Stewardship Excellence Award: Golden Gate National Parks Stewards
TCLF honors the National Park Service, The Presidio Trust, and Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy for their decades-long stewardship of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The park system, created in 1972, is an 80,000-acre gem with some of the nation’s most beautiful natural and designed landscapes. Bikers, hikers, joggers, birders, nature lovers and others are drawn daily to its miles of trails and paths and its parks and other amenities. This National Park is not only a place for San Franciscans to recreate and enjoy, it also provides an ideal setting for learning, helps establish a lifelong connection with nature and the environment, promotes civic engagement and a holistic stewardship ethic - all while fostering engagement with a broader national and international community. Maintaining this expansive cultural landscape, though, is complex, challenging and costly, particularly at a time when resources are lacking and years of deferred maintenance have hobbled many such places around the country.
The responsibility for making all of this nature look so natural – and publicly accessible – lies with the National Park Service and The Presidio Trust, working with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. Together, as forward-thinking park stewards, they have consistently sought to balance natural, scenic and cultural values, providing public access while carefully managing a vast, ecologically-diverse park system. Their pioneering efforts serve as an innovative model for park stewardship nationally and internationally, successfully securing funds, developing forward-thinking management policies and building and sustaining infrastructure. These projects are an important catalyst for Bay Area businesses, particularly landscape architects, architects, engineers and construction teams who are commissioned to design and rehabilitate the parks, trails, facilities and many other amenities.
