Also, if the area became a National Park, what compromises might need to be made in the park and how would it alter existing infrastructure?
Bit of a cheat answer, but there’s an area near me called the Carrie Blast Furnaces. I went here on a tour. The entire site is a former iron mill. The two furnaces remaining, #6 and #7, are national historic landmarks. The rest of the site has been significantly adapted with graffiti and metal art over the years, and if they applied for national historic site designation, they’d have to remove all of the art and try to bring the entire site as close to its original condition as possible. They decided to preserve the art and now use the surrounding site for metalworking classes, craft shows, theater production, and also as a wedding venue.
Couldn’t they include the art in the application? Alcatraz Island has preserved graffiti from the the 1970’s while being preserved in a National Recreational Area.
I am surrounded by state parks that could totally be national ones. All that would need changing is the management from state to fed. 🤷♂️
Other than the gift shop, what else would need to change?
The black forest. A tiny part of it has recently been made a national park, but the vast majority still isn’t. There’s a lot of opposition to increasing its area, as it couldn’t be used for logging and farming anymore.
I guess, but then you get other benefits from tourism and being able to use the forest as a better sponge for rain. I feel like you could make the argument to push the area to increase tourism and higher end agricultural products.
I just moved, but before I lived in a town (locally) famous for its woods. Yet to my horror I discovered not only is it not protected as such, in recent years it has been cut down further for huge logistics depots pushing their screeching noises deep into the woods, and of course also a golf course.
Then I see these maps from the middle ages in the town hall, where the woods reach straight to the nearest river a good 10 km away. All this wood chopped up over the course of some 800 years, first for the construction of the major port-city of Antwerp some 30 km downstream, and then later for local frivolity. So sad.
