Take Pride in America Ponds
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Take Pride in America is a Department of Interior initiative to encourage public-private partnerships and citizen volunteerism in land stewardship. It was started by Ronald Reagan and re-launched in the second Bush administration after a Clinton-era hiatus, so it can’t be considered outside of the environmental agendas of those two presidents. Both Reagan and Bush named notoriously anti-environmental appointees to lead the Department of Interior and cut the agency’s budget even while trying to cosmetically fill the gap with private volunteerism, recast as patriotic duty. Though the Take Pride in America viewing platform is nice and all, the program is in keeping with a generally conservative approach to governance: gut public services and propose voluntary, private initiatives in their place. The isolated viewing platform and scattering of boat landings and fishing points built by Take Pride in America stand in sharp contrast to the massive public investment that built Crab Orchard’s three lakes and planted three and a half million trees in the 1930s and 1940s.
