Chattanooga Times Free Press

Park Service reaches out to minority communitie­s

- BY FELICIA FONSECA AND BEATRIZ COSTA-LIMA

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Ariz. — When Asha Jones and other Grand Canyon interns arrived for their summer at the national park, they were struck by its sheer immensity, beauty and world-class hiking trails. Soon, they noticed something else.

“It is time for a change here, specifical­ly, at Grand Canyon and in the National Park Service in general, to get people who look like me to your parks,” said Jones, a 19-year-old black student at Atlanta’s Spelman College.

The National Park Service, which oversees more than 131,000 square miles of parks, monuments, battlefiel­ds and other landmarks thinks it’s time for a change, too.

As it celebrated its 100th birthday Thursday, the agency faced some key challenges. Among them is reaching out to minority communitie­s in an increasing­ly diverse nation and getting them to visit and become invested in preserving the national parks.

“If public lands aren’t telling their story, and they don’t see themselves reflected in these beautiful places, they may not support them,” Interior

Secretary Sally Jewell said. “They may not recognize that these are their assets and protect them for future generation­s.”

The NPS doesn’t track the makeup of its visitors, but commission­ed studies have shown about three-quarters are white. The agency’s workforce is less diverse, at 83 percent white, a figure that can fluctuate with temporary employees.

Minorities are expected to eclipse the country’s white population before 2050.

The problem of lack of minority engagement is longstandi­ng and complex but can be tied to two main factors, said Myron F. Floyd, a leading scholar on race and ethnicity in outdoor recreation at North Carolina State University.

The first relates to cultural traditions. Outings to national parks generally aren’t passed down through generation­s in minority communitie­s, he said, and few minorities grow up with an appreciati­on for such sites. Also, for many years, African-Americans were excluded from national parks and other public resources, he said.

Barriers to visiting national parks also can be as simple as not knowing they exist, or not having a way to get to them or enough money for entry fees, said Jose Gonzales, Latino Outdoors founder.

The Park Service has made some changes to address these issues, including recruiting minority interns and producing videos and brochures for Spanishspe­aking audiences.

The agency also has pushed to designate more sites that highlight the history and contributi­ons of minorities. Some of its newest locations include the Cesar A. Chavez National Monument, establishe­d in 2012, and New York’s Stonewall Inn, the first national monument to gay rights, in June.

National parks need more support than ever because years of tight budgets have left them with a lengthy and growing backlog of maintenanc­e projects, officials say. The list of needed repairs totaled almost $12 billion as of last year.

The Park Service gets help from some outside groups like the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Conservanc­y, which recently worked to restore old cabins used by research scientists at Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. But that’s not enough, experts say.

“I would argue that one of the greatest challenges [the agency] faces in the 21st century is how to engage an increasing­ly racially and ethnically diverse population in order to maintain the support it has had for generation­s,” Floyd said.

Kristen Smith, a 44-year-old black woman from Long Island, N.Y., said she and two white friends were subjected to racial slurs and gawked at by visitors during a 2014 trip to Yellowston­e National Park in Wyoming. But she didn’t let it spoil her outlook on the outdoors.

She particular­ly enjoyed an earlier visit to Yosemite, where a hiking guide nonchalant­ly noted black men built some of the park’s first trails. The hundreds of Buffalo Soldiers — members of the nation’s first black Army regiments — were protectors of the land before it became Yosemite National Park, and also served at California’s Sequoia National Park.

“The part that was the nicest was having someone so casually mention that, acknowledg­e the truth,” Smith said.

The history of minorities in national parks isn’t always well-known. An annual pilgrimage to Yosemite’s Sing Peak honors Chinese Americans. Frazer Point in Maine’s Acadia National Park is named for a freed black slave who built a homestead on land that became part of the park.

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 ?? ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOS ?? Adam Nguyen, a crew member for the nonprofit organizati­on Rocky Mountain Conservanc­y, helps restore old cabins used by research scientists inside Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park, Colo. Rocky Mountain Conservanc­y works for the U.S. Park...
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOS Adam Nguyen, a crew member for the nonprofit organizati­on Rocky Mountain Conservanc­y, helps restore old cabins used by research scientists inside Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park, Colo. Rocky Mountain Conservanc­y works for the U.S. Park...
 ??  ?? A buck forages for edible leaves Thursday in Grand Teton National Park, Wyo. Thursday marked the 100th anniversar­y of the National Park Service.
A buck forages for edible leaves Thursday in Grand Teton National Park, Wyo. Thursday marked the 100th anniversar­y of the National Park Service.

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