Friends with Money: Private Support for a National Park in the US Virgin Islands

Abstract

"With the decline of state-sponsored funding for protected areas, private support has become increasingly important, and, in some places, predominant. This article explores and analyses the implications of private support for the Virgin Islands National Park in St. John, US Virgin Islands. Specifically, it focuses on the emergence of an organisation called Friends of the Virgin Islands National Park. This organisations support has become essential to the management of the park, which consistently experiences significant shortfalls in federal funding. While this support has been beneficial to the park, it has exacerbated the long-standing tensions between park management and local people, which have existed since the park was established with support from Laurence S. Rockefeller in 1956. At issue are the ways in which the Friends Group raises money, the park programmes it funds, the interpretation of historic sites, synergistic relationships between the group and certain island residents, and the groups political capital in national arenas. The paper highlights the inequitable structural relationships in which local people find themselves and their values disregarded. By way of conclusion, the article addresses the more general implications of these dynamics for private support of protected areas, particularly how private support can disenfranchise those outside of philanthropic partnerships."