Visitors who go to national parks to get away from it all may soon find that the whole corporate world has arrived ahead of them.
Crunched for cash, the National Park Service has opted to sweeten the rewards for corporate donors by allowing them to display their names and logos, although not advertising slogans. New rules will take effect by the end of the year.
Naming rights for a broad array of amenities will help the Park Service cover an $11 billion maintenance backlog. Buses, benches, bear-proof waste receptacles and food lockers can now have corporate sponsors.
According to the Washington Post, naming rights can be awarded for “(b)ricks or paving stones on the steps to a visitor center, video screens inside, educational, interpretive, research, recreation and youth programs, positions or endowments … and a donor will be allowed to design and build a park building, even operate it long-term.”
The reciprocal advantages are obvious: More funds for national parks during a time when federal funding is insufficient, and more visibility for donors, some of whom have been longtime park partners, contributing to many improvements with no more recognition than a small plaque. This is a natural advertising opportunity for outdoor recreation businesses like Osprey, and if there’s a price point they can afford, for local tourist-oriented businesses.
But the big signage is likely to go to corporations who sign deals for space in parks across the country, and this plan invites those businesses further into spaces that were once reserved for nature and history.
The applications must be carefully scrutinized. Mesa Verde National Park must continue, with every inch of its space, to be respectful of the descendant populations of the people who dwelt in cliff cities and mesa-top sites. Civil War battlefields cannot provide advertising space to bring festering resentments further into the 21st century. A World War II veteran, returning for one last visit to Pearl Harbor, will not want to sit on a bench sponsored by Mitsubishi.
Handled well across the 411 national parks, monuments and conservation areas, such a program could make the visitor experience better. That assumes several points: First, that only the right donors, with the right motivations, will be accepted. Second, that program costs can be controlled and substantial funding does accrue to the parks themselves. Finally, that sponsorships and the policies that govern them not be allowed to conflict with visitation and the values that support it. (A recent illustrative example is an attempt by the Park Service to ban the use of disposable plastic water bottles, a major source of trash. Lobbyists for the bottled water industry succeeded in killing the policy.)
Each park unit has an individual reason for existing, and commercialism definitely has the potential to cause problems. With contributions comes the expectation of influence, which must be countered with a firm focus on the true mission of the National Park Service.
Fearing that this is another step toward privatization of public lands is not illogical. That’s a real threat, although less to the Park Service than to multiple-use agencies, at least for now. A combination of ever-diminishing government funding and increasing dependence on private contributions is an effective method of moving in that direction.
The bottom line is that the National Park Service must protect the inherent value of the parks, which lies not in advertising space but in preserving, for all Americans, experiences that are becoming ever more rare.
The Park Service must be careful with this, and ready to pull back if problems emerge.