This Land, Your Land

President Obama's $218 million boost to the National Parks budget next year doesn't come close to fulfilling his promise to make up for years of neglect, Newsweek says.

"Obama said during his campaign he 'will repair the damage done to our national parks by inadequate funding,' but so far, he has done only slightly better than George W. Bush when it comes to boosting the parks' budget. Since 2007, the annual budget has increased by more than $100 million a year. Next year's increase of $218 million is an improvement, but it's hardly transformative.

"'It's a very little increase that Obama has managed to get through the Congress,' says Bruce Hamilton, deputy executive director of the Sierra Club. 'It may be a step in the right direction, but it's not nearly enough. Much more needs to be done by Congress and the administration to find much larger public funding investment in future years. They will need to keep adding more.'"

"Last year, under Bush, the parks budget was about $2.5 billion. This year, it is a bit over $2.7 billion. The parks have a maintenance backlog of $9.2 billion and an operating deficit of about $580 million," Newsweek says. "Their annual budget is less than 0.1 percent of the federal budget and is less than what America spends in a week in Iraq."

Law enforcement is one area that has been adversely affected by budget shortages. "The 469-mile-long Blue Ridge Parkway National Park in North Carolina and Virginia, for instance, has had to cut back 40 percent of its staff," according to the magazine. "It now has only about 35 law-enforcement rangers to deal with 16 million annual visitors to its 300 miles of trails, and the reduced number of rangers has a direct effect on park visitors. Phil Francis, superintendant of the park, says that one of his rangers recently had to decide whether to respond first to a potentially deadly car crash or to a person who was having a heart attack: 'Imagine if you have to wait for someone to drive 40 or 50 miles to respond to a medical emergency.'"