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National Park Service aims to diversify visitors

From the Sequoias in California to the Everglades in Florida, the National Parks Service has been stewards of these magnificent landscapes and monuments for nearly 100 years
The National Park Service helps you “find your park” 04:49

The National Park Service will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year. Ahead of this milestone it has launched a campaign called "find your park," aimed at attracting a wider audience to experience parks, monuments, seashores and wilderness areas. CBS News correspondent David Begnaud reports from Los Angeles, California.

From the Sequoias in California to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington to the Everglades in Florida, the National Parks Service has been stewards of these magnificent landscapes and monuments for nearly 100 years.

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Vietnam Veterans Memorial National Park Service

It is a legacy started by President Theodore Roosevelt who first designated the first great American iconic landscapes as protected places

Today, there are 407 National Park Service properties. Jonathan Jarvis, the Director of the National Parks Service, wants to make sure the parks and monuments remain valued by all Americans:

Last year 290 million people visited national parks, which sounds like a lot of people.

"Our core visitation to the National Parks tends to be older, and more white than the demographic of the U.S.," Jarvis said. "For me that is a problem."

That is why the National Park Service is going all out to get more visitors like 10-year-old Tigran Nahabedian who has a badge for each of the 32 National Parks he's visited. But does Nahabedian think other people his age are interested in National Parks?

"I think so," Nahabedian said. "I am trying to inspire my friends to go to the National Parks."

President Obama is trying to do the same, starting this fall, every 4th grader like Tigran can visit a National Park for free along their family.

Tigrin's passion started at the Channel Islands National Park off the Southern California coast where every week students go on a 10-mile boat ride with rangers.

One group comes from the Buena High School environmental club in Ventura, California. They've volunteered to help park staff restore the island, which was once used for ranching.

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Channel Islands National Park National Park Service

A ranger explained to the group that the whole area was filled in to make way for the ranching operation. Plants that ranchers brought in to feed cattle eventually overran the native plants. Now, the students will help get eradicate the problem.

It is a hands-on conservation lesson young people like Lauren Zaragoza might otherwise not have. She had never been to one before and hopes to bring her family soon.

"My mom is really interested in coming," Zaragoza said.

The National Parks Service is discovering young people are the ones introducing others to the parks.

Eddie Alvarez, a student, said he goes every break he gets. Opportunities for Eddie Alvarez are as vast as the as the 84 million acres designated as a National Park Service property.

Ahead of next year's centennial celebration, the National Park Service has launched a campaign called "find your park" to point out the multitude of special American places.

The El Pueblo Historic Monument in downtown Los Angeles was founded in 1781 by Native American, Africans and European farmers. With the help of celebrities, the Park Service is also promoting its urban parks as a way to bring more minorities to them.

"I am a deep believer that these belong to the American people, and that the experience of standing in Gettysburg Battlefield and thinking about what happened there and how it changed America, that the transition from civil war to civil rights today, that these are issues that we are still dealing with in this nation -- it is an experience that everyone should have," Jarvis said. "And it literally, sort of breaks my heart there are members of our society that are not having this experience."

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Joshua Tree National Park National Park Service

To experience it, it must be seen, because as President Theodore Roosevelt said "There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm."


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