Tuesday, January 23rd 5:30 p.m. Osborne Nature Center
“Maybe you weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth, but like every American, you carry the deed to 635 million acres of public lands.”
-John Garamendi
Public Lands are a defining feature of American life. Millions of citizens each year visit the most extraordinary treasures our nation has to offer, whether it’s a long family road trip to a National Park or an afternoon spent hunting mushrooms in a nearby county park.
Meanwhile, billions of dollars each year are generated by the timber, mining, and grazing opportunities provided by public lands.
But with a veritable alphabet soup of Government agencies managing these places – from the BLM to the USFWS to the NPS –
it can get confusing fast. What’s the difference between a National Park and a National Monument? What about a National Forest? Is a preserve different from a refuge?
Locally speaking, what’s the difference between the DNR and a County Conservation Board? Who runs the state parks? What’s a wildlife management area?
Get the answers to all these questions and more with this deep dive into public lands in America, with a special focus on our home state here in Iowa. You might be surprised to learn about the outsized role the Hawkeye state has played in the history of these special places belonging to each and every American.