Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Sally Jewell hopes to change lives by bringing children to National Parks

A group of about 25 mostly environmentalists and high-level public lands managers bolted into the new Sand to Snow National Monument one afternoon last week. Setting a blistering pace was Sally Jewell, the 51st Secretary of the Interior, who at 5 a.m. that morning had been hiking with Native Americans in Montana, not far from the Canadian border. Jewell believes that outdoor experiences are part of the DNA of humans and is concerned that today’s children are not getting out into the wildland frontiers of America. That’s why she believes the Obama administration’s “Every Kid in a Park” initiative is so important. Launched in September 2015, the Department of Interior program provides all fourth-grade students and their families with free admissions to National Parks and other federal lands and waters for a year. Jewell spoke about the sedentary, urban lifestyle of young people in America after she negotiated a log bridge over the rapidly flowing Whitewater River and nimbly danced around numerous rock obstacles. The trail Jewell and the other 24 briskly walked on goes from the Wildlands Conservancy’s Whitewater Preserve to Mission Creek Preserve. Both properties are privately owned but fall within the Sand to Snow National Monument boundary line, which extends to the 11,500-foot Mt. San Gorgonio on the west to the Sonoron Desert to the east...more

She's changed the lives of children already.  Take for example the children of those parents who would have worked on the Keystone pipeline.  And right now the children of thousands of parents employed in the coal industry.

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