March, 18 2010, 03:09pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Mark Wenzler, Director of Clean Air and Climate Programs, National Parks Conservation Association, 202.454.3335
Restore a Nation Report Highlights Positive Economic Impact of National Parks
Recommends funding restoration projects to create American jobs and address climate change
WASHINGTON
National parks are local economic drivers that create jobs and
support families across the United States, according to a new report by
the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), the nation's
leading voice for the national parks. The report, Restore a Nation: The Economic Benefits of Restoring the Lands and Waters of our National Parks,
also notes the need for new investments in restoration projects to
sustain these economies, maintain healthy ecosystems, address a
changing climate, and create American jobs.
"By funding restoration projects in national parks, such as
replanting native grasslands and rejuvenating streams and rivers; we as
a nation can restore our national park system and create more American
jobs ," said Mark Wenzler, NPCA director for clean air and climate
programs.
Restoration projects are more important than ever
given that drought, wildfires, and floods are on the increase; coastal
wetlands are declining; and wildlife are under increasing stress as
changing temperatures make their traditional homes unsustainable. This
ecological challenge also threatens to become an economic challenge for
countless communities, since national parks directly support $13.3
billion in private sector activity and maintain 267,000 jobs.
"Healthy
ecosystems in national parks provide communities with clean drinking
water and flood protection, and support revenue-generating businesses
like fishing, tourism, and recreation, especially in rural areas," said
Wenzler.
Among the projects highlighted in the report are those throughout the country that demonstrate economic benefits, including:
- Restoring coastal wetlands in Connecticut was significantly
correlated with an average increase in housing values of more than
$11,000; - Planting streamside forests to keep the water cool enough to
support aquatic life is saving an Oregon utility company $50 million
over five years; - Implementing a comprehensive Great Lakes restoration
strategy could support nearly $50 billion in economic activity in the
region; - Restoring the Elwha River in Olympic National Park is
projected to generate 1,200 new jobs in Clallam County, Washington-this
roughly 3 percent increase is more than the number of jobs lost in the
county's timber industry between 1987 and 1995; and - Implementing Florida's state climate action plan would
generate 148,000 jobs over 16 years, including nearly 40,000 jobs
restoring and establishing forests.
The report also includes the findings of a recent study that found
conserving or restoring land instead of using it for industrial
development is correlated with sustained economic growth. It
also highlights that ecosystem restoration projects have shown
impressive economic returns, some approaching 80 percent.
The Restore a Nation report concludes that taking action
now and investing in work that helps lands and animals respond to the
earth's changing climate-work that restores our ecosystems and
essential habitats-will benefit not only wildlife and our national
parks, but American communities.
This week, NPCA has also joined the
Outdoor Industry Association and 75 outdoor businesses in calling on
Congress to protect public lands from climate change impacts and fund
restoration projects to create American jobs. To view information on
the letter to Congress, including the full text, please click here.
To
view the full report, which includes examples from: California, the
Great Lakes, Louisiana, Maine, Connecticut, Washington State, Colorado,
and Arkansas, please visit the NPCA website at www.npca.org/restore.
To download photos and graphics from the report, please click here.
NPCA is a non-profit, private organization dedicated to protecting, preserving, and enhancing the U.S. National Park System.
LATEST NEWS
Gaza Journalists Killed by Israel Honored on World Press Freedom Day
"To claim these deaths are accidental is not only incredulous, it is insulting to the memory of professionals who lived their lives in service of truth and accuracy," said one expert.
May 03, 2024
As the international community marked World Press Freedom Day on Friday, journalists and advocates across the globe mourned and celebrated those killed in Israel's ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.
The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has publicly identified at least 97 media workers killed since Israel launched its retaliatory war on October 7: 92 Palestinian, three Lebanese, and two Israeli reporters.
"Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price—their lives—to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth," said CPJ program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna in a Friday statement. "Journalists are civilians who are protected by international humanitarian law in times of conflict. Those responsible for their deaths face dual trials: one under international law and another before history's unforgiving gaze."
Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF)—or Reporters Without Borders—puts the journalist death toll in Gaza above 100. Middle East Monitorreports at least 144 members of the press are among the 34,622 Palestinians that Israeli forces have killed in less than seven months in what the International Court of Justice has called a plausibly genocidal campaign.
RSF on Friday released its annual Press Freedom Index. In its section on the Middle East, the group states:
Palestine (157th), the most dangerous country for reporters, is paying a high price. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have so far killed more than 100 journalists in Gaza, including at least 22 in the course of their work. Since the start of the war, Israel (101st) has been trying to suppress the reporting coming out of the besieged enclave while disinformation infiltrates its own media ecosystem.
At the war's six-month mark in April, Jonathan Dagher, head of RSF's Middle East desk, declared that "this massacre must stop. Gaza's reporters must be protected, those who wish must be evacuated, and Gaza's gates must be opened to international media."
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"RSF calls on the international community, its leaders, and its governments, to do everything to step up pressure on the Israeli authorities to end this disaster," Dagher added. "Palestinian journalism must be protected as a matter of urgency."
The Paris-based group nominated Palestinian journalists covering Gaza for an annual award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)—an honor they received during a ceremony on Thursday.
"Each year, the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano Prize pays tribute to the courage of journalists facing difficult and dangerous circumstances," said Audrey Azoulay, the U.N. organization's director-general. "Once again this year, the prize reminds us of the importance of collective action to ensure that journalists around the world can continue to carry out their essential work to inform and investigate."
Palestinian journalists covering Israel’s war on Gaza have been awarded UNESCO’s World Press Freedom prize. More than 100 journalists, mostly Palestinians, have been killed in the war. pic.twitter.com/uSfIKsqTyQ
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 3, 2024
Nasser Abu Baker, president of the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate and vice-president of the International Federation of Journalists, accepted the prize on behalf of his colleagues in the besieged enclave.
"Journalists in Gaza have endured a sustained attack by the Israeli army of unprecedented ferocity—but have continued to do their jobs, as witnesses to the carnage around them," he said. "It is justified that they should be honored on World Press Freedom Day. What we have seen in Gaza is surely the most sustained and deadly attack on press freedom in history. This award shows that the world has not forgotten and salutes their sacrifice for information."
Mariam Abu Dagga, a 31-year-old photojournalist for the Independent Arabic displaced in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, toldCNN: "We are covering the war on Gaza because this is our journalistic duty. It is entrusted upon us... We challenged the Israeli occupation. We challenged the difficult circumstances and the reality of this war, a genocidal war."
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“Palestinian journalists have seen what no journalist has.”
For #WorldPressFreedomDay, we spoke to Palestinian journalist Hani Aburezeq, who's been showing the world Israel’s war on Gaza. pic.twitter.com/YikPzX12a7
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 3, 2024
While Israel has repeatedly claimed—as it did to CNN on Friday—that "the IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists," members of the press and others have cast doubt on such comments.
“For far too long Israel has been able to operate with impunity in the occupied Palestinian territory, and this has included occasionally killing reporters, like the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022," Simon Adams, president of the Center for Victims of Torture, told the Inter Press Service.
Given the number of journalists killed in Gaza since October, he said, "to claim these deaths are accidental is not only incredulous, it is insulting to the memory of professionals who lived their lives in service of truth and accuracy."
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"Unbelievable," said Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft executive vice president Trita Parsi, an outspoken critic of the Biden administration's support for Israel's mass killing of civilians in Gaza since October, in response to the news.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) first proposed inviting Netanyahu to give a congressional address in March, and told The Hill that he had sent a draft of the letter inviting the prime minister to Schumer to cosign. At the time, Schumer said he would "always welcome the opportunity for the prime minister of Israel to speak to Congress in a bipartisan way," but he has not signed on to the invitation yet.
"He intends to join the invitation, the timing is being worked out," a spokesperson for Schumer told The Hill on Thursday.
Schumer angered Netanyahu in March by saying on the Senate floor that he has "has lost his way" and is being pushed to "tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza" by far-right extremists in his Cabinet, putting Israel at risk of becoming a "pariah" state.
He said that along with Hamas, Netanyahu and his Cabinet are "major obstacles" to peace in the Middle East and called for new elections in Israel.
Palestinian rights supporters welcomed Schumer's rebuke but called on him to push President Joe Biden to cut off military funding for Israel, which has killed at least 34,622 Palestinians since October and has caused dozens of people to starve to death by blocking humanitarian aid.
Progressive advocate and former congressional candidate Lindsey Boylan said she was "deeply, irretrievably disappointed" in Schumer for planning to invite Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress.
"Netanyahu has stolen more from his own people than can ever be verbalized," said Boylan. "He is a criminal."
The news of the imminent bipartisan invitation comes as Israel is reportedly preparing to begin a full-scale ground assault on Rafah, where 1.2 million Palestinians have been displaced following the Israel Defense Forces' decimation of cities across Gaza, and as thousands of Americans have been arrested on college campuses in recent weeks for protesting U.S. support for the war.
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Rail workers voiced outrage Thursday after U.S. President Joe Biden quietly nominated a former Trump administration official with a history of supporting deregulation to Amtrak's board of directors, a move that one alliance of unions called a "slap in the face."
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The Associated Pressnotes that before serving at the FRA, Batory was president and chief operating officer of Conrail, "a service provider for the CSX and Norfolk Southern freight railroads." Norfolk Southern operated the train that derailed in East Palestine last year, spilling toxic chemicals and sparking a public health crisis.
In 2019, Batory faced backlash from rail unions for withdrawing a proposed rule aimed at establishing mandatory crew sizes on freight and passenger trains.
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Earlier this month, Biden's FRA finalized a rule requiring two-person crews on trains with limited exceptions. The reform received praise from railway workers and their allies.
But an organization representing rail workers across the U.S. said Biden's decision to nominate Batory to the board of Amtrak—the nation's passenger railroad company—calls into question the president's commitment to worker and rail safety.
"Batory, renowned for his role in loosening rail safety regulations during a tenure that critics link to subsequent rail disasters like East Palestine, is now poised to shape Amtrak's future," Railroad Workers United (RWU) wrote on social media late Thursday. "Remember the 2022 rail workers' debacle? When labor unions hoped for Biden's support, and instead got a presidential shove to accept a contract that many felt skirted around their key demands? It's almost poetic then, how Biden's nomination of Batory seems to echo that same disregard."
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Well, it seems @POTUS has truly outdone himself this time, nominating Ronald L. Batory—yes, the deregulation aficionado from the Trump era—to the @Amtrak Board of Directors. https://t.co/dVMWEApL5D
— Railroad Workers United ✊ (@railroadworkers) May 3, 2024
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Clegg and Batory must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Railway Age contributing editor Frank Wilner wrote Thursday that Batory could face a Democratic "hold" on his nomination in the Senate "given that many in rail labor are unhappy" with his withdrawal of the train crew rule during his tenure as FRA administrator.
Ross Grooters, a Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen member and co-chair of RWU, said Thursday that Biden's nomination of Batory "is a betrayal of labor, arguably bigger than the 2022 contract dispute."
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