The Northeast Region has initiated a Climate Change Steering Committee that is promoting a sustainable building initiative along with energy audits, for all covered facilities. Also, parks in the Northeast Region are being directed to enter the Climate Friendly Parks Program and to establish regional Green Teams.

Both the Secretary of the Interior and the Director of the National Park Service have mandated youth programs as a high priority, calling for an increase in employment opportunities for youth in the Bureau by 60% this fiscal year. They have also directed the NPS to engage youth in resource and energy conservation efforts.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

America's Great Outdoors - Listening Session


This program has been in the works for a while, and the fact that we participated is amazing. We travelled to the WHYY station in Philadelphia. We got the chance to hear from key figures from the Department of the Interior (DOI) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA), including:

- Jay Jensen, Deputy Under Secretary of Natural Resources and Environment, USDA

- Robert Stanton, Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the Interior

- Will Shafroth, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Fish & Wildlife & Parks (DOI)

- Dan Wenk, Deputy Director of the National Park Service (DOI)

After the informational sessions, we - that is to say several hundred youth employees/volunteers - broke up into "focus groups."

Each group was tasked with discussing the most effective ways that the government could improve attendance and overall quality of National Historical Parks and Sites. The group I attended decided that the three best ways would be to:

1. Better incorporate National Parks into education, via annual field trips in public schools, so that people would get a better appreciation for the parks.

2. Sponsor an informative documentary that would appear before movies in theatres. While people go to see their favorite shows, they would get a glimpse of what a national park has to offer and even if they didn't end up going, the interest might be passed on to their friends and families.

3. Widespread pamphlets to the general public that provide information on nearby parks and what could be done there. This would increase the number of visitors if more people actually knew that the parks existed. (I saw several parks in PA that I'd never even heard of at the presentation slideshow.)

After all was said and done, one speaker from each of the six youth groups would stand and present the ideas at a podium where they'd be recorded and sent to the president. I was one of those six speakers. When you get up to speak before a recording that's going to the president, you definitely feel humbled.

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