As well as filming with Nat Geo, including a virtual reality experience to be shown later this summer, Obama was joined on the visit by First Lady Michelle Obama, the First Daughters.
Advertisement
Following the speech, Obama and the first family took off for a day-long hike around Yosemite.
Obama and his family plan to stay at a suite in the hotel formerly known as the Ahwahnee, the luxury establishment that has been renamed the Majestic Yosemite Hotel due to a trademark battle with the park’s former concessionaire. The Obama’s visited Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico on Friday.
What the National Parks represent to US historyPresident Barack Obama waves to the crowd while he arrives at Yosemite earlier this week.
President Barack Obama mixed business with pleasure here Saturday, touting the importance of national parks, and then seeing one up close for himself as he took in the sights at what is arguably the crown jewel of the National Park System.
President Barack Obama greets attendees before speaking in Yosemite National Park in California, Saturday, June 17, 2016. Here in Yosemite, meadows are drying up, bird ranges are shifting farther northward, Alpine mammals like pikas are being forced further up slope.
Gediman, who has worked in Yosemite for more than 20 years, is also honored that the president chose to visit Yosemite during the National Park Service’s centennial year.
“Make no mistake”, President Obama said. Not all kids get to see that kind of thing, and that needs to change, he said.
“We’ve designated new monuments and historic sites that better reflect the story of all our people”, Obama said.
Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman said the park has given out 4,000 to 5,000 free passes through the Every Kid in a Park initiative, more than any other national park, since the program started in September.
Climate change, he said, could at some point “even threaten icons like the Statue of Liberty at Ellis Island”. “No more Joshua trees in Joshua Tree National Park”, Obama said. The service said glaciers could be completely gone from Glacier national park by 2020, park facilities in Alaska are sinking due to thawing permafrost and archaeological sites are under threat from sea level rise. “Part of why it’s so important for us to raise awareness (about climate change) with the general public is: This is a solvable problem”.
Temperatures inside the Big Room hold at a cool 56 degrees, in sharp contrast to the 100-degree heat baking the arid landscape that surrounds the national park, and Obama wore a jacket to ward off the slight chill.
Advertisement
“We have to have the foresight and the faith in the future to protect our parks and to protect our planet for the generations to come”, Obama said at Yosemite National Park in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.
