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Park wars: The force is with public trust in Chicago lakefront fight
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City’s mayor joins George Lucas on public policy’s dark side.
Recreation
Trail segment installed at Sleeping Bear
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Environmental precautions taken when constructing the 27-mile-long route.
Recreation
Great Lakes national parks prepare for centennial
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Popular or not, vast or small, the national parks of the Great Lakes region are publicly owned treasures of environmental and natural resources, historic and cultural wealth, recreation and national identity.
Land
What’s in a name?
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What was the former emperor of France doing in Northern New York, about an hour’s drive south of the St. Lawrence River?
Land
U.S. wilderness areas study includes 16 in Michigan
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The Sierra Club would like the Trap Hills part of the U.P.’s Ottawa National Forest to be added as a wildernss area, but public land agencies say they have no plans for major changes in Michigan.
Recreation
Kite boarders bring new conflicts to Great Lakes beaches
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An Ontario park launches kite boarders on a separate beach from swimmers. The increasingly popular activity is also a source of conflict for people sharing Great Lakes beaches.
Recreation
State parks examine role in solving obesity
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Survey indicates few healthy food choices and campers’ desire for more.
Recreation
Stargazers drawn to dark sky park
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Due to their locations away from city lights and often near water, dark sky parks offer enhanced opportunities to see, study, and enjoy the night sky and everything in it.
Land
Preserving the lands of the wealthy
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A stretch of New York’s Hudson Valley is known for its old wealth, stately mansions–and encroaching new wealth and development.
In the words of the National Park Service, “For nearly two centuries, this place has been home to socially prominent New Yorkers.
It still is, and increasingly so. Median household income of $71,508 in 2008-12 is up by 34.70 percent since 2000.
Those pressures make it imperative to preserve what can be preserved of the land and the culture.
Land
Why Small Parks Matter
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Ask natural scientists why small parks matter and you’ll hear about habitats, biodiversity, carbon sequestration and buffer zones between developments. Ask the same question to social scientists and you’ll hear about maintaining human connections with nature, centers of community concern, neighborhood identity and healthy outdoor activities. Small parks can even serve a public policy purpose as a political rallying point. That happened last year in Turkey when government plans to develop 9-acre Taksim Gezi Park — one of Istanbul’s smallest parks and among the few remaining green spaces in the city’s BeyoÄŸlu district— triggered sit-ins and national demonstrations. From a humanist as well as scientific perspective, poet-environmental activist Wendell Berry has written that we need not cherish just the great public wildernesses” but small ones as well.