California State Parks and “The First 70”

Last year, California governor Jerry Brown announced that due to budget constraints the state would be forced to close many of its beautiful state parks. The good news is that a few weeks ago state politicians passed a budget that allowed for most to stay open. Here’s an announcement from the Surfrider Foundation, which had created a campaign to save the parks:

In May of 2011, Governor Brown announced that nearly 25% of California State Parks would shut down in order to help “close the State’s budget gap”. Upon hearing the Governor’s decision, Surfrider and our partners from the “Save our State Parks” coalition engaged the Governor and the legislator by lobbying against drastic closures and by encouraging decision makers to seek long-term funding. A reprieve came when the Governor signed a budget that allocated millions of dollars to the state park system. In addition to receiving funding through the budget, State Parks are staying open due to local partnerships. Over the past year, the state has reached agreements with nonprofits, local governments and other entities to maintain and operate State parks. Of course, Surfrider realizes that this might be a short-term victory and we foresee other threats to Parks from budget cuts, but for now… we are celebrating this success and our hard work.

Even better news is that, inspired by the possibility that the parks might close, three young filmmakers traveled to seventy California parks and filmed their adventures. Based on the trailer for The First 70, it seems to be partly a documentary about resistance to the closures and partly a stunning gallery of nature footage. Here’s a link to the trailer, which is worth watching at full-screen size.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2012 at 7:00 am. It is filed under Sustainability and tagged with . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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