SAN FRANCISCO — Private donors are ready to hand over millions of dollars to spruce up some of the nation's most cherished parks in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said Thursday.
Congress has yet to approve the Bush administration's plan to celebrate the park system's centennial by leveraging taxpayers' funds to attract philanthropists' money for repairs and upgrades to the country's wildlands.
But corporations, nonprofits and visitors' groups already have pledged more than $300 million to restore trails through Yosemite National Park's wetland meadows and crocodile habitat in Florida's Everglades, two proposals included on a select list of 201 priority anniversary projects unveiled Thursday.
"Working with the parks' partners allow us to take a giant leap toward the parks of tomorrow," Kempthorne said. "This is our opportunity as the current stewards to do our part."
The national parks have long suffered from a budget shortfall, resulting in a long backlog of maintenance and preservation needs.
The Centennial Challenge project aims to fill in some of those gaps through a matching grants program projected to fetch $1 billion in private funds. That's separate from the $1 billion in operational funding President Bush has proposed adding to the national parks' budget over the next decade.
The special anniversary projects announced Thursday won't become final unless Congress approves a final spending plan for the parks. A spending bill is currently awaiting approval in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
But for Yosemite Superintendent Michael Tollefson, who helped select the winning projects from parks' wishlists across the country, landing a spot on the priority list puts the park closer to making repairs on an overlook fronting Half Dome, the granite formation that rises more than 4,000 feet above the valley floor.
"Our trail around Yosemite Valley is an absolutely beautiful way to see the park, but on the busiest days of the summer use on that trail is almost nonexistent because it's so degraded," Tollefson said. "This will help us make sure the visitor has the best experience."
At St. Louis' Gateway Arch, park officials hoped to use the new funds to start a "Parkpalooza" educational program to reach youth through multimedia stations scattered throughout the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.
"The last big heady time for the park service like this was in the 1950s, when they built up the infrastructure to serve the growing population and the car culture," said Frank Mares, deputy superintendent. "It's a real exciting time to be working in the parks."
But some wilderness lovers were uneasy at the growing influx of private money in the parks, and worried the initiative could give way to influence peddling by private industry.
"Pretty soon this is going to be Coca-Cola's Yosemite Valley or Nike's Tuolumne Meadows," said Scott Ayers, 47, a rock climber from Tucson. "The private sector's going to be paying for all of this."
National Park Service Director Mary Bomar said park employees were expressly barred from soliciting donations, and said the parks system followed strict guidelines about what kind of public recognition donors could expect.
"You're not going to see any golden arches in any of our parks," Bomar said.