Roger G. Kennedy, a former director of the National Park Service, revealed his support for that agency to assume control over the Valles Caldera National Preserve yesterday.
He announced this in an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, in response to another opinion piece in that paper earlier this week that dealt with the concept of the national park, a topic that has been receiving a great deal of media coverage recently due to the airing of the Ken Burns PBS miniseries “National Parks: America’s Best Idea.”
Kennedy lauds the concept of having protected land near cities, stating that “accessible places near urban areas are, as well, examples of good land use and as re-inspirators for everyday life. That is the joy of the accessible park lands around San Francisco, Denver, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.”
And now we need another great national park. The Valles Caldera, near the growing metropolitan areas of Albuquerque and Santa Fe, N.M., should be a national park.
Click here to read Kennedy’s op-ed in its entirety.
