Analysis Of The National Park Service (NPS): The Decline Of National Parks

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The National Park Service (NPS) has put a lot of effort in making national parks more appealing to society today. Visiting national parks in the past was something people used to enjoy doing together, but as the years have gone on the number of people visiting national parks have significantly decreased. The NPS believes this decrease in the national park visitation is due to the amount of technology used today. Many efforts have been made to get millennials off of their phone and outside enjoying national monuments, however, most of the efforts made are unsuccessful because this generation is based on technology. The NPS has noticed a decline in the number of people visiting the nation’s national parks. This service concluded that technology …show more content…

Many promotions and initiatives are put into play to get more children in the parks. Barack Obama launched Every Kid in a Park that gave “fourth graders and their families free admission to national parks for the past school year and summer” (Egan and Egan). This program is now a 12­year program to get children in the parks at a young age to hopefully increase their want to the national parks as they grow up. Although, these initiatives and promotions may have an effect it does not change the fact that technology is still being used more and that national parks are not something most children want to go see. Whether or not technology is a factor visiting national parks is not a fun getaway with friends anymore. Not only are the NPS trying to take different initiatives to get young children in the parks, they are also trying to make sure everyone feels equal while visiting the parks. Most people that visited in the parks in the past were white because every other race had to work for their money and they did not have time to go visit a park. Even though today that is not the case other races did not grow up going to the parks, so most of the other races do not visit these parks or feel like they should. To change this feeling, “NPS is also broadening its historical interpretation services to reflect the diversity of our population and experiences of groups such as African­ Americans, Latinos/Latinas and women” (Bilmes and Loomis). Although, the NPS are trying to make these parks more appealing to young children and all races does not mean that more people will visit these