Private Land in Public Parks

Deer at Valley Forge National Historical Park; 'anesterik' photographer.

Across the National Park System's 84 million acres there are holes. Holes of private lands owned by folks who lived there before the parks became parks, holes of private lands that originally were intended to be part of a park system unit but which Congress didn't provide funds to purchase, and holes where lands that would be perfect as part of a park later became available.

At Valley Forge National Historical Park in Pennsylvania there are 78 acres bounded on three sides by the park but which the National Park Service has never been able to afford. Now the acreage stands poised to be developed by an organization that not only wants to build a museum there, but also a conference center with hotel space. In New Mexico at Petrified Forest National Park the National Park Service in 2004 was given congressional approval to more than double the size of the park by buying up surrounding ranchlands that contain valuable resources of fossils and petrified forests, but so far Congress has not provided the needed funds and the land is going on the market.

There are other examples of where the NPS has identified nearly 2 million privately held acres that are "critical" to the park system. Unfortunately, due in large part to Congress' underfunding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the vehicle that traditionally provides funds for such purchases, the NPS hasn’t been able to make inroads into this priority list.

"The mission of the National Park Service is two-prong," says the agency’s Land Office, "to provide for visitor services and the protection of the resources for future generations. Recently, funding for the protection of resources has dropped significantly. The Service continues to struggle to balance these two goals with declining resources."

We at the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees believe that "acquisition of parcels of privately-owned land in, or adjacent to, the boundaries of national parks, identified by the NPS as critical to management of the parks, is important and deserves adequate funding by the Congress to meet the mission of the National Park Service."