WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine), Ranking Member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, honored the National Park System on the Senate floor. King’s remarks came during National Park Week, which was designated to be April 21^st to April 29^th by a King-led resolution that passed the Senate last week.

“When I left office as Governor of Maine in January of 2003, my family and I the next day took off in a 40 foot RV to see the country,” Senator King said. “My children were 12 and 9 at the time, and we basically circumnavigated America over the next five and a half months. Before coming to the floor, I went down the list of the parks we went to, but the point I want to make – I get a bit emotional about this – this was the greatest experience of my life. To have taken my children to these parks and my wife, Mary, and to have seen [the parks] and experience them and experience the people at the parks was just an unbelievable – an unbelievable life experience.”

During his speech, Senator King shared list of the national parks he has visited on his trip including: Arches, Badlands, Big Bend, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capital Reef, Carlsbad Caverns, the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Olympic, Redwood, Sequoia & Kings Canyon, Shenandoah, Yellowstone, Yosemite and Zion.

Senator King is an avid supporter of the National Park System, and during his tenure in the Senate has pushed for modernizations to make the parks more accessible to future generations, including the implementation of a pilot program to make entrance passes for parks available online, that was lauded in a Subcommittee hearing last year. The program has been particularly successful in Acadia National Park (ANP): Acadia accounts for 72% of total sales in the pilot program, and online purchases accounted for 10% of the park’s total entrance fee receipts in 2016.

As Senator King referenced during his speech, national parks are a key driver of Maine’s economy, as the state counts tourism among its largest industries. Last May, he urged Secretary Zinke to let the Katahdin Woods and Waters Monument stand, citing concerns that the Department of the Interior’s review was having “economically chilling effect” on the local economy. In October, Senator King wrote a letter with Senator Collins to the Department of the Interior in response to a proposal to nearly triple the cost of entrance at ANP, noting that this change could decrease visitors to the park and urging the Department to seek other options for addressing the maintenance backlog that currently sits at almost $12 billion; the Department recently announced a more modest fee increase.

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