Park Service Approves Proposal To Allow Ads Inside National Parks
Park Service Approves Proposal To Allow Ads Inside National Parks
Consumerist
Mary Beth Quirk
While we were all snoozing in between Christmas and the new year, the National Park Service went ahead and approved revisions to its policy that will allow some corporate logos and signage within park boundaries in the country’s public places, despite public backlash against the idea. Some critics think this is a very bad, terrible, no good idea.
On Dec. 28, NPS announced that Director Jonathan Jarvis had signed and finalized revisions to Director’s Order #21, which lets parks recognize donors with labels on certain things, but would not let corporations or anyone else rename parks like Yellowstone or features like Old Faithful. No logos or ad language will be allowed either.
Advocacy group Public Citizen says this move is “disgraceful,” and allows our national parks to the sold to “the highest bidder.”
“Now that this policy has been finalized, park visitors soon could be greeted with various forms of advertisements, like a sign reading ‘brought to you by McDonald’s’ within a new visitor’s center at Yosemite, or ‘Budweiser’ in script on a park bench at Acadia,” says Kristen Strader, program coordinator for Public Citizen’s Commercial Alert program.