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10 Things You Might Not Know...
About National Park Service |
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- The National Park Service oversees the operation of 392 national parks,
which welcome over 275 million visitors a year.
- The National Park Service protects 84 million acres of land, 4.5 million acres of oceans, lakes and reservoirs, 85 thousand miles of rivers and streams and some 400 endangered species living in these habitats.
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With early support and guidance from Audubon Society founder George Bird Grinnell, Theodore Roosevelt went on to create 5 national parks and unilaterally created 18 national monuments, set aside 51 federal bird sanctuaries and four national game refuges, and added more than 100 million acres of national forest.
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The first protectors of national parks were not rangers from the National Park Service, but cavalrymen from the U.S. Army, including the African-American "Buffalo Soldiers" who patrolled Yosemite and Sequoia national parks.
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Ulysses S. Grant instantly transformed Yellowstone into the world's first "game preserve" after establishing it as a national park in 1872. Yellowstone currently comprises 2,221,766 acres-roughly the size of the state of Connecticut.
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In addition to parks, the National Park Service also manages thousands of historic sites, landmarks, monuments, and battlefields, including: New York's Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon, the Virgin Islands Coral Reef, Gettysburg Battlefield, the Martin Luther King Jr. birthplace in Atlanta, California's Sequoia, and Aztec Ruins in New Mexico.
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Many early national parks received strong support from the railroads, which lobbied Congress for their creation believing that Glacier, Mount Rainier, Sequoia, and even Yellowstone would become tourist destinations and increase their ridership.
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With support from L.L. Bean and Friends of Acadia, propane-powered Island Explorer buses have carried more than two million passengers into Acadia National Park since 1999, eliminating more than 685,000 automobile trips and preventing the emission of 6,444 tons of greenhouse gases.
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Established in 1947, at 1.5 million acres, Everglades National Park is the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States. Audubon's ties to the Everglades began in 1902 when Audubon wardens risked their lives to protect Everglades birds from plume hunters.
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In 1957, Liz Titus Putnam, who was honored with Audubon's 2009 Rachel Carson Award, founded the Student Conservation Association, a co-ed, hands on service organization. Today, approximately 12% of parks service employees started as SCA interns.
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| Click here to download PDF of card. |
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