Thanks to the NRPA Weekly newsletter that shows up in my inbox, I ran across an interesting article about an old idea that I had long forgotten. Many years ago I went to a lecture at CU presented by the proponents of a concept they called the Buffalo Commons. While intrigueing at the time, it nontheless seemed pretty far-fetched. The idea was to remove people from much of the Great Plains and return it to a natural condition where the buffalo could freely roam. Interesting now to hear the idea being resurected by none other than the governor of Kansas. An article at http://www.kansascity.com/340/story/1570333.html talks about the possibility of turning a large part of northwestern Kansas into a "Buffalo Commons National Park".

The article also mentions a bill introduced in Congress last week to restore full funding to the Land and Water Conservation Fund. In my travels to inventory and evaluate parks across the country, I frequently run across parks that were created years ago with Land and Water Conservation Funds. These parks are providing an important service today to people in a wide variety of communities. Restoration of this program to full funding would benefit many communities, particularly smaller ones that don't have a lot of other resources for creating parks.

Rob Layton