TIL About The Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service

Exhibit 5000+ that Jimmy Carter was a brilliant President -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritage_Conservation_and_Recreation_Service

The Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service (HCRS) was an agency within the United States Department of the Interior which subsumed its functions from the National Park Service and Bureau of Outdoor Recreation.^[1] It was created under the Carter administration by order of the Secretary of the Interior on January 25, 1978.^[2] HCRS, a non-land managing agency, was responsible for assuring the identification, protection, and beneficial use of important cultural, natural, and recreational American resources. HCRS offered grant assistance, technical information and guidance to those in the public and private sectors involved in conservation or recreation projects. Under the Reagan administration the HCRS was abolished by Secretarial Order 3060 on February 19, 1981, and absorbed into the National Park Service.^[2]

During its brief tenure, HCRS revolutionized the integration of natural resource based planning and cultural and historic preservation. HCRS was involved with a number of important achievements during its relatively short existence including:

1. Publication of the Third Outdoor Recreation Plan (P.L. 88–29) in 1978 and its 1979 Nationwide Recreation Action Program;
2. Support for the passage and implementation of the Urban Parks and Recreation Recovery Act (P.L. 95-625);
3. Creation of a one million acre Pinelands National Reserve in New Jersey;
4. Support for addition of twenty-one units to the National Park System;
5. Support for enlargement of the National Wilderness System;
6. Addition of eight units to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System;
7. Tripling of mileage in the National Trails System (P.L. 95-625);
8. Acceleration of National Recreation trails designations;
9. Authorization of the use of abandoned highway lands for bikeway and recreation development through the 1978 Surface Transportation Assistance Act;
10. Launching the nationwide “rails to trails” program through authorization of an initial demonstration grant program to convert abandoned railroad rights-of-way to conservation and recreation purposes through the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act;
11. helping to justify Executive Action to set aside 120 million acres of outstanding natural, cultural and recreation resources in Alaska;
12. Preparation of the National Heritage Policy Act to establish a national heritage policy and provide a basis for a State-based partnership program to identify, select, and protect special natural areas and historic places;
13. Support for issuance of three Executive Orders which:
    • (a) protect Federal lands from degradation by off-road vehicles,
    • (b) ensure that Federal agencies protect natural, cultural, and recreation values of wetlands by minimizing their loss or degradation, &
    • (c) mandating access for the handicapped in all Federal or federally assisted programs and facilities through Federal agency guidelines issued by the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare;
14. Completion of the 1978 the National Urban Recreation Study, the first comprehensive assessment of the Nation’s urban recreation problems and options for local, State and Federal action; &
15. Reducing paperwork and shortening project approval time for the States through new consolidated grant applications for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (P.L. 95–42), increasing its funding to $900 million for FY1978, and increasing public participation in the Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan process.

HCRS also played a major role in advocating for passage of legislation to protect the biodiversity and other natural resources found on Barrier Islands which passed the U.S. Congress in 1982 as the Coastal Barrier Resources Act (P.L. 97-348). These and other actions of HCRS were detailed in the Third Outdoor Recreation Plan transmitted to the Congress of the United States by President Jimmy Carter on December 11, 1979.

I was looking around and noticed this big spike in land conservation & recreational programs in the late ’70s that was across the board – city, county, State, and National. At first, I thought that, “oh, this must have just been a broad-based cultural movement” but then I was like, “but how did all this stuff get coordinated? I mean, Gates of The Arctic National Park is a very different proposition from the City of Atlanta rebuilding city parks or the governance of the US Olympic Teams.

And yup. It was Jimmy Carter. Doing the right thing even when no one was watching.