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LATEST NEWS
- Congress Debates Reopening National Parks Across the Country
October 2, 2013
- Press Telephone Briefing Today RE: Shutdown of National Parks Nationwide
October 1, 2013
- Government Shutdown Closes National Parks Nationwide
October 1, 2013
NPCA Timeline
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| August 25, 1916: |  The National Park Service is created by the Organic Act. |
| May 19, 1919: | The National Park Association (NPA) is created by the same people who founded the park service. The association is renamed the National Parks and Conservation Association in 1970 and National Parks Conservation Association in 2000. |
| December 1919: | NPA champions its first major park issue, advocating that the Park Service provide food for the elk that live inside Yellowstone during the winter, to prevent the elk from wandering outside the park in search of food and being killed by hunters. |
| 1920: | "National Parks Bulletin" is produced, which today is known as "National Parks magazine". |
| August 10, 1933: | President Franklin Roosevelt, after discussions with NPA, issues an executive order to transfer management of national monuments and military sites management from the Forest Service and the War Department to the Park Service. |
| May 30, 1934: |  After over 10 years of pressure from NPA, Congress agrees to create Everglades National Park. |
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| 1943: | NPA successfully works to keep the trees within Olympic National Park safe from WWII lumber production. |
| May 17, 1945: | NPA's first president and founder, Robert Sterling Yard, dies after 30 years of service. |
| March 1954: | NPA members join U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas in an eight day hike to advocate for the preservation of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. The demonstration helped stop plans for a proposed parkway on top of the canal and lead to the creation of the C&O Canal National Historical Park. |
| January 27, 1956: |  In preparation for the 50th anniversary of the National Park Service, the White House and Congress launched Mission 66, a 10-year commitment of $1 billion to support restoration efforts and construction of roads, campgrounds, and visitor centers throughout the under-funded and heavily-visited park system. NPA carefully monitors new development and construction in the park. |
| 1959: | NPA fosters the creation of the Student Conservation Program, which later becomes the Student Conservation Association in 1964. |
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| June 26, 1961: | NPA petitions to intervene in the Marble Canyon lawsuit, seeking to protect the Grand Canyon from two proposed dams. NPA wins the battle to protect the canyon four years later. |
| 1962: | NPA leads the fight against revising hunting policies in the congressionally designated parks. |
| 1978: | The Redwood National Park Expansion Act of 1978 is passed by Congress, after NPCA's first State of the Parks report in 1963 raised concerns about National Park Service's management of natural resources. |
| 1980: | NPCA awards its first William Penn Mott Park Leadership Award to Representative Morris Udall. The annual award recognizes the outstanding efforts of a member of Congress or other public official who stands as a strong advocate of the National Park System. NPCA launched a multi-year effort to update existing research on visitor impacts and creates the Visitor Impact Management System (VIMS), for setting visitor standards and limits in the parks. VIMS served as a model for National Park Service's Visitor Experience and Resource Protection planning. |
| December 2, 1980: | Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) is passed—creating 15 national parks in Alaska. |
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| 1982: | NPCA launches its regional program; today, NPCA operates 25 regional and field offices around the country. |
| June 1983: | NPCA and other organizations hold an international conference in Germany on preservation, conservation and environmental impacts on the national parks around the world, publishing Views of the Green. |
| 1983: | U.S. courts rule in favor of NPCA's amicus brief against the National Rifle Association. This ruling clarified that hunting is prohibited in national parks unless otherwise allowed by Congress. |
| 1984: | NPCA awards its first Stephen Tyng Mather Award to William Jewell. The annual award recognizes a federal employee who has risked his/her career for the principles and practices of good stewardship of the national parks. |
| 1986: | NPCA awards its first Marjory Stoneman Douglas Citizen Conservationist of the Year to M.S. Douglas. The annual award recognizes outstanding efforts of an individual that result in the protection of an established/proposed park unit. |
| November 12, 1996: | After 50 years of advocacy by NPCA, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve is created. |
| 1998: | NPCA and the Park Service launch the National Parks Business Plan Initiative (BPI) to assess the management procedures of individual parks and devise business plans to improve the management of financial resources within those parks. The Park Service adopts the program in 2002. |
| 1999: | NPCA publishes Vanishing Night Skies, a study that inspired the Park Service to investigate the effects of light pollution on the park system. The first Mosaic in Motion conference was organized by NPCA in San Francisco to provide a forum to establish, strengthen, and celebrate better relationships between the Park Service and communities of color across the United States. Two more conferences were held in 2000 and 2002. |
| 2000: | NPCA launched the Center for the State of the Parks to develop the first complete, comprehensive, and informed understanding of the condition of natural, cultural, and historic treasures in the national parks. |
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| 2005: | Using the Clean Air Act, NPCA won a lawsuit against the Department of the Interior to protect Yellowstone National Park from the proposed Roundup coal-fired power plant. |
| June 6, 2005: | The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the submerged lands and tidelands of Glacier Bay National Park belong to the general public, as managed by the Park Service, and not the state of Alaska. NPCA filed an amicus brief in this case, in an effort to ensure that the area, and its wildlife, would be protected by the Park Service. |
| 2005-2006: |  NPCA mounts a successful national campaign that blocks the rewriting and weakening of the National Park Service's guiding management policies. |
| 2007: | NPCA helps to secure a record $122-million funding increase for the National Park Service. |
| 2008: | EPA bows to pressure from NPCA and others, and abandons its plans to weaken pollution standards that would have made it easier to build new coal-fired power plants near national parks, which would have marred scenic views and endangered visitors and wildlife in our parks. |
| 2009: | Congress provides a reinvestment of more than $900 million in America's national park infrastructure as part of Economic Recovery Bill, creating jobs in rural and urban communities across the country. |
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