We've had this discussion before. There are many, many places across the United States that are not, but should be, part of the National Park System. Places like the North Woods of Maine. The area surrounding Blackwater Falls in West Virginia. Sections of the San Rafael Swell in Utah. Now there's an independent group working to see such places added to the system.

The New National Parks Project just has three souls and is only days old, but its founders believe their efforts are needed to complete the National Park System.

“Our existing National Park System is the best in the world. But it is far from complete,” said Michael Kellett, founder and president of the project. “There are hundreds of priceless natural landscapes and cultural sites that qualify as new national parks and dozens of existing parks that should be expanded. Now is the time to preserve these irreplaceable treasures.”

Mr. Kellett said that while the birth of the national park movement in the United States is wldely viewed as "America's best idea," it is one that hasn't fully matured. The pace of parks creation has slowed to a crawl in recent years, he said.

While only Congress or the president can designate units of the park system, the New National Parks Project will urge these public officials to initiate studies of special places across the
country for their potential as new national parks.

“The centennial of the National Park Service is in 2016. What better way to celebrate than to create a new generation of national parks for the American people?” asked Erica Rosenberg, the group's Washington, D.C., director. “As the only group dedicated solely to new national parks, we will be working with grassroots and national organizations, elected leaders, and citizens across the country to make new national parks a top priority in the years ahead. Our goal is not to duplicate the work of others, but to unite, lead, and energize citizens who want new parks.”

Susan Tixier, who runs the project's Southwest office, believes there's a need to have more national parks that, while preserving incredible places, also are closer to population centers.

“We need more national parks. Everyone deserves to have a park nearby,” she said. “Everyone needs the chance to experience the adventure of the out-of-doors, where the unpredictable can happen — where there are bears and eagles, wild rivers and avalanches, crashing thunder and blissful silence, butterflies and blinding sunlight. This is the America our ancestors experienced — it’s a vital part of our national heritage.”

The trio believes their efforts are well-timed. The Ken Burns PBS documentary, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, is receiving an enthusiastic public response. The blue-ribbon Second Century Commission report recommends more resources for existing parks and the addition of new parks. The Obama administration is showing a level of interest in protecting and expanding national parks that has not been seen in decades. The new congress provides a positive climate for new national park legislation. And, the group said, the approaching National Park Service centennial in 2016 provides a unique milestone for major expansion of the park system.

Here's part of an op-ed that Ms. Rosenberg wrote to explain their cause:

Despite their universal popularity, Congress, the Park Service and park advocates working at the national level focus almost exclusively on existing parks. New park designation has stalled. Since 1980, only 35 new park units of any kind have been created, fewer than one a year on average, with the overwhelming majority of those being small historic sites as opposed to expansive natural areas. Between 1929 and 1980, in contrast, about 230 units, or on average almost four a year, were added to the system.

Hostility to federal land ownership and spending on the part of conservative Congresses account for some of the stagnation. As significant, environmentalists for the last few decades have directed their energies not to preserving natural areas by adding parks to the system, but to battling federal agencies beholden to extractive industries and to expanding the federal wilderness system.

Wilderness -- which, like national parks, only Congress can designate -- offers a protective overlay for federal land regardless of the agency managing it (be it the BLM, the Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service or the Park Service). It's the most restrictive designation, keeping out most activities and people, except for rugged individuals hiking in the backcountry. Parks, on the other hand, encourage people to come in, and so they accommodate (to varying degrees) the need for parking lots and visitor centers, and for a wide range of recreational opportunities, from mountain biking to ranger talks to car camping.

Despite these accommodations, parks protect vast swaths of wild lands. They also confer enormous public health, educational and scientific benefits. They afford outstanding and varied outdoor activities for an increasingly urbanized and unfit population. They present and explain natural phenomena and U.S. history, from the geology of the Grand Canyon to military tactics at the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg. Because they represent relatively intact ecosystems, parks enable scientific research -- and species -- to flourish; Yellowstone, for example, has been the "lab" for the study of wildfire recovery and for the restoration of the wolf and grizzly bear in the Lower 48.