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Blue Ridge Parkway vista Photo: National Park Service
The Blue Ridge Parkway — first conceived in 1933 to connect Skyline Drive to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park — is a feast for the eyes, designed by landscape architects specifically to showcase a variety of vistas and views. But preserving them requires conserving parcels along the boundaries of the Park, which, as This American Land explains, the government’s Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) makes possible. The Park is 469 miles long and took decades to complete — its construction involved several New Deal jobs programs including the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).
Why This Matters: Built as a result of some of the most important job-creating programs of the New Deal, the Blue Ridge Parkway boosts local economies all along its path. The Parkway’s economic benefits are as important today as when it was built. If Congress takes up a fourth stimulus bill aimed at economic recovery and putting people back to work, then programs like the ones that created this national treasure and boosted parks across the nation ought to be part of the package. And they should provide permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund – a bill pending in Congress now — right away.
by Amy Lupica, ODP Staff Writer Women have played an integral role in agriculture since its beginnings, but now only 14% of the world’s land is owned by women. Experts say that gender inequity is an obstacle in optimizing climate mitigation through better land-use practices.. Despite women representing more than half of all people who almost exclusively on land and […]
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by Ashira Morris, ODP Staff Writer Nearly 3 million acres of federal land could gain new protections after the House of Representatives passed a major conservation bill last Friday. The bill, called the Protecting America’s Wilderness and Public Lands Act, rolls together eight bills previously introduced. If passed in the Senate, it would: Designate 1.5 […]
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New research shows that fertile, carbon-rich topsoil is completely gone from one-third of all farmland in the Midwest, severely impairing crop growth and future harvests.
Why This Matters: Experts say this “growing” problem is mostly due to over-tilling the soil and other unsustainable farming practices.
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