California State Parks Membership Special

While this isn't exactly clean technology news, we feel that it's an important announcement and want to offer our support to the natural parks in California where the CleanTech Authority Network is based. After all, part of the reason we care so much about clean technology is that we enjoy the natural wonders of wilderness and state parks that it helps preserve.

This past Monday we received a note from the California State Parks Foundation describing the struggles and hardships they have endured over the past several years. Budget cuts causing backlogs in maintenance worth $1.2 billion and a recent funding cut of 10% proposed by Governer Schwarzenegger. The proposed 10% cut would force the closing of 48 parks over the next year and a half. Even as parks remain open, facilities, trails and resources are becoming increasingly strained as funding wanes.

The proactive solution that has been worked out is to attract more attention and funding for the parks by lowering the introductory membership rate from $40 to just $25. This emergency membership drive seems like a great deal to us and we encourage everyone in California who loves camping and hiking to visit the CSPF website at http://www.calparks.org/join/newmember.html and join up.

The $25 membership includes free day-use passes to over 200 parks, an official map of all state parks, the California Parklands newsletter, and a subscription to Sunset Magazine (which you can choose to waive in order to allocate more money and resources to the State Park Foundation).

In addition to the membership offer outlined above, the letter we recieved also included a petition form addressed to the Governer urging him to maintain funding for the parks which are the largest provider of educational programs outside of the public school system in California. That's quite an amazing statement considering the number of private schools and other training centers across the state.

The funding from new memberships will be shared between the parks themselves, the restoration and protection of cultural and historical assets within the park system, and educational programs curently in place. One such program, Coast Alive! brings thousands of children to coastal parks to learn about marine ecology each year.

To become a member of California State Parks go here