Guest column: Who wouldn’t want a national park?
| October 5, 2024
This is a guest column by John Donahue, a former National Park Service superintendent for the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.
The great public lands of the Eastern United States are distinguished by some of the oldest mountains on earth, covered in forest from Canada to Florida.
The Appalachian Trail connects forests from Maine to Georgia. Yet very few of these exceptional and sacred places are given the highest level of protection, national park status.
On this public land, we should strive to create the Delaware River National Park & Lenape Preserve.
The great states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and nearby New York deserve to have a national park as much as any place out west.
Yes, we have historic sites, battlefields, monuments, and those are loved and honored, but there are no designated national parks. The 60 million people living here should not have to drive to Montana or Maine to enjoy the opportunities that come with that designation.
The wildness of the east is exemplified by the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area (DEWA), created specifically to provide outdoor equity for all the urban people living within a day’s drive.
The proposed national park and preserve is the solution, not the problem. It is environmental justice spelled out in the Senate and House reports, over 60 years ago, creating the DEWA.
President Johnson summarized the intent of Congress on signing the bill into law:
“The Delaware Water Gap National Recreation bill authorizes the creation of a 72,000-acre national park……. A full 15 percent of this Nation’s entire population will live within 100 miles of this reservation…… these people of ours yearn for beauty and hunger for the opportunity to find refreshment in nature.”
We as Americans can elevate a small 9,980 acres to national park status and the remaining 56,000 acres to be the Lenape Preserve.
There is no cost involved since these are only federally owned lands in the proposal. No other NRA has the volume and diversity of hunting that is found in DEWA. That is exactly why preserves are created, enshrining hunting in a more protective manner with less discretionary decisions by the agency.
Collaboration with sportsmen can ensure language more protective of traditional uses. Cooperation can also result in added connectivity, resilience and prevent any loss of huntable acres.
A small sliver for the non-hunting public (more than 95 percent of visitors) isn’t much to ask, amid hundreds of thousands of huntable acres directly surrounding the park and millions more in the surrounding area.
Let’s place this gem of our national heritage into the jeweled crown of the national park system, the highest level of protection according to NPS (nps.gov).
Let’s make it America’s Delaware River National Park and Lenape Preserve because of the unique and extraordinary complex of opportunities to be inspired.
Found in this one special place: the Appalachian Trail, the longest undammed river in the Eastern United States, the Kittatinny Ridge, a world class migratory highway, and 12,000 years of demonstrated human occupation; all within the Lenapehoking, homeland of the Lenape people.
The evolution of land use is written in the fields and forests among those oldest mountains on the earth. All of this found within the heart of hundreds of thousands of acres of connected public lands in one grand landscape.
Eliminating the existing DEWA authority to manipulate habitat will stop any efforts to convert forest to field as has happened in the past. It will benefit the residents of this tourist-based locality as seen in cited studies listed on the park website, ourpark.org.
Most importantly, it will provide more opportunities for all Americans to be inspired. Gifford Pinchot implored us to create the greatest good. This proposed national park and preserve does exactly that.
There are opponents to sharing, and they are entitled to their opinion, but opinion is all they offer, mixed with misinformation, falsehoods and canard.
In West Virginia, locals urged their representatives to create the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.
“This, I think, is going to be such a major investment in tourism in West Virginia,” Senator Capito said. “Being a national park is so much of a gold standard of approval and excellence.”
Since its creation, the park and preserve has added new huntable acres and increased its budget. Local businesses are thriving.
Let’s encourage national environmental groups who profess support for more national parks to put action behind their words. Recognizing and giving back to the land and sharing with every American is what the Delaware River National Park and Lenape Preserve Alliance, proposes.
Who wouldn’t want a national park? Only people who live in fear of change of any kind may not.
Who wouldn’t want a national park? Only those who want the park to continue being underfunded and the infrastructure to crumble may not.
Only those who want the increased development outlined in the approved Visitor Use Management Plan may not.
Only those who want our children stuck in an economy where they can’t live and thrive here may not.
Only those who don’t want to share and want to keep the very people the park was created for away may not.
The status quo guarantees DEWA will continue to be one of the most underfunded, overburdened parks in the system. Go to the website ourpark.org and voice your support.
Americans are proud of our national parks and will love the Delaware River National Park and Lenape Preserve.