Every year, millions of people visit Great Smoky Mountains National Park to experience its clear mountain streams, verdant views, and diverse forms of natural beauty. The mountains exert a powerful spell — but too often, that spell is broken by the sight of plastic bottles and candy wrappers scattered beside trailheads and overlooks, fast food bags and old tires flung along roadsides and plastic bags or balloons hung in treetops. 

To the Editor:

The Smoky Mountain News has done a great disservice to the American people with the headline “America’s Worst Idea” (SMN, Feb. 28 edition). 

Often called “America’s best idea,” the National Park System founded more than a century ago has given generations of visitors from across the country and the world a unique opportunity to come together amid the bountiful natural beauty and historical dignity this nation has to offer.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park has earned this one for its decision to begin charging for parking, effective March 1 this year. 

The National Park Service issued a decision and a Finding of No Significant Impact for the Gatlinburg Spur Improvements Environmental Assessment.

This spring, the National Park Service released its third edition of the Green Parks Plan, setting refreshed goals and objectives to advance sustainable park operations.

A press release describes the plan as “a bold vision for national parks to attain net-zero status by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, conserving energy and water, reducing solid waste, transitioning to green transportation and fostering a culture of sustainability inside and outside of parks.”

The plan also aims to further the NPS’ commitment to work toward phasing out single-use plastics over the next decade.

Five goals in the Green Parks Plan are: combat the climate crisis by achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, achieve net-zero water use and net zero energy for facilities and operations, achieve net-zero waste and sustainable procurement, adopt and support zero-emissions transportation methods, and engage the NPS workforce, partners, visitors, stakeholders and communities to support and participate in sustainability, climate resilience and environmental justice.

The plan is part of the NPS response to climate change outlined in its Climate Change Response Strategy.

The first edition of the Green Parks Plan was released in 2012. The update incorporates advancements in science and technology, as well as new legislation and executive orders. Read the plan at nps.gov/subjects/sustainability/index.htm.

Growing up in Franklin, Katie Peek never dreamed she would one day be living in the mountains and working as a coastal scientist in Western Carolina University’s Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines.

This year marked both the 16th birthday of the Benton MacKaye Trail and the 100th anniversary of its namesake’s flagship idea. Proponents of the trail want Congress to honor these milestones by designating the Benton MacKaye Trail as the nation’s 12th National Scenic Trail . 

On Jan. 20, President Joe Biden issued an executive order requiring coronavirus prevention protocols — including mask-wearing — on all federal lands and buildings. Now, management teams at National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service lands are deciding how to implement the new requirement locally. 

Face masks are now required at all National Park Service buildings and facilities as a result of President Joe Biden’s Executive Order on Protecting the Federal Workforce and Requiring Mask-Wearing issued Jan. 20.