Brian O'Neill is General Superintendent of the Golden Gate National Parks. Greg Moore is Executive Director of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.

Citation: This paper may be cited as: [Authors.] 2005. [Article title.] In Ted Trzyna, ed., The Urban Imperative. California Institute of Public Affairs, Sacramento, California.

The San Francisco Bay Area of California is home to 7 million people. It is also the home of one of the world’s most extensive systems of protected areas. This remarkable juxtaposition – a large and densely populated urban area enriched with national parks and other protected areas – is the result of decades of building a constituency for nature conservation. This constituency-building has been sustained by more recent efforts to ensure that these protected areas are of service and are relevant to urban communities – and that people are given a role in their long-term preservation.

Within the Bay Area metropolitan region, specifically at the Golden Gate area, over 2 million ha are protected in the Golden Gate Biosphere Reserve, one of the most significant urban biosphere reserves designated under UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme. The Golden Gate Biosphere Reserve includes one of the world’s largest urban national parks; vast marine protected areas; regional watersheds; special wildlife preserves; and state, regional, and county park systems. The protected waters in adjacent marine sanctuaries total 1.7 million ha – one of the largest marine protected areas in the world. The protected lands in the San Francisco Bay Area greenbelt total 526,000 ha.

The habitat diversity of these protected lands is remarkable: 19 separate ecosystems; 12 distinct plant communities; close to 1300 species of plants and animals in the terrestrial environment; important migration routes and breeding locations; and more than 80 sensitive, rare, threatened, or endangered species.

Building constituencies for nature conservation in urban areas has depended upon several key elements. First of all, visionary private citizens paved the way to large-scale landscape conservation. Second, these leaders and their organizations have been able to create conservation momentum over time. Each generation of conservation leadership and success creates a platform for future accomplishment, a sort of conservation "layer cake."

And third, a green matrix has evolved, a set of key partners in nature conservation. A combination of governmental, nonprofit, and private actors – with a strong base of community support – has leveraged advocacy, talent, perseverance, and funding. In some cases, nonprofit leadership goes first, in others governmental, in still others private. All have learned to work in concert – and strategically – toward conservation action.

The centerpiece of these protected areas is the Golden Gate National Parks (hereafter referred to as "Golden Gate"), managed by the United States National Park Service. Formally known as the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, this complex of urban national parks contains a vast array of natural, cultural, and historic resources in over 30,350 ha of open space. It includes important natural habitat, rare and endangered species of plants and animals, working agricultural lands, and former military open spaces and buildings now converted to park purposes. About 17 million people visit and enjoy these parklands each year (GGNP 2004).

Public support for urban environmental protection in the Bay Area began at the turn of the 20th century and became increasingly active and organized beginning in the early 1970s. Each wave of environmental protection has depended upon strong environmental leaders and well-developed and orchestrated public campaigns. To the initial preservation of a redwood grove and some small offshore marine islands, the Bay Area has added expansive parklands, marine protected areas, agricultural preserves, estuary protection, wildlife refuges, and watersheds.

In 1970, as natural areas, open space, and historic landmarks around the Golden Gate were threatened by urban development, local activists mounted a campaign to save them. Symbolized by a bold slogan, "Parks for People, Where the People Are," the campaign mobilized thousands of residents through grassroots environmental action. The result was establishment in 1972 of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area by Congress and the President.

Building on this widespread public support, constituency-building has become a core management concept at the Golden Gate National Parks. To produce tangible results for the parks and other protected areas, these principles depend upon the engagement of not just the public sector (in this case, the National Park Service), but the NGO (nonprofit) and private (business and individual volunteer) sector as well. At Golden Gate, the National Park Service has enlisted the support of a single, comprehensive NGO partner, the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy (GGNPC 2004), to build community support for the parks and engage people in its stewardship.

Established in 1981, the Parks Conservancy links the parks to the surrounding community. It focuses on three goals: increasing awareness of the national parklands and their value; providing avenues for public engagement to bring more resources to the parks now and in the future; and preserving the parks over time by building long-term constituencies.

The Parks Conservancy works to leverage the role of its federal government partner, the National Park Service. While NPS’ focus is on the management and operation of the Golden Gate National Parks, the Parks Conservancy directs its efforts toward community engagement, specific grassroots campaigns, and sponsorship of park restoration, improvement, and education efforts.

First and most essential to the Conservancy’s success is community awareness. At Golden Gate, the Conservancy has worked to make the parks as well-known and well-loved as other cherished public assets. The Conservancy’s goal is to elevate parks to the same level of community importance as other civic assets: as basic as schools; as essential as libraries; as necessary as hospitals; as valuable as clean air and water; as culturally important as symphony halls, opera houses, and museums. The Conservancy has achieved this goal with a well-developed strategy of research, opinion sampling, branding, and marketing. Public-awareness campaigns, involvement programs, placed-based education, and deeply connected forms of public stewardship of parklands have all been part of this strategy.

Central to the Conservancy’s work was a campaign to raise the identity of the Golden Gate National Parks by creating a series of graphically integrated logos and a branding and media campaign that invited the public to get involved in the Bay Area national parks. As a result of this work, the Conservancy achieved a remarkably high 92 percent recognition factor for the parks; additionally, more than 90 percent of those surveyed believed that the Golden Gate National Parks were essential to the quality of life in the region.

With this base of awareness in place, the Parks Conservancy has continued to mobilize Bay Area residents to take a part in specific conservation campaigns. To restore the natural landscape of a highly visible former military airfield, the Conservancy sponsored the Help Grow Crissy Field campaign. Through this effort, thousands of volunteers, school children, and contributors combined in a grassroots effort to restore coastal wetlands and shoreline dunes, and create a new national park area. Other Conservancy projects have restored other natural areas, created park visitor centers, and improved access to parklands. A current initiative, Trails Forever, seeks to engage the public in the enhancement and permanent stewardship of park trail systems.

Key to the Conservancy’s success is the ongoing effort to help the public, especially young people, understand the value of parks and protected areas and become long-term stewards. The Conservancy partners with others to help ensure there is a strong and active constituency for environmental protection. As one example, the level of environmental education is significant, with an "outdoor classroom" serving well with over 40,000 kids each year through environmental education programs delivered by the NPS and its NGO partners.

The level of voluntary stewardship is also extensive. More than 11,000 volunteers help annually in the parks, many in direct resource conservation, citizen science, and restoration work. Currently, these volunteers are engaged in over 30 restoration sites, planting more than 100,000 native plants annually.

In partnership with schools throughout the area, the Conservancy and Park Service manage a youth program called I-YEL, or Inspiring Young Environmental Leaders. Each year, a small number of high-school students are chosen to become active participants in environmental projects in the parks, in other protected areas, and in their own neighborhoods. These youth are required to take a leadership role in identifying environmental problems, proposing solutions, and mobilizing local communities. Through this program, the Conservancy reaches young people throughout the region, advances their support of parks and protected areas, and encourages many to consider environmental careers. The I-YEL program makes a particular effort to reach out to the Bay Area’s growing culturally and ethnically diverse populations, recognizing the need for future environmental leaders who reflect California’s demographic composition.

All the Conservancy’s efforts depend upon a partnership philosophy established by the National Park Service that recognizes the public’s role in the parks’ future. To advance this philosophy, these urban national parks have had to abandon such traditional park management concepts as "command and control" and the "best way to accomplish work is to do it yourself." Because of the magnitude of the surrounding built environment, and the need to connect with a large and diverse urban population, park management soon recognized that if the full potential of the parks was to be realized, its foundations needed to be built on a nontraditional model.

Underlying this nontraditional model are six unifying principles, all of which focus on extending park benefits beyond boundaries, building urban constituencies, and establishing partnerships. These principles are:

At Golden Gate, the National Park Service works to demonstrate that the parks are a part of, not apart from, urban communities. The parks must show their benefits beyond boundaries: enhancing the quality of life, providing economic benefits to the urban area, and responding to local needs. Only on this basis are community partnerships possible.

There is an absolute commitment to create and sustain a partnership culture. Golden Gate is built on partnerships. It has worked hard to instill this culture throughout its structure, and understand what makes it work.

At Golden Gate, management has worked for more than 20 years to incorporate the community into the park’s fabric. The National Park Service and the Conservancy have nurtured partnerships with schools, nonprofit organizations serving the poor and homeless, local environmental organizations, youth groups, businesses, cultural institutions, churches, neighborhood centers, organizations serving the elderly, and community leaders throughout the region. These include some rather unconventional partnerships, but ones that show the park is an integrated, intelligent, even compassionate contributor to the quality of life in our region.

The second principle relates to making Golden Gate an innovation laboratory for creative financing. The park’s maintenance infrastructure, resource stewardship, and visitor service requirements represent literally hundreds of millions of dollars of need. These needs could be met either by using U.S. Government dollars alone or by pursuing a path which combines government appropriations with private support.

Golden Gate has been entrepreneurial in pursuing and leveraging funds from other public sources, private philanthropy, aggressive cost recovery, and fee-for-service approaches, as well as expansive business and program partnerships. In fiscal year 2002, the park brought in 83 cents for every $1 of public funds through its partnership, revenue, and volunteer programs.

The third principle at Golden Gate involves the understanding and effective use of marketing techniques in positioning the park nationally and in the broader San Francisco Bay Area communities. For the parks to be supported, community awareness and even affection were essential. Ways to build community affiliation with park values had to be developed.

National Park Service officials recognized that the agency was a neophyte in the area of "product branding and message communication." However, Golden Gate had a firm commitment to evolve its organization into one that understood how to communicate its mission and values to the diverse communities it serves, and understand and respond to a variety of community expectations.

Through the efforts of the Parks Conservancy and voluntary leadership, park officials have brought in an impressive array of outside talent to assist them in a sustained effort to build organizational capacity in this critical area.

An important fourth principle relates to Golden Gate’s desire to build the institutional capacity to successfully address community-based stewardship and constituency-building. The management team at Golden Gate understands that a long-term investment is required to build community ownership of park values and the mission of the National Park Service.

The management team also realizes that a sustained commitment to community building – connecting with people and organizations more holistically – requires that it operate differently. Rather than being the "doers" of all things, park employees needed to see themselves as the facilitators, the brokers, the conveners – the conduits through which talents of the community are tapped.

This principle is based on the notion that everyone in the community is a potential contributor to the work of the parks. Conversely, it reminds employees that every time something is done with staff resources only, an opportunity for community investment is lost.

This model of intense community engagement and resource leveraging required realigning the parks’ organizational structure. It also required changes in personnel policies: hiring for character and attitude, and training for skill and expertise. Toward these ends, the parks have been exploring best practices across the United States.

The fifth principle at Golden Gate was to establish a primary non-profit entity that would function as in seamless partnership with it and share goals for realizing the parks’ future. This partner is the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.

The Conservancy has grown from a modest start in 1981, when it contributed less than $9,000 in support to the parks, to a peak contribution in 2001 of $14 million. Since its inception, the Parks Conservancy has contributed $70 million.

The Conservancy has become integral in the funding and delivery of curriculum-based education, helping manage visitor centers and bookstores, producing educational material and interpretive-based products, co-managing native plant nurseries and site-based stewardship programs, raising private and other governmental funds for both major capital projects and smaller site and program enhancements, and carrying out advocacy work for the parks.

The sixth and most recent principle at Golden Gate relates to sustainability. It is built on the notion that people visiting national park sites should expect nothing but the best in both practices and interpretation of park resources.

Visitors should experience the newest technology in energy conservation, renewable energy production, water conservation and re-use, recycling and waste management, trail design and maintenance, transportation infrastructure, and sustainable building design. They should also have access to healthy food.

This principle is predicated on the park’s willingness to raise the bar of expectations, to make the park experience an even greater laboratory of learning. As with its other major initiatives, park management recognizes the difficulty of establishing a mindset and internal culture in which sustainability is part of the prevailing operating philosophy. However, it is now firmly launched in that direction.

All these initiatives illustrate what Golden Gate calls the Cycle of Friend Raising that underlies how it approaches community work. It starts with exposure of a company, organization, group of people, or individual to an idea, project, or initiative. It then moves systematically to building an awareness, creating understanding, stimulating caring and a desire to protect, and finally a willingness to advocate.

Community-building at Golden Gate is about networking and relationship-building. The goal is to connect people at an emotional level with the park and translate this into a sense of ownership of an idea, a place, a thing, or another value important to the park.

Creating and preserving national parks and other protected areas in urban settings presents many challenges: intense pressures of urban development, scarcity of open space, competing public and private interests. To succeed, park managers must develop strategies to reach important potential allies: the communities just beyond park boundaries. A park management philosophy embracing the importance of community awareness, outreach, and partnership, coupled with marketing, engagement, and stewardship, is the best investment in the long-term value of urban national parks and protected areas.

Some of the concepts in this paper were set out in the newsletter of the U.S. Department of the Interior, People, Land, and Water, November 2002

GGNP. 2004. Golden Gate. http://www.nps.gov/goga. United States National Park Service, Washington, D.C.

GCNPC. 2004. Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. http://www.parksconservancy.org. GGNPC, San Francisco.

This paper copyright © 2004 International Union for

Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

Reproduction of this paper for educational or other noncommercial purposes is authorized without prior written permission from the copyright holder provided the source is fully acknowledged. Reproduction of this paper for resale or other commercial purposes is prohibited without prior written permission from the copyright holder.

Web site hosted by the California Institute of Public Affairs,

an IUCN member since 1980

Home page  /  Site map  /  Copyright & caveats 

The copyright notice applies to the entire contents of this Web site.