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FEATURED PARK
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
Acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns has created a sweeping documentary film about our national parks. The National Parks: America's Best Idea, premiered September 27th to great acclaim. Ken Burns's film tells the stories of American citizens who fought to protect our most precious places and to create our national parks.
The Grand Canyon is one such place that owes its existence to dedicated Americans who realized something precious was at risk. It started in 1888 when the Wetherill brothers found the ancient cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde. Soon a Scandinavian anthropologist expressed interest in taking artifacts back to Sweden--a move that sparked his arrest, followed by the surprising discovery that he had broken no law.
John F. Lacy led the effort to pass the Antiquities Act in 1906, giving the president the power to create national monuments and to protect American antiquities. Theodore Roosevelt invoked the new Antiquities Act to protect cultural treasures, such as Mesa Verde, and also to conserve remarkable geological features, such as the Grand Canyon. Today Grand Canyon National Park receives more than 4 million visitors a year from around the world.
View the slideshow > >
OUR LATEST CAMPAIGNS
Safeguard Our National Parks from Climate Change
Senate on verge of historic vote on climate legislation
Earlier this year the, U.S. House of Representatives passed landmark legislation that would reduce pollution that contributes to global warming, and provide our national parks with unprecedented new funding to combat climate-related damage already unfolding across our treasured lands. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will vote on similar legislation this week, followed by a full Senate vote, possibly later this fall.
Getting this climate legislation enacted is among NPCA's top priorities. National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis has called climate change the greatest threat the parks have ever faced. As chronicled in NPCA's recent report, climate change is profoundly threatening national park wildlife, from the coral reefs of Biscayne to the grizzlies of Yellowstone. Unless we act now to reduce global-warming pollution and safeguard wildlife habitat from rapidly advancing changes, many species of plants and animals could be driven from the parks--and even to the point of extinction.
Please help NPCA safeguard the national parks and their wildlife by taking action now. Urge your senators to vote for legislation that cuts global-warming pollution and protects our national parks. Decisive action now can help bring about a more hopeful future for wildlife and for ourselves.
Click here to take action today!
National Park Champions
 In his latest film, The National Parks: America's Best Idea, Ken Burns tells the story of how our national parks came to be. It is the story of Americans from all walks of life—artists, explorers, soldiers, scientists, vacationers—rich and poor, who fell in love with special American places and worked to save those places for everyone to enjoy.
Fortunately, that story doesn't end with Burns's film. The story continues today, as individual Americans continue the fight to protect parks big and small around the country.
We invite you to listen to the stories of today's park champions in their own words. Learn how Maxine Johnston became the godmother of Big Thicket National Preserve. Find out why Clarence Moriwaki has spent a decade working to ensure that no one forgets about the 120,000 Japanese Americans forcibly removed to internment camps during World War II.
Listen Today > >
Make Room on Your Coffee Table: National Parks: Our American Landscape
 You've seen his work in nearly every issue of National Parks magazine for three years running--from the railyards of Steamtown National Historic Site to the waters of the Everglades and the peaks of Denali. Now photographer Ian Shive has collected hundreds of his best images for a new book entitled The National Parks: Our American Landscape, and he's set aside a percentage of the profits to benefit NPCA. An introduction from our own Tom Kiernan accompanies essays by National Parks editors who detail the experience of collaborating with Shive in our Washington offices and in the field. But the photos are the real draw, and the iconic landscapes are all here: Arches and the Grand Canyon, Glacier and Zion, Yellowstone and Yosemite. So, too, are the sights that many of us overlook: the pure white gypsum of White Sand Dunes, a jellyfish floating in the Channel Islands, a tarantula and a scorpion underfoot in Big Bend. It's a great gift for any park lover you know, and it's not a bad way to pick your next vacation spot, either. Through special arrangement with the publisher, NPCA members can purchase the book at 35% off the cover price by entering coupon code EANP0454 at www.earthawareeditions.com (Earth Aware Editions, 204 pp., $39.95 retail).
TRAVEL WITH NPCA
Grand Canyon Raft: Phantom Ranch to Diamond Creek
September 2-11, 2010
 Grand Canyon National Park is one of the most popular destinations in North America; experience it as few others do. Hike down to the canyon floor where you meet expert raft guides. Each day of the next week, you'll spend several hours floating down the Colorado through renowned whitewater. Opt to participate in easy to strenuous side hikes or simply rest in the beauty of the canyon along the way. You'll also learn the geological and cultural history of the canyon region from Park Service rangers and your NPCA leader. For more information please call us at 800.628.7275, email us at travel@npca.org, or go online to www.npca.org/whitewater.
OUR LATEST REPORT
Center for the State of the Parks: Effigy Mounds National Monument
 NPCA's Center for State of the Parks recently released an assessment of the condition of cultural and natural resources at Effigy Mounds National Monument. The park is in northeastern Iowa and is home to some of the nation's best examples of American Indian-built earthen mounds, several historic structures, and significant cultural landscapes. American Indians constructed the mounds--some of which are in the shape of animals--sometime during the Woodland Period (1000 B.C. to A.D. 1000). According to this assessment, Effigy Mounds National Monument's natural and cultural resources are in "fair" condition overall.
Monument staff are doing all they can to protect Effigy Mound's natural and cultural treasures with the resources available. But internal and external threats continue to endanger the monument's treasures. A lack of funds makes it difficult to complete top-priority resource projects such as constructing a walking trail to some of the monument's most popular mounds; collecting oral histories from people associated with the park's past; recording oral histories of employees (past and current); and surveying, controlling, and monitoring the invasive non-native garlic mustard plant. What's more, a lack of funding and staff, in addition to a dearth of planning and management documents, limits the staff's ability to fully protect and manage park resources.
In the face of these and other challenges, Park Service staff are accomplishing important resource-protection projects--including treating degraded landscapes with prescribed burns, returning historical species to the landscape, reintroducing the once-extirpated peregrine falcon, and providing popular teacher workshops to help local educators bring the history and natural resources of the monument into their classrooms.
Learn more about the park and threats it faces > >
National Parks Magazine: Fall 2009
 The Fall issue of National Parks magazine takes a look at the life of a fire lookout in North Cascades, details the journey of photographers working to preserve Glacier National Park, and relates the experience of the Second Century Commission—a group of high-profile park lovers who carved out an agenda for the parks' next 100 years. And if you enjoyed Ken Burns's recent PBS film, you may want to spend some time getting to know John Grabowska, the OTHER national parks filmmaker, whose handiwork is shown at visitors centers all over the country. National Parks magazine is a member benefit, but you can read a few selections from each issue at www.npca.org/magazine.
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The National Parks Conservation Association has launched a Twitter account! If you use Twitter, or have friends and family who do, be sure to follow NPCA for the latest national park news. 
