The Eppley Institute for Parks and Public Lands has been selected to partner with two major national parks, Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming) and Everglades National Park (Florida), to produce mandatory park user education programs that protect natural resources and enhance park user safety.
Everglades National Park
Eppley will partner with Everglades National Park to provide an online boater education program for the park’s marine waters as a key part of the park’s general management plan. The need for this boater safety program is based on strong public concern for marine resources protection, the quality of visitor experiences in these areas, as well as scientific information gathered about park conditions and levels of use. The online course will increase power boaters’ understanding of the challenges of navigating the Everglade’s marine waters, and ensure that boaters will be aware of laws, regulations, and policies that affect marine resources and visitor use.
Yellowstone National Park
Yellowstone National Park is utilizing the Eppley Institute to implement an online Snowmobile Education Certification that allows private snowmobilers to enter Yellowstone National Park with the training they need to be safe, and to protect the park’s wildlife and natural resources. As the park transitions to allowing select snowmobile groups to be able to enter Yellowstone National Park without a commercial guide, emphasizing resource protection and visitor safety, along with educating snowmobile operators about unique conditions they will encounter on Yellowstone’s groomed over-snow roads during extreme winter condition becomes imperative.
About the Eppley Institute
Established in 1993 Indiana University’s Eppley Institute for Parks and Public Lands is an national award winning program offering online learning for park, recreation, and protected areas management to over 30,000 individuals annually at www.eppley.org. The Institute was recently awarded over $750,000 in contracts and grants for the National Park Service including these two important projects, as part of its 20 year history of research, education, and consulting efforts nationally.
