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Reader Participation Day: Call It A "National Park"

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By Kurt Repanshek - December 24th, 2019
White Sands National Monument has been redesignated as a "national park"/NPS

White Sands, once a national monument, now a national park. Should the other 357 units of the National Park System be reclassified as "national parks"?/NPS

What's in a name? Whether it's called a "national monument" or a "national park," does it really come down to dollars and cents?

We've gone down this road before. Before it was Pinnacles National Park, it was Pinnacles National Monument. Before it was Indiana Dunes National Park, it was Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. And before it was White Sands National Park, it was White Sands National Monument.

Did anything change on the ground to motivate these name changes? No. Rather, it had to do with the cachet of being known as a "national park," and the economic fallout tied to that.

So, good readers, should the other 357 units of the National Park System be reclassified en masse as "national parks"?

Traveler postscript: Frankly, as just one of four "national lakeshores," Indiana Dunes might have enjoyed more cachet before joining the club of "national parks." What do you think?

Comments

Submitted by Nick on January 17, 2020 - 8:50am.

there are 19 different designations for protected areas. while Wilderness and national park are clearly above monument and recreational area, where does historic park lie? where does conservation area fall? I would favor streamlining designations, if it was combined with a very large increase of protected areas. There are 1000 areas nationwide deserving of protected status, and many states have 0 national monuments at all.  now theres precedent for something like this, in 1933 when all the War Department parks were moved into the Park Service, places like Gettysburg , Shiloh etc. 

While we are streamling designations, and increasing protected areas, you also mandate a range of funding, 100 million per year at the low end. 2 billion a year at the high end. small parks  like the Statue of Liberty would get the minimum, while big parks, like bristol Bay, would get the max. give 10% of the parks budgets to the states for state and local conservation efforts, to help conservation groups preserve areas across the country. the more protected areas a state has, the more money it gets. 


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