherspoon about Cheryl Strayed's trek on the Pacific Crest Trail, will encourage more park visitors into the park system's magnificent backcountry.

Getting into the outdoors is necessary for the human condition. As nature writer Gary Ferguson wrote recently in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times:

Back in 1906, celebrated psychologist and educator G. Stanley Hall '” the man who coined the term 'œadolescence' '” wrote that kids age 3 to 8, especially those in the 'œurban hothouse,' must be exposed to nature. They should be taken 'œto visit field, forest, hill, shore, the water, flowers, animals, the true homes of childhood '¦ for the very soul and body cry out for a more active, objective life, and to know nature and man at first hand. These two staples, stories and nature, by these informal methods of the home and the environment constitute fundamental education.'

A century on, however, kids are even less tutored by nature. A 2003 survey of 830 mothers by Rhonda Clements revealed that 70% of the women said they played outdoors every day when they were kids, yet only 31% of their children played outside daily.

* That the National Park Service finds a way to subtley acknowledge donors, as a rider in the year-end massive Defense authorization bill directed.

Philanthropic giving is critical to the national parks, there's no question. But acknowledging that giving shouldn't turn parks into promotions for corporations and foundations.

* That more areas in the National Park System that are treated as wilderness, and qualify for official wilderness designation, gain it.

* A bitterly cold winter for northern Wisconsin and Minnesota so an ice bridge will tie Isle Royale National Park to the Canadian mainland so some wolves can bring a refreshing mix of genes to the 8-9 wolves on the island.

* Development of a solid, all-inclusive plan for celebration of the NPS centennial in 2016, one that will encourage renewed interest in the parks by more than just die-hard park fans.