America’s natural places are in danger. This time the danger comes from an unusual source. This danger does not come from factories dumping toxic waste into our rivers or strip miners scarring the landscape. Instead, it comes from one of the conservationists’ greatest tools: local, state and federal governments, and like many a science fiction B-movie, our greatest tools have strayed from their initial noble intentions and are now acting in near diametric opposition.

From California to Maine, state parks are fighting to stay alive as all levels of government find ways to trim the fat in the face of Great Recession budgetary woes. Parks across the nation are raising prices even as they reduce services. So far California is leading the pack by closing more than a quarter of their state parks, starting this month with 20 public parks being padlocked shut for the foreseeable future.

Even things here in Louisiana, while not as badly hit as California, are not much better off. In addition to five parks previously closed this summer, Louisiana state parks, and public museums, had to shorten their hours, as they had to choose between maintenance and operating.

In light of this new relationship between our government and our wild places, it has become apparent that the government can no longer be the faithful stewards they promised they would be at the inception of the public parks movement. When our public parks are subject to being closed to the public at the whim of every politician demanding austerity, it is only a matter of time until there are no public parks left. It is better that these places be given, or sold, to organizations that could properly care for them.

Organizations like the Audubon Society or the Sierra Club could not only help, but also be better stewards than far-off politicians whose only thought is of eventual re-election. Some states are taking tentative steps in this direction by privatizing park operations. These private companies take over the parks and change them in an attempt to attract more visitors and, accordingly more profits, to the park.

While this method has it flaws, we have to ask ourselves whether a public park funded by private profit is better than a public park funded on the whims of legislators and the latest budget reports.

A shuttered public park is no better at instilling in mankind the appropriate wonder and awe that nature deserves than an industrial park. At the end of the day, wonder and awe are the only way that nature will survive the constant onslaught of mankind.

Man is only interested in immediate things — if he cannot touch, taste and feel it, he has no interest in it. By shutting the out of our natural places, we doom those natural places to the sad fate of gradual repurposing for the use and comfort of the kind of man whose only interaction with nature is the immaculately Photoshopped grassy knoll on his computer screen.

David Holmes can be reached at [email protected]

Loyola freshmen Matt Burghoff, business major; Ocean Diamond, mass communication major; and Hillary Fitz, environmental studies major, enjoy a warm day in Audubon Park Wednesday, Sept. 14. Public parks across the state and country face cutbacks and closure due to national budget woes. (Geenah Acevedo/Staff Photographer)