David Thomas: “I want to take the time that we have available this morning while we are waiting for these important closing…”

“I want to take the time that we have available this morning while we are waiting for these important closing activities--I hope closing activities--to talk a little bit about an issue that I feel very strongly about and that I think most people do, and that is our national parks and our national parks plan. I am chairman of the Subcommittee on National Parks, and we have spent almost this entire year working on a program to help strengthen the parks. Certainly, the National Park System is truly one of our treasures. The Park System is the custodian of some of America's most important natural and cultural resources and provides, of course, a legacy for our children and our grandchildren. The Park System today consists of about 374 units which are visited annually by millions of people. They stretch all the way from Acadia in Maine to American Samoa in the Pacific islands and provide a unique opportunity. I, of course, am particularly selfishly interested in parks because I come from Wyoming. We have the first national park which recently celebrated its 125th anniversary--Yellowstone. We also of course have Teton Park. But the whole country has a park system that we are extremely proud of. Unfortunately, that System is and has been under considerable stress.”