Heartbreaking Statistic: Blacks Less Than 1% Of Visitors To Yosemite National Park

[The Architect]

As I was reading New York Times', Energy & Environment section online, I came across an article that made my heart ache. The title, Park Ranger Asks: Where Are The Black Visitors? In the article, an African American park ranger, one of only a few in the entire country, reports that his park, Yosemite National Park, covering nearly 1200 square miles of mountainous terrain in the Sierra Nevada of California, is lucky if Blacks make up even one percent of the total annual visitors. And the problem is not isolated to Yosemite. Across the country, increasing minority visitorship to National Parks is a constant goal, as well as a constant struggle, for park officials.
Many park officials have expressed deep concern over the consequences of not having higher park visitorship from within the black community. National Parks have done more to interest young people in the sciences and preserving earth's precious natural resources, than all other catalysts, combined. We can not simply continue to turn a blind eye to the loss of contributions from an entire generation of potential black scholars, environmentalists, geographers, marine biologists, anthropologists, archeologists and others...and at Go Eco, we don't intend to.