Friends of the Parks (FOTP) is a non-profit organization in Chicago, Illinois. Formed in 1975, it acts as a watchdog group and environmental advocate for the Chicago area. Specifically, it monitors the condition and safety of the Chicago Park District and the forest preserves of Cook County.
FOTP's office is in downtown Chicago. Its staff of approximately eight people relies on volunteer efforts for many of its activities.
Annual events organized by FOTP include the Earth Day Parks and Preserves Clean-up, mobilizing several thousand volunteers on a single day in April to beautify and clean over 100 Chicago area locations; and a black tie ball which features a charity auction.
FOTP provides environmental education programs for Chicago students through two programs: Nature Along the Lake (NAL) for elementary students, and the Earth Team, an after-school apprenticeship program for high school students.
FOTP encourages grassroots efforts to organize local park organizations and acts as a liaison for organizing volunteer events to maintain and improve Chicago area parks, forest preserves, and other greenspace.
On May 3, 2016, a statement released by Melody Hobson stated that the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art would seek a location outside Chicago after a protracted confrontation with FOTP over plans that would have erected a private museum with public greenspace in place of a lakefront parking lot. [1]
In May 2018, Juanita Irizarry, Executive Director, said that Friends of the Parks "disagree with the choice to locate [the Obama Center] on public parkland rather than vacant land across the street from Washington Park." [2] Nonetheless, Friends of the Parks did not join the lawsuit initiated by Protect our Parks against the Obama Center. [3]
In the United States, a national monument is a protected area that can be created from any land owned or controlled by the federal government by proclamation of the president of the United States or an act of Congress. National monuments protect a wide variety of natural and historic resources, including sites of geologic, marine, archaeological, and cultural importance. In contrast, national parks in the U.S. must be created by Congressional legislation. Some national monuments were first created by presidential action and later designated as national parks by congressional approval.
The tallgrass prairie is an ecosystem native to central North America. Historically, natural and anthropogenic fire, as well as grazing by large mammals provided periodic disturbances to these ecosystems, limiting the encroachment of trees, recycling soil nutrients, and facilitating seed dispersal and germination. Prior to widespread use of the steel plow, which enabled large scale conversion to agricultural land use, tallgrass prairies extended throughout the American Midwest and smaller portions of southern central Canada, from the transitional ecotones out of eastern North American forests, west to a climatic threshold based on precipitation and soils, to the southern reaches of the Flint Hills in Oklahoma, to a transition into forest in Manitoba.
Parks in Chicago include open spaces and facilities, developed and managed by the Chicago Park District. The City of Chicago devotes 8.5% of its total land acreage to parkland, which ranked it 13th among high-density population cities in the United States in 2012. Since the 1830s, the official motto of Chicago has been Urbs in horto, Latin for "City in a garden" for its commitment to parkland. In addition to serving residents, a number of these parks also double as tourist destinations, most notably Lincoln Park, Chicago's largest park, visited by over 20 million people each year, is one of the most visited parks in the United States. Notable architects, artists and landscape architects have contributed to the 570 parks, including Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jens Jensen, Dwight Perkins, Frank Gehry, and Lorado Taft.
The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is a United States national recreation area containing many individual parks and open space preserves, located primarily in the Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California. The SMMNRA is in the greater Los Angeles region, with two thirds of the parklands in northwest Los Angeles County, and the remaining third, including a Simi Hills extension, in southeastern Ventura County.
Hermann Park is a 445-acre (180-hectare) urban park in Houston, Texas, situated at the southern end of the Museum District. The park is located to the immediate north end of the MD Anderson Cancer Center at Texas Medical Center and Brays Bayou, east of Rice University, and slightly west of the Third Ward. Hermann Park is home to numerous cultural institutions including the Houston Zoo, Miller Outdoor Theatre, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and the Hermann Park Golf Course, which became one of the first desegregated public golf courses in the United States in 1954. The park also features the Mary Gibbs and Jesse H. Jones Reflection Pool, numerous gardens, picnic areas, and McGovern Lake, an 8-acre (32,000 m2) recreational lake.
Macombs Dam Park is a park in the Concourse section of the Bronx, New York City. The park lay in the shadow of the old Yankee Stadium when it stood, between Jerome Avenue and the Major Deegan Expressway, near the Harlem River and the Macombs Dam Bridge. The park is administered and maintained by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. The majority of Macombs Dam Park was not open to the public from August 2006, when construction began on the new Yankee Stadium, to April 2012.
The Nature Center at Shaker Lakes is a nonprofit organization in Shaker Heights, Ohio, that works to conserve a natural area, educate visitors about nature, and promote better environmental stewardship. It was founded in 1966 as the result of a volunteer effort to preserve the Shaker Parklands from becoming the route for a new freeway connecting Cleveland's east side to Downtown Cleveland.
The Wilderness Society is an American non-profit land conservation organization that is dedicated to protecting natural areas and federal public lands in the United States. They advocate for the designation of federal wilderness areas and other protective designations, such as for national monuments. They support balanced uses of public lands, and advocate for federal politicians to enact various land conservation and balanced land use proposals. The Wilderness Society also engages in a number of ancillary activities, including education and outreach, and hosts one of the most valuable collections of Ansel Adams photographs at their headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a nonprofit membership organization known for its work protecting endangered species through legal action, scientific petitions, creative media and grassroots activism. It was founded in 1989 by Kieran Suckling, Peter Galvin, Todd Schulke and Robin Silver. The center is based in Tucson, Arizona, with its headquarters in the historic Owls club building, and has offices and staff in New Mexico, Nevada, California, Oregon, Illinois, Minnesota, Alaska, Vermont, Florida and Washington, D.C.
Patapsco Valley State Park is a Maryland state park extending along 32 miles (51 km) of the Patapsco River south and west of the city of Baltimore, Maryland. The park encompasses multiple developed areas on over 14,000 acres (5,700 ha) acres of land, making it Maryland's largest state park. In 2006, it was officially celebrated as Maryland's first state park, its first formation being in 1906. Patapsco Valley State Park is managed by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
Elklick Woodlands Natural Area Preserve is a 226-acre (91 ha) Natural Area Preserve located in Fairfax County, Virginia. Owned by the Fairfax County Park Authority, it is protected with a local conservation easement, and preserves a globally rare natural community known as a "northern hardpan basic oak-hickory forest". This kind of forest occurs on diabase soil with an underlay of dense plastic clay; such terrain is called "shrink-swell soil" due to extreme variations in moisture availability exhibited throughout the year. Trees which grow in such an environment are stunted, and their relatively open canopies encourage the growth of a wide variety of grasses and herbs in the understory. Such forests were once common around northern Virginia, but many have been lost due to increasing suburbanization of the area.
Citizens for East Shore Parks (CESP) is a United States environmental organization that focuses on the acquisition and preservation of parkland in the San Francisco Bay Area. CESP works to protect open space along the East Bay shoreline for natural habitat and recreational purposes through a combination of advocacy, education, and outreach. Since its founding in 1985, CESP has worked to secure approximately 1,800 acres (730 ha) of public land, primarily through the creation of the 8.5-mile (13.7 km) long Eastshore State Park in 2002.
Alliance for the Great Lakes is a nonprofit environmental organization formed to conserve and restore the freshwater resources of the Great Lakes through public engagement and policy promotion.
Forterra, based in Seattle, Washington, US, is the state of Washington's largest land conservation, stewardship and community building organization dedicated solely to the region.
Atlanta Georgia includes over 3,000 acres of parkland managed by Parks and Recreation. The 343 Atlanta parks range in scope from formal gardens at Atlanta Botanical Garden to pocket parks in neighborhoods. Additionally, there are six miles of paved pedestrian and bike trails in the Atlanta Beltline as well as the PATH Foundation network of 150 miles of off road trails.
The Barack Obama Presidential Center is a planned museum, library and education project in Chicago to commemorate the presidency of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States. The center will also include community and conference facilities and will house the nonprofit Obama Foundation. Construction on the 19.3 acre campus began in 2021, the tower topped out in mid-2024, and the center is expected to open in the first half of 2026.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is a museum founded by filmmaker George Lucas and his wife, businesswoman Mellody Hobson. Once completed, the museum will hold all forms of visual storytelling, including painting, photography, sculpture, illustration, comic art, performance, and video. It is under construction in Exposition Park in Los Angeles, California. The museum is expected to open in 2025.
The environmental policy of the Donald Trump administration represented a shift from the policy priorities and goals of the preceding Barack Obama administration. Where President Obama's environmental agenda prioritized the reduction of carbon emissions through the use of renewable energy with the goal of conserving the environment for future generations, the Trump administration policy was for the US to attain energy independence based on fossil fuel use and to rescind many environmental regulations. By the end of Trump's term, his administration had rolled back 98 environmental rules and regulations, leaving an additional 14 rollbacks still in progress. As of early 2021, the Biden administration was making a public accounting of regulatory decisions under the Trump administration that had been influenced by politics rather than science.
Twin Metals LLC is seeking approval to create and operate a copper sulfide mine near Ely, Minnesota, on Superior National Forest land. There has been significant opposition to the proposed mine, most notably because of its proximity to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, location within a watershed that drains into the BWCA, and the air, water, light and noise pollution and traffic effects of converting a forested area bordering the BWCA into a substantial industrial mining facility. Twin Metals is a subsidiary of the Chilean conglomerate Antofagasta, which is controlled by billionaire Andrónico Luksic. The original lease is a 1966 lease to the International Nickel Corporation.
The Rockridge-Temescal Greenbelt also commonly known as Frog Park is a public park and greenway that connects the neighborhoods of Temescal and Rockridge in Oakland, California.
Juanita Irizarry, executive director Friends of the Parks, also released a statement, saying officials with the group welcome the Obama Center to the South Side "but disagree with the choice to locate it on public parkland rather than vacant land across the street from Washington Park."
we welcome the Obama Presidential Center to Chicago's South Side but disagree with the choice to locate it on public parkland rather than vacant land across the street from Washington Park," Juanita Irizarry, executive director of Friends of the Parks, said in a statement Monday. "While we are not involved with this lawsuit in any way, it is an indication of the fact the Friends of the Parks is not alone in our concern about Chicago's parks being seen as sites for real estate development."