Organizations
How companies, institutions, and movements embody the sixteen values.
National Park Service
Land held in trust for the unborn
The National Park Service was created to manage the land that the United States government had decided was too significant to be extracted, developed, or privately owned. The founding mandate, to preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources for the enjoyment of present and future generations, is a legacy-orientation written into law. The specific institutional commitment distinguishing the NPS is the intergenerational obligation: the land is held not for current users but for people who do not yet exist, making the time horizon explicitly multigenerational.
National Park Service
Land held in trust for the unborn
The National Park Service was created to manage the land that the United States government had decided was too significant to be extracted, developed, or privately owned. The founding mandate, to preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources for the enjoyment of present and future generations, is a legacy-orientation written into law. The specific institutional commitment distinguishing the NPS is the intergenerational obligation: the land is held not for current users but for people who do not yet exist, making the time horizon explicitly multigenerational.
63 national parks and 400 sites preserving natural and cultural landscapes that would otherwise have been converted to extractive or commercial use. Free and low-cost access to natural environments for families who cannot afford private alternatives. A preservation ethic resisting extractive pressure for a century and producing landscapes that are now among the most significant conservation areas on earth.
Chronic underfunding producing an $11.7 billion deferred maintenance backlog. A founding history that created national parks by removing Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands and erasing that displacement from the official narrative. Overcrowding in the most visited parks, in which the popularity of the preservation success threatens the ecological integrity that motivated the preservation.
The creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872 - the first national park in the world, establishing that a government could make a binding legal commitment to hold land in perpetuity for public benefit rather than private extraction.