The appended message from the National Parks Foundation is all smiles. It's not until you look behind the facade will you see what is so troubling. Please go to the link provided and click around. It will take you but a moment to discover why I am drawing your attention to this upcoming Leadership Summit.

I can barely keep up with the rapidly increasing outpouring of this and similar propaganda. To be honest, I am finding it increasingly difficult to report upon the harm deliberately being done to our National Parks and to continue issuing warnings as I have done for the past decade.  It is, I suppose, like watching one's child bleeding to death with no help in sight and starting to accept what appears increasingly inevitable.

My greatest hope at this 11th hour is that the conservation community will get involved and will somehow manage to keep the President's Centennial Initiative from being passed into law. My hope is that come 2008 we will have for the first time in many years, a genuine opportunity to do right by the parks.

My greatest fear is that the conservation community will not merely stand by and watch the President's intentional destruction of the National Parks System, but that it will start giving chest compressions and thereby speed its exsanguination.

As I have been writing in many of my personal correspondences and now share with you...

The President's Centennial Initiative is the biggest threat to the NPS.
The President's Centennial Initiative is the biggest threat to the NPS.
The President's Centennial Initiative is the biggest threat to the NPS.
The President's Centennial Initiative is the biggest threat to the NPS.

Scott 

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Welcome to the National Park Foundation Leadership Summit!
Published on 09/12/2007

BUILDING THE NEXT CENTURY OF OUR PARKS

Dear Friends,

The National Park Foundation is extremely proud to convene the first-ever National Park Foundation Leadership Summit on Partnership and Philanthropy at the University of Texas at Austin from October 14 through 16.

Please join us for this unique opportunity that will bring together thought-leaders from across our nation to shape strategies, which will ensure that our national parks remain the world’s premier centers of learning, science, recreation, preservation, and partnership.

Private philanthropy has always been at the core of the preservation, protection, and improvement of America’s national parks, and will continue to be essential in securing their future. For the last four decades, the National Park Foundation – chartered by Congress as the only national charitable partner for national parks – has been the steward of that tradition, taking the lead to sustain and grow this legacy of private support.

The Leadership Summit offers a critical and compelling forum for generating innovative programmatic steps and tools to meet the challenges of this historic moment. With the enthusiastic support of our Honorary Chair, Mrs. Laura Bush, the Leadership Summit will harness the creative thought and energy of today’s leaders to support our parks in the next century.

I’m looking forward to seeing you at this historic conference.

Warm regards,

Vin Cipolla
President and CEO
National Park Foundation

Contact Information
National Park Foundation, Leadership Summit on Partnership and Philanthropy
202-354-6460, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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