With Yellowstone being made the nation’s first nationwide park by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1862 and Theodore Roosevelt later establishing 5 others with the Nationwide Park Service (NPS) in 1916, new additions to the 63 parks throughout the U.S. have grown more and more uncommon within the fashionable age.
West Virginia’s New Valley Gorge is the nation’s latest nationwide park, having acquired a proper designation in December 2020.
Within the 20 years between 2004 and 2025, solely 5 others joined the record, which noticed its predominant interval of growth between the 1870s and Nineteen Forties: Nice Sand Dunes in Colorado, Pinnacles in California, Gateway Arch in Missouri, Indiana Dunes in Indiana, and White Sands in Mexico.
The complete title of “national park” is reserved for bigger areas of untouched land. Different designations comparable to nationwide historic website, nationwide monument, and nationwide forest are assigned to smaller websites that maintain both pure or cultural significance.
As of 2025, the NPS managed 433 official websites throughout the nation in whole.
Why is a congressman attempting to make part of Florida a nationwide park?
On the finish of August, Congressman Randy Positive (R-Fla.) launched into a push to get the Ocala Nationwide Forest within the southern a part of Florida designated as an official nationwide park. The nation’s largest contiguous sand pine scrub forest, Ocala additionally has a number of pure streams that make it a preferred website for swimmers and kayakers.
Within the invoice that he filed in Congress, Positive says that taking Ocala from a nationwide park website to a full park will “commemorate our Florida springs and the surrounding areas on a level like the Everglades or Yellowstone or Yosemite” and acknowledge the world as “something unique not just to Florida but to the country,” whereas additionally giving the world an financial enhance by driving tourism.
Even so, the proposal has already run into controversy — native resident Bobbie Jo Dameron created a Change.org petition, signed by over 6,600 individuals inside 48 hours of being posted — over what he argues will result in “unsustainable tourism and commercialization in the Ocala National Forest.”
Ocala Nationwide Forest has a number of streams that function house to completely different alligator species.
Picture supply: Ocala Nationwide Forest
“Threatens the long-term health of one of Florida’s most ecologically sensitive regions”: petition
Particular points introduced up embody elevated litter and soil erosion that comes from bigger variety of guests in addition to infrastructure that will should be changed so as to meet the demand for bigger numbers of vacationers.
“While we value public access to natural spaces, this bill threatens the long-term health of one of Florida’s most ecologically sensitive regions,” the petition reads. “The Ocala National Forest is already federally protected and funded through the U.S. Forest Service, conservation grants, and strategic partnership agreements.
“Extra laws selling tourism isn’t solely pointless but in addition harmful to the delicate ecosystems, endangered species, and quiet rural communities that decision this space house.”
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All this comes as the Trump administration targets national parks with widespread budget cuts and firings.
The 2026 budget that Congress passed at the start of July takes $1.2 billion in funds from the NPS — that in turn have resulted in crowding and decreased availability of services in many popular parks.
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Associated: Nationwide park director simply advised guests this season is ‘not going to be nice’
