They can’t give this thing away!

Back in 2021 we reported on Platt National Park/Chickasaw National Recreation area, which as far as I know is the only national park ever to be downgraded. We even had a chance to visit. The nature there has been heavily altered by human hand, it’s almost a crafted landscape. That’s not usually how we now like to think of or act in our national parks.

Yesterday in Bloomberg:

mentions the former Platt NP:

Republican Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma has offered Chickasaw National Recreation Area in Oklahoma as a candidate to be transferred to the Chickasaw Nation, which sold it to the federal government in 1902. Congress turned it into Platt National Park, until it stripped the park of “crown jewel” status and changed its name in 1976.

Today, the park service spends about $4.5 million to accommodate more than 1.5 million annual visitors at Chickasaw NRA.

Cole’s office said the Chickasaw Nation hasn’t asked for the recreation area to be returned, but the nation’s governor, Bill Anoatubby, said in a statement that it’s interested.

So far, though, there’s little other interest in transfers.

Sure, why not?

Worth remembering how we got here though:

In some cases, the National Park Service was put in charge of some areas because residents didn’t trust the states to manage them.

That’s what happened at Big Cypress, which became the first national preserve in 1974. Congress agreed with many south Floridians that the Rhode Island-sized wetland needed to be protected from the state’s plan to build what would have been the world’s largest commercial airport.

Floridians “wanted to protect it and they didn’t trust the state,” McAliley said. “People wanted the Park Service because they trusted them to manage natural qualities.”