May 2016 - Parks & Recreation - 18

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Notable News

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16 Parks & Recreation

n
Nevada received roughly
$400,000 in grants from the Land
and Water Conservation Fund
(LWCF) to improve park and recreation areas throughout the state.
Nevada Sen. Harry Reid (D) fought
to reinstate the LWCF, which, last
October, congressional Republicans allowed to expire for the first
time in 50 years. In most cases, the
money will help to upgrade facilities in several local and state parks,
as well as to develop a new park for
the Paiute-Shoshone Tribe of the
Fallon Reservation and Colony.
n American Rivers recently published its annual America's Most
Endangered Rivers report, which
" identifies the 10 most threatened
waterways in the country. " Topping
the list is the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin, which
is threatened by outdated water
management practices and wasteful
water use. Outdated water management practices also pose a threat
to California's San Joaquin River.
Threats to the other river systems include a proposal to build new dams
on tributaries that feed into the Pascagoula River that flows through
Mississippi and Alabama; harmful
dam operations on New York's St.
Lawrence River, the Susquehanna
River that flows through Pennsylvania and Maryland, and North Carolina's Pee Dee River; mountaintop
removal mining on the Russell Fork
River that flows through Kentucky
and Virginia; and others.
n Almost five years ago, Oklahoma City garnered two unflattering
rankings: the " worst U.S. walking

| M AY 2 0 1 6 | W W W. PA R K S A N D R E C R E AT I O N . O R G

city " from Prevention magazine and
the American Podiatric Medical
Association, and the " No. 2 fattest
city " from Men's Fitness magazine.
Since then, as part of the city's focus on active living and healthy
eating, its infrastructure has seen
the addition of hundreds of miles
of new sidewalks, 8 miles of bike
lanes on streets (no bike lanes existed in 2008), 100 additional miles
of recreational trail and new gyms
built at many public schools. These
and a number of other steps being
taken have already resulted in a significant decline in the city's obesity
rate, which has fallen from 6 percent annually to 1 percent.
n Much of the research about public parks and green spaces focuses
on the physical, psychological and
social benefits to urban residents.
A recent study, " Public Parks and
Wellbeing in Urban Areas of the
United States, " published on PLOS
ONE (http://tinyurl.com/hephfzj)
is one of a few that focuses on the
influence of parks on comprehensive measures of subjective wellbeing at the city level. Using 2014 data
from 44 U.S. cities, the relationship
between urban park quantity, quality and accessibility was evaluated
and results suggest that expansive
park networks are linked to multiple aspects of health and wellbeing
in cities and positively impact urban quality of life.
For more news from around
the industry, visit www.parksandrecreation.org/2016/May/Notable-News.

May 2016 - Parks & Recreation

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