Park Service seeks minorities' support as it marks 100 years

When Asha Jones and other Grand Canyon interns arrived for their summer at the national park, they were struck by its sheer immensity, beauty and world-class hiking trails. Soon, they noticed something else. "It is time for a change here, specifically, at Grand Canyon and in the National Park Service in general, to get people who look like me to your parks," said Jones, a 19-year-old black student at Atlanta's Spelman College. The National Park Service, which oversees more than 131,000 square miles of parks, monuments, battlefields and other landmarks thinks it's time for a change, too. As it celebrated its 100th birthday Thursday, the agency faced some key challenges. Among them is reaching out to minority communities in an increasingly diverse nation and getting them to visit and become invested in preserving the national parks. The NPS doesn't track the makeup of its visitors, but commissioned studies have shown about three-quarters are white. The agency's workforce is less diverse, at 83 percent white, a figure that can fluctuate with temporary employees. Minorities are expected to eclipse the country's white population before 2050...more