This semester I am working on a project exploring the budgets of national and state parks in
Virginia. Specifically, I am interested in identifying any differences in management priorities and
budget totals between parks managed by the federal government and the state of Virginia. Last
semester I was a student at the Smithsonian Mason School of Conservation, where I was able
to learn more about natural spaces in Virginia and the policies that impact them, especially
Shenandoah National Park. During my time in Front Royal, a large section of Shenandoah
National Park caught fire. I started reading a lot about wildfire policies in the US and learned
that in 2015 more than 60% of the US Forest Service budget went to fire suppression. This
number seemed incredibly high, and led me to wonder how budget priorities differed across
management authorities. My first step in this process was to request the comprehensive
budgets from the natural parks in Virginia. While I wait for these budgets, I am reading smaller
budget documents about priorities for the different management authorities in Virginia. I have
also been reading a lot of literature about what the differences between state and federal
practices are in other parts of the country, especially in the western United States. The most
interesting thing I discovered this week is that some western states engage in something called
‘land banking.’ This is where states can sell off trust lands that have low recreational value to
purchase lands more suitable to recreation. It’s an interesting way that states can prioritize
recreational activity on public lands. I’ve also been preparing my datasets for when I receive the
budgets. I am using a program called GIS to catalogue different geographical data about the
parks, for example, how far the parks are from a water source or what physiographic region they
are in. This will help me control for the different situations the parks are in. Long term, I am
interested in the intersection of economics with conservation and natural resource policy.
Specifically, how can we build better institutional structures to encourage conservation and natural recreation? I hope to continue exploring these questions in graduate school and in my
future career.
