Celebrating the contributions of the National Park Service at its centennial

This week, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, which oversees places like Yosemite, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon and – near our community of Coachella, California – Joshua Tree National Park.

On this historic milestone, we want to offer our firsthand perspective of what national parks, national monuments and other public lands contribute to communities like ours and urge the President to conserve other special places.

Joshua Tree was first protected 80 years ago by President Franklin Roosevelt. He permanently conserved an ecological oasis at the junction of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts using the Antiquities Act. This law allows the president to protect our public lands and places of “historical and scientific interest” as national monuments. Later, this special place would become a National Park thanks to the leadership of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and many others.

Decades later, FDR’s visionary action is still benefiting our community and region. Joshua Tree’s nearly 800,000-acre expanse is home to a stunning array of geological formations, one of the most diverse biological ecosystems in the American Southwest, and remnants of a rich cultural history belonging to a range of the region’s earliest civilizations as well as later pioneers.

Residents and visitors alike enjoy Joshua Tree National Park for what it adds to our quality of life. We have access to scenic terrain for hiking, biking, rock climbing and camping. We treasure the wide open skies and starry nights in the park and marvel at the wildlife and geological formations.

Joshua Tree also bolsters our economy by attracting more than 2 million visitors annually. In 2015, visitors to Joshua Tree and Death Valley National Parks and the Mojave National Preserve contributed more than $225 million to the region’s economy and provided more than 3,100 jobs. This destination is an important engine for our community. 

On the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, we celebrate the remarkable place that is Joshua Tree and recognize that FDR’s use of the Antiquities Act to protect this place added great value to our region. Given the Antiquities Act’s historic role in protecting special places here in the Coachella Valley, we are dismayed that anti-conservation extremists in Congress continue to attack this important law. In the 114th Congress alone, 12 bills and 11 amendments were introduced to severely curtail the law.

Thankfully, President Obama has a significant legacy of protecting our cultural heritage and natural treasures with the Antiquities Act. Earlier this year, President Obama designated the Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow, and Castle Mountains National Monuments in the California Desert. We’re grateful for his leadership in protecting these places as well as the leadership of Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Feinstein, all of whom contributed to this effort.

We urge the President to look to other special places to protect. There’s an effort underway to conserve Bears Ears in Utah, public lands that include more than 100,000 archaeological sites. There’s Gold Butte, Nevada’s own piece of the Grand Canyon, whose awe-inspiring petroglyphs deserve to be preserved for eternity. And then there’s the proposed Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument and an urgent need to protect these lands from threats of uranium mining and logging of old-growth forests.

These lands deserve the same status as Joshua Tree, a jewel of the Coachella Valley. We urge President Obama to preserve these places of natural, cultural and historic legacy for future generations. We have the benefit of history here in the Coachella Valley, and we can say that doing so is the definition of a win for all involved.

Steven A. Hernandez is Mayor of the City of Coachella and a long standing member of the Coachella Valley Conservation Commission. Betty Sanchez is a Coachella City Councilmember and member of the Coachella Valley Mountains Conservancy Board and Energy and Environment Committee.

The views expressed by authors are their own and not the views of The Hill.