Summary

President Biden’s Parks

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President Biden added 10 national park units. Seven are historic civil rights sites: Amache NHS, Blackwell School NHS, Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School NM, Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley NM, Frances Perkins NM, New Philadelphia NHS, and Springfield 1908 Race Riot NM. And three are national scenic trails: Ice Age, New England and North Country NSTs.

President Biden’s parks legacy is now complete, and overall he’s accomplished more than the first term of his predecessor, who approved five small park units, cut Bears Ears & Grand Escalante by over a million acres, and removed 19 US Biospheres from UNESCO. Biden doubled the scenic trails units from three to six, and his parks help protect the history of American Concentration Camps, desegregation in education, the Underground Railroad, and Black History.

Biden has also made many other changes that don’t affect the official total of park units.

  • Elevated to national historical parks
  • Created new national monuments
  • Expanded existing national monuments in California
    • San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles
    • Berryessa Snow Mountain in Lake County
  • Restored protections
    • Bears Ears in Utah
    • Boundary Waters in Minnesota
    • Grand Staircase Escalante in Utah and Arizona
    • NE Canyons & Seamounts (south of Cape Cod)
    • Tongass National Forest in Alaska
  • Limited exploitation and protected wildlife
    • Aransas and Big Boggy in Texas
    • Bristol Bay in Alaska
    • Chaco Canyon in New Mexico
    • Chumash Marine in California
    • Everglades in Florida
    • Lost Trail in Montana
    • Muleshoe in New Mexico and Texas
    • Paint Rock River in Tennessee
    • Roanoke River in North Carolina
    • Thompson Divide in Colorado
    • Wyoming Toad

All Teddy Roosevelt Sites

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The park service commemorates six parks for Teddy Roosevelt, from his childhood home in NYC, to the ranch in North Dakota where he mourned, to his family home on Oyster Bay, to the room where he was sworn in after an assassination, to the DC island that celebrates his legacy and to the monument that rightly places him among our greatest presidents. The carbon crisis threatens to end the environment Teddy Roosevelt saved for us, so he would want us to switch to electric vehicles to enjoy all his parks, as I did.

At least a dozen current National Parks began with Teddy Roosevelt protecting their land, besides his namesake park above. His friendship with John Muir inspired our entire national park system. We owe a debt that we can only repay by continuing his legacy of preservation for the future.

As President, Teddy Roosevelt protected 230 million acres for us in 20+ states, including national forests, rivers, preserves and more, such as around the beautiful San Luis Valley. He’s directly responsible for all the units listed below, plus others, as well as for signing the Antiquities Act by which presidents still designate national monuments.

“The civilized people of today look back with horror at their medieval ancestors who wantonly destroyed great works of art, or sat by slothfully by while they were destroyed.
We have passed that age, but we are, as a whole, still in that low state of civilization where we do not understand that it is also vandalism wantonly to destroy or to permit the destruction of what is beautiful in nature – whether it be a cliff, a forest, or a species of mammal or bird.
Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds.
We pollute the air, we destroy forests and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals – not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements.
But at last it looks as if our people were awakening.
Above all we should realize that the effort toward this end is essentially a democratic movement!
Now there is a considerable body of opinion in favor of our keeping for our children’s children, as a priceless heritage, all the delicate beauty and all the burly majesty of the mightier forms of wildlife.
Surely our people do not understand, even yet, the rich heritage that is theirs!”

Teddy Roosevelt, 1913