National Parks Reach Out to Blacks Who Aren’t Visiting

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National Parks Reach Out to Blacks Who Aren’t Visiting

November 10, 2010.

(Reprinted from New York Times)

Shelton Johnson, a ranger at Yosemite and author of “Gloryland: A Novel,” published last year by Sierra Club/Counterpoint

November 2, 2010

By MIREYA NAVARRO

When Shelton Johnson was 5, his family took him to Berchtesgaden National Park in the Bavarian Alps. To this day, he remembers his sense of awe.

“The mountains, the sky being so close — it affected me profoundly,” said Mr. Johnson, who now works as a ranger at Yosemite National Park in California.

In 23 years on the job, Mr. Johnson, 52, has been equally struck by how few of his fellow African-Americans visit the national parks, Yosemite included. A few years ago, he decided to do something about it.

In a plaintive letter to Oprah Winfrey, he wrote:

“Every year, America is becoming increasingly diverse, but that diversity is not reflected in the national parks, even though African-Americans and other groups played a vital role in the founding of national parks. If the national parks are America’s playground, then why are we not playing in the most beautiful places in America?”

On Friday, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” devoted the full hour to a segment that was taped at Yosemite in response to Mr. Johnson’s appeal. Part 2 of the episode is to be broadcast on Wednesday.

The visitors issue is a pressing one for the National Park Service, which is expanding its efforts to diversify both its guests and its work force as the agency prepares to celebrate its centennial in 2016.

Studies and surveys show that visitors to the nation’s 393 national parks — there were 285.5 million of them in 2009 — are overwhelmingly non-Hispanic whites, with blacks the least likely group to visit. That reality has not changed since the 1960s, when it was first identified as an issue. The Park Service now says the problem is linked to the parks’ very survival.

“If the American public doesn’t know that we exist or doesn’t care, our mission is potentially in jeopardy,” said Jonathan B. Jarvis, who took over as director of the Park Service last year. “There’s a disconnect that needs addressing.”

The Park Service does not log attendance numbers at individual parks by race or ethnicity. But in a comprehensive survey it commissioned in 2000, only 13 percent of black respondents reported visiting a national park in the previous two years. That compared with 27 percent for Latinos, 29 percent for Asians and 36 percent for whites.

Jim Gramann, a visiting social scientist with the Park Service who is overseeing a review of a follow-up survey in 2008 and 2009 that is to be released early next year, said the gap persisted.

“The demographic face of America is not reflected in national park visitation, with a few exceptions,” Mr. Gramann said. In the large Western parks especially, he added, visitors are overwhelmingly non-Hispanic white, highly educated and affluent.

Park Service officials have identified factors like cost, travel distance and lack of information — for example, ignorance about what activities the parks offer — as barriers to visits.

But some officials acknowledge that the parks may not seem welcoming to specific ethnic groups. They cited rules that limit the number of people in picnic areas or the number of tents that can be pitched at specific sites, which can clash with the vacation style of extended Latino families.

Yet no group avoids national parks as much as African-Americans. The 2000 survey found that blacks were three times as likely as whites to believe that park employees gave them poor service and that parks were “uncomfortable places.”

Park Service officials emphasize that the demographics vary, and that parks like the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta and the Manzanar National Historic Site in Independence, Calif., site of a World War II detention camp for Japanese-Americans, draw diverse crowds.

But attendance tends to be more homogenously white at wilderness parks like Yosemite, where a 2009 survey found that 77 percent of the visitors were white, 11 percent Latino, 11 percent Asian and 1 percent black.

When Ms. Winfrey visited Yosemite this month to tape her show, Mr. Johnson said, he was not surprised to hear that it was her first trip to the park and her first time camping. He said he was more likely to meet someone from Finland or Israel in the park than from, say, Harlem or Oakland, Calif.

“It’s something that’s pervasive in the culture — it doesn’t matter whether you’re Oprah or a postal worker,” Mr. Johnson said. (Ms. Winfrey was traveling and unavailable for an interview, a spokeswoman said.)

Nina Roberts, a former education specialist for the Park Service who is an associate professor of recreation, parks and tourism at San Francisco State University, said her research showed that many blacks were anxious about the people they might encounter in the parks, a wariness that gets passed on through the generations.

Ms. Roberts said a 19-year-old woman in a focus group in Denver had told her: “My granddaddy told me the K.K.K. hangs out up in the mountains. Why would I want to go?”

Mr. Johnson, who was born in Detroit, said he visited Berchtesgaden in the Alps when his father was stationed in Germany as a staff sergeant in the Army.

Mr. Johnson, who majored in English literature and creative writing at the University of Michigan, became a ranger in 1987 after what he described as a lark of a summer job washing dishes at the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park.

As he learned more about the Park Service’s early history, he embarked on a work of fiction, “Gloryland: A Novel,” published last year by Sierra Club/Counterpoint. The novel recounts the experience of a black cavalryman in the Army, one of the so-called Buffalo Soldiers who patrolled national parklands in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Today, the Park Service’s 25,000 employees are 83 percent white.

Incorporating stories like the Buffalo Soldiers’ tale into tours and brochures is one step the Park Service has taken to be more welcoming as well as more accurate. But such efforts are scattered, said Mr. Jarvis, the agency’s director, and far more are needed.

Mr. Jarvis said the Park Service was planning more partnerships with high schools that arrange park jobs for students and more naturalization ceremonies for new citizens in parks. It is also seeking to recruit employees at black colleges.

With the “The Oprah Winfrey Show” segments and a black family in the White House who made a point of vacationing in Yellowstone last summer, some experts suggest that the climate is favorable for a turnaround in park visits.

“It’s all layered,” said Carolyn Finney, an assistant professor of environmental science policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who is working on a book about blacks’ relationship to the natural environment. “You need ways to make people think about the parks differently.”

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First Lady Michelle Obama Asks Junior Rangers to Take It Outside at Our National Parks

June 17, 2010.

WASHINGTON, DC – “Let’s Move Outside, Junior Rangers!” is First Lady Michelle Obama’s call to kids across the country this summer. Today, the National Park Service kicks off Let’s Move Outside Junior Ranger in 20 parks. National Park Junior Rangers will not only have fun and get exercise but also receive an extra reward for working up a sweat.

Young people who complete at least one physical activity in pursuit of their Junior Ranger badge receive a special sticker that designates them as a Let’s Move Outside Junior Ranger. The activities range from adventures like hiking with a ranger at Grand Canyon National Park to body surfing at Canaveral National Seashore and canoeing at Mississippi National River and Recreation Area.

Let’s Move Outside, led by the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture, provides tools and information to parents to make it easy to enjoy the outdoors and be active. It is part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s nationwide campaign to end childhood obesity within a generation.

“The Let’s Move Outside program in our national parks provides a wonderful way for parents to help their children gain a passion for outdoor recreation while teaching them about our nation’s beautiful lands, our rich cultural heritage, and our storied past,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.

The program engages young people from all backgrounds in a range of educational programs and self-guided activities on America’s public lands and waters. From hiking and biking, to swimming, paddling, and horseback riding, these activities promise to be fun, healthy, and family friendly.

Throughout the summer, Let’s Move Outside! programs and events will be held in conjunction with schools, community groups, and other partners.

“Young people inspire us; we want to help them be vigorous and curious for life. It starts with family fun. National parks are amazing places where exercise is disguised as adventure, and we sneak in some learning too,” National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said.

Let’s Move Outside will soon be integrated into other programs, like the Fish and Wildlife Service’s “Let’s Go Outside” initiative, which seeks to reconnect kids and families to nature in our country’s 552 National Wildlife Refuges, and the Bureau of Land Management’s “Take It Outside” program.

Primary federal partners in this initiative are the Department of the Interior’s National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Land Management, and the Department of Agriculture’s U.S. Forest Service.

“As a department that manages one fifth of our nation’s land, the Department of the Interior will play a vital role in Let’s Move Outside!” said Julie Rodriguez, director of the department’s Youth Office. “Our parks, refuges, and other public lands are waiting to be explored and enjoyed by our nation’s young people, and we are eager to help them get outdoors.”

By summer’s end, 50 national parks will offer Let’s Move Outside Junior Ranger. Before heading out, visit www.letsmove.gov/outside <http://www.letsmove.gov/outside> for more information about activities and participating parks. This website hub will link families to the great outdoors and give tips and ideas on how to best plan and enjoy an active visit.

The 20 parks launching today:

Canaveral National Seashore, Florida
Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio
Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska
Effigy Mounds National Monument, Iowa
Fire Island National Seashore, New York
Fort Dupont Park, Washington, DC
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, Colorado
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee and North Carolina
Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, West Virginia
Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Indiana
Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, Minnesota
Mount Rainier National Park, Washington
New River Gorge National River, West Virginia
Prince William Forest Park, Virginia
Redwood National and State Parks, California
Rock Creek Park, Washington, DC
Shenandoah National Park, Virginia
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Montana

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Obama Administration Officials Announce White House Conference on America’s Great Outdoors

April 02, 2010.

ObamasOutdoors

03/26/2010

Christine Glunz
(202) 456-3469

WASHINGTON - Obama Administration Officials announced today that they will host a White House Conference on America’s Great Outdoors on Friday, April 16, 2010. Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior, and Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture are leading the conference, which will address the challenges, opportunities and innovations surrounding modern-day land conservation and the importance of reconnecting Americans and American families to the outdoors.

“America’s outdoors are part of our national identity. They are the farms, ranches and forests that we take great pride in, and the neighborhood parks, trails and fields where we spend memorable time with our families and friends,” said Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “Too many of these places are disappearing. In launching this conversation, we strive to learn about the smart, creative community efforts underway throughout the country to conserve our outdoor spaces, and hear how we can support these efforts.”

“Across the country, Americans are working to protect the places they know and love, from the streams they fished as children and the parks where families gather together to the battlefields and buildings that tell America’s story,” said Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior. “The Conference is a great chance to learn about these efforts, start a new dialogue about conservation in America, and find ways to further the work that is already going on in cities and towns, counties and states throughout the country.”

“There is no doubt that we face serious challenges to our natural resources: climate change, air and water pollution, a lost connection between some Americans and the outdoors, and a fragmentation and loss of open space,” said Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture. “We believe that the best way to answer these challenges is to work with landowners, conservation groups, sportsmen and women, local communities, and state and local governments to conserve America’s great outdoors, and in doing so, reconnect Americans to our forests, working lands and public lands.”

This conference will bring together leaders from communities across the country that are working to protect their outdoor spaces. Participants will include working ranchers and farmers, sportsmen and women, State and local government leaders, Tribal leaders, public lands experts, conservationists, youth leaders, business representatives and others who view the outdoors as integral to their communities. The discussion will center on the conservation opportunities in communities, the challenges facing them, and the innovative solutions they are crafting from the bottom up.

The conference will offer an opportunity for participants to engage with each other, learn from past and ongoing efforts, communicate how the Federal Government can support these efforts, and identify new opportunities to work together to modernize our approach to conservation, and reinvigorate the national conversation about our outdoors.

Media credentialing information will be released when it becomes available.

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Secretary Salazar Unveils New and Expanded “Youth in the Great Outdoors” Initiative

February 09, 2010.

Secretary Salazar

02/08/2010

WASHINGTON, D.C.- Today Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar told the annual Corps Network Forum that he has challenged the Interior bureaus to increase youth employment opportunities in 2010 by 50 percent over 2009 figures and in 2011 by 60 percent. This new challenge will give a big boost to youth employment and education programs throughout the nation.

“You are the future conservation leaders in the United States of America,” Salazar told the members and staff of conservation corps from across the country. “As stewards of our parks, wildlife refuges and other public lands, the Department of the Interior emphasizes not only the importance of nature to youth but also the importance of youth to nature. We hope that you not only find a job but also a connection to the Great Outdoors and a career in the emerging Clean Energy Economy.”

The Secretary announced that together, Interior and its bureaus will directly employ at least 12,000 youth in 2010—a 50 percent increase over the 8,000 in 2009. The department also indirectly employs youth through other organizations and reaches millions of youth through education and recreation programs.

“Step by step, corps member by corps member, year by year, together we are building a 21st Century Youth Conservation Corps that will not only help provide jobs for thousands of youth but also will help protect America’s Treasured Landscapes, build our new renewable energy frontier, and empower Native American communities,” the Secretary said.

At the event today, Secretary Salazar also unveiled a new Bureau of Reclamation Youth Conservation Program and announced that the agency has selected the Corps Network to help it develop the program.

“We are particularly excited to work with your Corps Network to develop the Bureau of Reclamation’s new program that will engage youth in hands-on crew work, as well as internship opportunities,” Secretary Salazar noted.

Funding for this cooperative agreement could be up to $5 million over a five year period. At Reclamation, the youth will learn and contribute to Reclamation goals of delivering water for agriculture and municipal users, providing renewable energy for America’s future, focusing on 21st Century Water Management and a commitment to Native American Tribes.

The other Interior bureaus—including the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Geological Survey–have devised action plans to expand their youth programs to meet the Secretary’s challenge.

FY 2011 Budget Proposal and Youth

The importance of the Youth in the Great Outdoors Initiative is reflected in the FY 2011 budget proposal, which includes large increases not only in employment of teens and young adults ages 16-25 but also in education and recreation programs that engage youth of all ages.

Increases include $5.8 million for youth employment and education programs in the national park system and $2 million for youth programs at national wildlife refuges. The budget also includes $2 million for the Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management to join with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in public-private partnerships to promote priority species conservation on both public and private lands. The National Park Service also will dedicate $6.4 million of recreation fees collected at parks to youth projects that benefit the visitor experience. This is an additional $2 million over the 2010 level.

Office of Youth in the Great Outdoors: Employ, Educate, Engage

In 2009 Secretary Salazar established a new departmental Office of Youth to catalyze these programs. The office will lead efforts to “employ, educate and engage” Youth in the Great Outdoors.

Employment

The Secretary noted that today’s programs have inherited the spirit of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which provided employment during the Great Depression of the 1930s and also helped build trails, facilities and conservation projects in national parks and other areas.

“Our economic troubles are particularly tough on young people, just as they were during the Great Depression,” said Secretary Salazar. “Young people again face double-digit unemployment rates (20% according to some estimates). And Interior is again in a unique position to put thousands of young people to work – especially during the summer, when young people need jobs the most.”

The Youth in the Great Outdoors Initiative places a special emphasis on engaging youth from underserved communities where unemployment is highest, as well as young women and girls.

Education and Engagement

In addition to employment, the Department of the Interior engages millions more youth each year through educational and other programs.

“The future of America’s treasured landscapes depends upon the next generation’s understanding of and connection to the Great Outdoors, so getting younger children outside in nature and providing educational programs for them is just as important as providing jobs for older youth,” said Secretary Salazar.

For example, Department of the Interior and bureau programs serve:

More than 30 million youth each year in meaningful environmental education and service-learning programs in parks and refuges and thousands in historic preservation projects.
More than 42,000 First American students, in elementary and secondary schools funded by the Bureau of Indian Education and located in 23 states across America.
More than 6 million children through recreation programs and opportunities in parks, refuges and other public lands that take young people into the great outdoors where they can connect with nature and build relationships with their families and communities.

For more information on youth programs, please visit http://doi.gov/whatwedo/youth/.

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National Parks Reach Out to Blacks Who Aren’t Visiting

(Reprinted from New York Times)

Shelton Johnson, a ranger at Yosemite and author of “Gloryland: A Novel,” published last year by Sierra Club/Counterpoint

November 2, 2010

By MIREYA NAVARRO

When Shelton Johnson was 5, his family took him to Berchtesgaden National Park in the Bavarian Alps. To this day, he remembers his sense of awe.

“The mountains, the sky being so close — it affected me profoundly,” said Mr. Johnson, who now works as a ranger at Yosemite National Park in California.

In 23 years on the job, Mr. Johnson, 52, has been equally struck by how few of his fellow African-Americans visit the national parks, Yosemite included. A few years ago, he decided to do something about it.

In a plaintive letter to Oprah Winfrey, he wrote:

On Friday, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” devoted the full hour to a segment that was taped at Yosemite in response to Mr. Johnson’s appeal. Part 2 of the episode is to be broadcast on Wednesday.

The visitors issue is a pressing one for the National Park Service, which is expanding its efforts to diversify both its guests and its work force as the agency prepares to celebrate its centennial in 2016.

“If the American public doesn’t know that we exist or doesn’t care, our mission is potentially in jeopardy,” said Jonathan B. Jarvis, who took over as director of the Park Service last year. “There’s a disconnect that needs addressing.”

Jim Gramann, a visiting social scientist with the Park Service who is overseeing a review of a follow-up survey in 2008 and 2009 that is to be released early next year, said the gap persisted.

“The demographic face of America is not reflected in national park visitation, with a few exceptions,” Mr. Gramann said. In the large Western parks especially, he added, visitors are overwhelmingly non-Hispanic white, highly educated and affluent.

Park Service officials have identified factors like cost, travel distance and lack of information — for example, ignorance about what activities the parks offer — as barriers to visits.

But some officials acknowledge that the parks may not seem welcoming to specific ethnic groups. They cited rules that limit the number of people in picnic areas or the number of tents that can be pitched at specific sites, which can clash with the vacation style of extended Latino families.

Yet no group avoids national parks as much as African-Americans. The 2000 survey found that blacks were three times as likely as whites to believe that park employees gave them poor service and that parks were “uncomfortable places.”

Park Service officials emphasize that the demographics vary, and that parks like the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta and the Manzanar National Historic Site in Independence, Calif., site of a World War II detention camp for Japanese-Americans, draw diverse crowds.

But attendance tends to be more homogenously white at wilderness parks like Yosemite, where a 2009 survey found that 77 percent of the visitors were white, 11 percent Latino, 11 percent Asian and 1 percent black.

When Ms. Winfrey visited Yosemite this month to tape her show, Mr. Johnson said, he was not surprised to hear that it was her first trip to the park and her first time camping. He said he was more likely to meet someone from Finland or Israel in the park than from, say, Harlem or Oakland, Calif.

“It’s something that’s pervasive in the culture — it doesn’t matter whether you’re Oprah or a postal worker,” Mr. Johnson said. (Ms. Winfrey was traveling and unavailable for an interview, a spokeswoman said.)

Ms. Roberts said a 19-year-old woman in a focus group in Denver had told her: “My granddaddy told me the K.K.K. hangs out up in the mountains. Why would I want to go?”

Mr. Johnson, who was born in Detroit, said he visited Berchtesgaden in the Alps when his father was stationed in Germany as a staff sergeant in the Army.

Mr. Johnson, who majored in English literature and creative writing at the University of Michigan, became a ranger in 1987 after what he described as a lark of a summer job washing dishes at the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park.

Today, the Park Service’s 25,000 employees are 83 percent white.

Incorporating stories like the Buffalo Soldiers’ tale into tours and brochures is one step the Park Service has taken to be more welcoming as well as more accurate. But such efforts are scattered, said Mr. Jarvis, the agency’s director, and far more are needed.

Mr. Jarvis said the Park Service was planning more partnerships with high schools that arrange park jobs for students and more naturalization ceremonies for new citizens in parks. It is also seeking to recruit employees at black colleges.

With the “The Oprah Winfrey Show” segments and a black family in the White House who made a point of vacationing in Yellowstone last summer, some experts suggest that the climate is favorable for a turnaround in park visits.

“It’s all layered,” said Carolyn Finney, an assistant professor of environmental science policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who is working on a book about blacks’ relationship to the natural environment. “You need ways to make people think about the parks differently.”

First Lady Michelle Obama Asks Junior Rangers to Take It Outside at Our National Parks

Obama Administration Officials Announce White House Conference on America’s Great Outdoors

Media credentialing information will be released when it becomes available.

Secretary Salazar Unveils New and Expanded “Youth in the Great Outdoors” Initiative

Secretary Salazar

02/08/2010

At the event today, Secretary Salazar also unveiled a new Bureau of Reclamation Youth Conservation Program and announced that the agency has selected the Corps Network to help it develop the program.

“We are particularly excited to work with your Corps Network to develop the Bureau of Reclamation’s new program that will engage youth in hands-on crew work, as well as internship opportunities,” Secretary Salazar noted.

The other Interior bureaus—including the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Geological Survey–have devised action plans to expand their youth programs to meet the Secretary’s challenge. FY 2011 Budget Proposal and Youth

The importance of the Youth in the Great Outdoors Initiative is reflected in the FY 2011 budget proposal, which includes large increases not only in employment of teens and young adults ages 16-25 but also in education and recreation programs that engage youth of all ages.

Office of Youth in the Great Outdoors: Employ, Educate, Engage

In 2009 Secretary Salazar established a new departmental Office of Youth to catalyze these programs. The office will lead efforts to “employ, educate and engage” Youth in the Great Outdoors.

Employment

The Secretary noted that today’s programs have inherited the spirit of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which provided employment during the Great Depression of the 1930s and also helped build trails, facilities and conservation projects in national parks and other areas.

The Youth in the Great Outdoors Initiative places a special emphasis on engaging youth from underserved communities where unemployment is highest, as well as young women and girls. Education and Engagement

In addition to employment, the Department of the Interior engages millions more youth each year through educational and other programs.

For example, Department of the Interior and bureau programs serve:

More than 30 million youth each year in meaningful environmental education and service-learning programs in parks and refuges and thousands in historic preservation projects.

More than 42,000 First American students, in elementary and secondary schools funded by the Bureau of Indian Education and located in 23 states across America.

More than 6 million children through recreation programs and opportunities in parks, refuges and other public lands that take young people into the great outdoors where they can connect with nature and build relationships with their families and communities.

For more information on youth programs, please visit http://doi.gov/whatwedo/youth/.

Intern Spotlight: Why GYF Is Needed

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The other Interior bureaus—including the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Geological Survey–have devised action plans to expand their youth programs to meet the Secretary’s challenge.

FY 2011 Budget Proposal and Youth

The Youth in the Great Outdoors Initiative places a special emphasis on engaging youth from underserved communities where unemployment is highest, as well as young women and girls.

Education and Engagement