How America's national parks shape our identity

What about pub- the public's perception of the park system? What do y- what do you find that people think it is, and, and then what does it turn out to be? As you said, I mean, it, it is varied.

Every, every site is distinct and individual.

Well, it's, it is complicated right now because I think a, a lot of Americans think of, uh, public lands as places that, um, are to be protected and to, uh, to keep development out and, and all that sort of stuff.

A lot of Americans look at public lands as places where they should be free to roam wherever they want and the government should keep their arms off of.

A lot of people look at them as resources, as places where we can go harvest wood and minerals and things like that.

There's, there's a lot of complications right now with the desire for people to want to go tour these places uninhibited, and that conflicted with the amount of people wanting to do it.

So there's been a whole lot of talk and, and administrative changes surrounding these timed entry reservations over the last few years.

So there, a lot of the big national parks have instituted reservation systems where in advance you have to book the time and day that you're going to go in, and some people think that is, you know, that is an infringement [chuckles] on their rights, and some people think, "Oh, that's great.

I get to know that I'm actually going to be able to enter this park on my vacation day." And then there's, there's the, the broad story happening right now surrounding the stories that we tell in these parks and the signage and, um, the, the exhibits about our history and about the complicated stuff in our history, mostly surrounding the Civil War and slavery and, uh, Native American removal.

And there have been, you know, efforts by the Trump administration to remove some of that signage, to change some of the language, to, um, remove, uh, remove things that might remind us of some of those sorts of things.

And then on the other side, you have this, uh, this desire to remove some of these, uh, Civil War m- monuments, uh, across the country.

Uh, that, that tension between those, the, the, the different sides of that argument has been going on for the better part of the last decade, um, a- along with then, uh, uh, presidents deciding to create national monuments and take them away.

A lot of our National Park Service sites are national monuments.

We've covered, actually, in our s- in our series this year, America at a Crossroads, in our 250th year, we've looked at some of the, the, uh, the conflict, um, um, between the administration and others over, over the National Park Service, and it is very much, um, in, uh, at the center of conversation and discussion.

Um, where do you see that?

Yeah, it, it's, uh, it, it's an interesting test.

The national parks system in general is complicated.

I think there's, there's this idea that it was always something, and then Trump has come in, and he's, it's sort of thrown things up in the air a bit.

And the part of that is true, that he has been the first president to try to reduce a national monument in scale.

And national monuments being interesting because of, of a president- Can set a national monument just by declaring so, whereas a national park, the, what we like to call the capital N capital P national parks, are designated by Congress and, you know, that takes an act of Congress.

But it, there actually is a kind of a long history of the complication of, of these sites and why they, they were created.

We think of them as, like, sort of special temples to nature, and a lot of times, you know, they're created because a couple of senators in a state want tourism, uh, in, in their area, and that's, that's what happens.

It doesn't mean these sites weren't special in the first place, but there has been this sort of complication over those sites, um, over the history, uh, of the National Park Service.

On the ground, I, I think when y- I think a lot of this conversation happens online.

I think people that a- are actually visiting these spaces aren't really, uh, concerned with it in, in any way i- in terms of they're not concerned that they're getting pummeled by too many, uh, images of, of, of slavery and, and Native American removal and, and all that sort of stuff.