Protecting threatened lands in perpetuity.
Within the boundaries of the 420+ sites in the national park system, over two million acres remain privately-owned, and the national trails that provide recreation and wildlife corridors across our great nation are often incomplete and unprotected. To conserve the most significant and threatened lands in our national parks, the National Park Foundation (NPF) works with the National Park Service (NPS) and nonprofit partners to acquire these properties and add them to the parks.
NPF's Land Conservation program helps expand parks for all to experience and enjoy, as well as supporting new park units that tell a more complete American story and protect unique natural beauty. To do this, NPF leverages private funds to accomplish complex land transactions involving willing sellers, protecting priority lands forever.
Learn more about NPF's Land Conservation program and the projects it funds in parks.
The NPF Land Conservation program depends upon the support of donors to meet NPS' needs. Philanthropic dollars enable several types of grants to protect land.
In December 2020, Acting Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt designated the home of Medgar and Myrlie Evers and their family as a national monument to honor the lives and sacrifices of the civil rights activists. To support NPS’ acquisition of the property, NPF paid for a property survey, title work, and environmental site assessments for the home of the civil rights leaders and nearby vacant land. In 2023, in anticipation of the 60th anniversary of Medgar Evers's assassination, NPF supported the Trust for Public Land's transformation of vacant lots into an outdoor education space and garden area adjacent to the home site.
In 2017, Congress authorized the addition of the Forks of the Road site to Natchez National Historical Park. Prior to the Civil War, the Forks of the Road market was the second largest market for the sale of enslaved persons in the Deep South. NPF helped NPS acquire properties within the new Forks of the Road site, and during the Natchez Juneteenth celebration in 2021, NPS announced the successful acquisition of the first two tracts at the site, with additional successful acquisitions in 2022 and 2023. NPF continues to support and facilitate conservation at the site towards the goal of one day opening this location to commemoration and visitor interpretation.
Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park is a unique urban park that tells the story of 17,000 years of continuous human habitation of the Ocmulgee basin. NPF was among several partners that helped add a 900-acre property to the park in 2022. The addition protects a Native American cultural site, as well as a riparian landscape within an urban community. The 900 acres purchased were the first piece of a 3,000-acre, larger acquisition project, and later that same year NPF and partners supported NPS' acquistion of another 250-acre parcel. NPF and partners are working with willing sellers to continue the process to preserve the culturally significant and sacred land of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation from the threat of development.
Thanks to the collaborative efforts of NPF and its donors, including the Mellon Foundation and Fund II Foundation, a new National Park Service site will preserve the story and legacy of Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley, a crucial chapter of American history and the civil rights movement. NPF has contributed nearly $3 million, with full support from the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project initiative and Fund II Foundation, to enable the preservation of the Till family’s story in context of this new park site, as well as the first year of staffing required to interpret the history and story of the historical courthouse.
