Panel to examine plans for new national park, monuments

By Rob Hotakainen | 05/14/2024 06:25 AM EDT

Georgia would get its first national park, while New York and Oklahoma would be homes to two new monuments under bills set for a hearing Wednesday.

Michael Caldwell.

National Park Service official Michael Caldwell will testify this week about a roster of bills. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee

A Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee this week will consider bills that would create the 64th national park in Georgia and two new national monuments in New York and Oklahoma.

They’re among the 23 bills that the Subcommittee on National Parks will tackle at a hearing on Wednesday.

S. 4216 would establish Ocmulgee Mounds National Park and Preserve on the outskirts of Macon, making it the first national park in Georgia. The bill would expand and redesignate the existing Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park.

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Georgia’s Democratic senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, introduced the bill earlier this month. Under their plan, the National Park Service would co-manage the park with citizens of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma, whose ancestors were forced to relinquish their land in Georgia more than 200 years ago and move west.

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