Making a Difference Forever
“For the enjoyment of future generations.” These final words of the National Park Service mission guide our need to protect forever. With projects focused on sustainability, cultural preservation, and long-term solutions to tough challenges, it is because of you we are able to reach into the future. Despite the challenges faced globally this past year, our community joined together, investing hours, dollars, and resources to ensure key projects moved forward:
- The generosity of anonymous landowners, and gap funding provided by you, meant more than 600 acres of land along the borders of Zion National Park and the Virgin River were permanently conserved.
- Donors, both online and in our park stores, provided resources needed to care for and monitor Zion’s famous Condor chick, 1K, as he became the park’s first to successfully leave the nest, an amazing milestone for the species’ recovery.
- Zion Forever support funded the first look at important genetic research into the canyon’s population of Mexican Spotted Owls. For this species, federally listed as threatened, the red rock walls and cliff of Zion provide one of the few remaining protected, and resource-rich, habitats.
- Water is important everywhere, but essential in the desert. Your generosity in 2020 allowed park researchers and scientists to establish baseline research on 60 of the park’s life giving springs, focusing on understanding water needs in the future.