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FEATURED PARK
Grand Canyon National Park,
Arizona
Acclaimed filmmaker Ken
Burns has created a sweeping documentary film about our national
parks. The National Parks: America's Best Idea,
premiered September 27th to great acclaim. Ken Burns's film
tells the stories of American citizens who fought to protect our
most precious places and to create our national parks.
The Grand Canyon is one such place that owes its
existence to dedicated Americans who realized something precious
was at risk. It started in 1888 when the Wetherill brothers
found the ancient cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde. Soon a
Scandinavian anthropologist expressed interest in
taking artifacts back to Sweden--a move that sparked his
arrest, followed by the surprising discovery that he had broken
no law.
John F. Lacy led the effort to pass the
Antiquities Act in 1906, giving the president the power to
create national monuments and to protect American antiquities.
Theodore Roosevelt invoked the new Antiquities Act to protect
cultural treasures, such as Mesa Verde, and also to conserve
remarkable geological features, such as the Grand Canyon. Today
Grand Canyon National Park receives more than 4 million visitors
a year from around the world.
View
the slideshow > >
OUR LATEST CAMPAIGNS
Safeguard Our National Parks from
Climate Change
Senate
on verge of historic vote on climate legislation
Earlier this year the, U.S. House of Representatives
passed landmark legislation that would reduce pollution that
contributes to global warming, and provide our national parks
with unprecedented new funding to combat climate-related damage
already unfolding across our treasured lands. The Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee will vote on similar
legislation this week, followed by a full Senate vote, possibly
later this fall.
Getting this climate legislation
enacted is among NPCA's top priorities. National Park Service
Director Jon Jarvis has called climate change the greatest
threat the parks have ever faced. As chronicled in NPCA's recent report,
climate change is profoundly threatening national park wildlife,
from the coral reefs of Biscayne to the grizzlies of
Yellowstone. Unless we act now to reduce global-warming
pollution and safeguard wildlife habitat from rapidly advancing
changes, many species of plants and animals could be driven from
the parks--and even to the point of extinction.
Please
help NPCA safeguard the national parks and their wildlife by
taking action now. Urge your senators to vote for legislation
that cuts global-warming pollution and protects our national
parks. Decisive action now can help bring about a more hopeful
future for wildlife and for ourselves.
Click here to take
action today!
National
Park Champions
 In his latest film,
The National Parks:
America's Best Idea, Ken Burns tells the story of how
our national parks came to be. It is the story of Americans from
all walks of life—artists, explorers, soldiers,
scientists, vacationers—rich and poor, who fell in love
with special American places and worked to save those places for
everyone to enjoy.
Fortunately, that story doesn't end
with Burns's film. The story continues today, as individual
Americans continue the fight to protect parks big and small
around the country.
We invite you to listen to the
stories of today's park champions in their own words. Learn how
Maxine Johnston became the godmother of Big Thicket National
Preserve. Find out why Clarence Moriwaki has spent a decade
working to ensure that no one forgets about the 120,000 Japanese
Americans forcibly removed to internment camps during World War
II.
Listen
Today > >
Make Room on Your Coffee Table: National Parks:
Our American Landscape
 You've seen his work in
nearly every issue of National Parks magazine for three
years running--from the railyards of Steamtown National Historic
Site to the waters of the Everglades and the peaks of Denali.
Now photographer Ian Shive has collected hundreds of his best
images for a new book entitled The National Parks: Our
American Landscape, and he's set aside a percentage of
the profits to benefit NPCA. An introduction from our own Tom
Kiernan accompanies essays by National Parks editors
who detail the experience of collaborating with Shive in our
Washington offices and in the field. But the photos are the real
draw, and the iconic landscapes are all here: Arches and the
Grand Canyon, Glacier and Zion, Yellowstone and Yosemite. So,
too, are the sights that many of us overlook: the pure white
gypsum of White Sand Dunes, a jellyfish floating in the Channel
Islands, a tarantula and a scorpion underfoot in Big Bend. It's
a great gift for any park lover you know, and it's not a bad way
to pick your next vacation spot, either. Through special
arrangement with the publisher, NPCA members can purchase the
book at 35% off the cover price by entering coupon code EANP0454
at www.earthawareeditions.com
(Earth Aware Editions, 204 pp., $39.95 retail).
TRAVEL WITH
NPCA
Grand Canyon Raft:
Phantom Ranch to Diamond Creek
September 2-11,
2010
 Grand Canyon National
Park is one of the most popular destinations in North America;
experience it as few others do. Hike down to the canyon floor
where you meet expert raft guides. Each day of the next week,
you'll spend several hours floating down the Colorado through
renowned whitewater. Opt to participate in easy to strenuous
side hikes or simply rest in the beauty of the canyon along the
way. You'll also learn the geological and cultural history of
the canyon region from Park Service rangers and your NPCA
leader. For more information please call us at 800.628.7275,
email us at travel@npca.org, or go online to www.npca.org/whitewater.
OUR LATEST
REPORT
Center for the
State of the Parks: Effigy Mounds National
Monument
 NPCA's Center for
State of the Parks recently released an assessment of the
condition of cultural and natural resources at Effigy Mounds
National Monument. The park is in northeastern Iowa and is home
to some of the nation's best examples of American Indian-built
earthen mounds, several historic structures, and significant
cultural landscapes. American Indians constructed the
mounds--some of which are in the shape of animals--sometime
during the Woodland Period (1000 B.C. to A.D. 1000). According
to this assessment, Effigy Mounds National Monument's natural
and cultural resources are in "fair" condition overall.
Monument staff are doing all they can to protect Effigy
Mound's natural and cultural treasures with the resources
available. But internal and external threats continue to
endanger the monument's treasures. A lack of funds makes it
difficult to complete top-priority resource projects such as
constructing a walking trail to some of the monument's most
popular mounds; collecting oral histories from people associated
with the park's past; recording oral histories of employees
(past and current); and surveying, controlling, and monitoring
the invasive non-native garlic mustard plant. What's more, a
lack of funding and staff, in addition to a dearth of planning
and management documents, limits the staff's ability to fully
protect and manage park resources.
In the face of these
and other challenges, Park Service staff are accomplishing
important resource-protection projects--including treating
degraded landscapes with prescribed burns, returning historical
species to the landscape, reintroducing the once-extirpated
peregrine falcon, and providing popular teacher workshops to
help local educators bring the history and natural resources of
the monument into their classrooms.
Learn
more about the park and threats it faces >
>
National Parks Magazine: Fall
2009
 The Fall issue of
National Parks magazine takes a look at the life of a
fire lookout in North Cascades, details the journey of
photographers working to preserve Glacier National Park, and
relates the experience of the Second Century Commission—a
group of high-profile park lovers who carved out an agenda for
the parks' next 100 years. And if you enjoyed Ken Burns's recent
PBS film, you may want to spend some time getting to know John
Grabowska, the OTHER national parks filmmaker, whose handiwork
is shown at visitors centers all over the country. National
Parks magazine is a member benefit, but you can read a few
selections from each issue at www.npca.org/magazine.
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The National Parks
Conservation Association has launched a Twitter account! If you
use Twitter, or have friends and family who do, be sure to
follow NPCA for the latest national park news. 
