Mesa Verde National Park has been selected to receive a 2012 Active Trails grant from the National Park Foundation (NPF), the official charity of Americas national parks. Now in its fourth cycle, the National Park Foundations Active Trails program promotes national parks as venues for community engagement, and encourages healthy living through various forms of recreation and volunteer service on land and water trails.
Since 2008, the National Park Foundation has granted over $1.2 million through its Active Trails program. To date, Active Trails has engaged more than 3,100 volunteers and 86 project partners who, combined, have contributed over 13,000 hours to help promote, refurbish or build national park trails that were ultimately enjoyed by 291,000 visitors (and counting!).Mesa Verde is one of 13national parks participating in the NPFs 2012 Active Trails program.
The NPF grant provided Mesa Verde National Park with funding to improve winter trails and purchase materials for winter ecology interpretive programs in the park. Mesa Verde is joining with the San Juan Mountains Association and the San Juan Four Corners Native Plant Society to offer a series of free winter ecology hikes during the 2012-2013 winter season. Four of the seven planned hikes will take place in Mesa Verde National Park. The first hike in the series takes place in the park on Saturday, Nov. 10. For further information on the hikes, visitwww.nps.gov/meve/planyourvisit/winter-activities.htm. Advance reservations are required for most of the hikes.
For more information on the National Park Foundation or on how to support and protect Americas national parks, visit www.nationalparks.org.