The National Park Foundation announced yesterday it had received a $100M grant, the largest for the US national parks system in the country's history.
The first US national park, Yellowstone, was established in 1872. Since then, the system has expanded to over 430 areas covering national parks, memorials, rivers, trails, and more. In all, the National Park Service manages more than 85 million acres of protected lands, which span across every state in the US and are frequented by over 320 million visitors annually. See a map of parks here.
The grant—from an endowment created by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly—will fund several priorities, including conservation efforts in Florida and grants to facilitate more visits from young people. The donation was received by the National Park Foundation, a nonprofit created in the 1960s to support the national parks system through private donations; Congress appropriated $3.3B to the parks in the 2024 fiscal year.
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