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Photographer Planning To Document Crumbling Side Of National Parks

Submitted by NPT Staff on March 19, 2013 - 2:44am

Pretty pictures of national park vistas are commonplace, and can take our breath away. But how would you react to a photo that showed the crumbling side of the parks?

A Utah-based photographer is setting out on the road this summer to chronicle how budget cuts and under-funding in general are impacting the parks, and he could use our help. Chris Mabey will be touring 10 parks in the Rockies and the West Coast to show how budget cuts are affecting the national parks and why the national parks are worth protecting.

"There has been a lot of talk of how these cuts will affect the national parks, but I want to show the world how the parks are affected and I need your help to do it," says Mr. Mabey. "I believe that pictures of how the national parks are hurting under these budget cuts will be much more powerful than the articles written about them."

To get the job done, Mr. Mabey, a student at Brigham Young University, could use our help. Check out his project on Kickstarter and consider donating to the cause.

Comments

Submitted by Barbara Moritsch on March 19, 2013 - 7:10am.

I really hope Mr. Mabey includes lots of shots of crumbling natural resources, as well as infrastructure.

Submitted by ecbuck on March 19, 2013 - 7:31am.

Barbara - some examples? Not saying they don't exist but it would seem in most cases "crumbling natural resources" would be "natural". Perhaps in some cases they are man induced but that is where I would be interested in some examples - and your proposed remedies.

Submitted by WorldParks on March 19, 2013 - 12:16pm.

One important example of "crumbling natural resources" is the issue of invasive species in parks. I regularly visit C&O Canal NHP and I can tell you that much of this park's native flora is slowly (sometimes not so slowly) but surely being overridden by non-native and very agressive English Ivy and other exotic plants. Without direct human intervention thousands of the park's native trees and other plants will be "suffocated" by these invasives. Clearly, reduced funding won't make tackling this problem any easier. Multiply this by all the other parks, refuges, etc. confronting this threat to ecological integrity and you can see this is really a massive problem.