This much may safely be said: Americans love their national parks and monuments a lot more than their government does.

Last week was National Park Week, which culminated with President Bush announcing the first $50 million in public-private matching grants, part of a centennial challenge designed to lead up to the 2016 centennial of the National Parks Service. The money is much-needed. Maybe it will take something as high-profile as a 100-year anniversary to bring some federal attention to the parks, which for years have been feeling pressures from increases in visitors and decreases in budgets.

This newspaper illuminated those challenges in an in-depth report published Saturday. It showed that, from 2003-07, visits to parks in Utah increased 4.3 percent, while full-time equivalent employee positions were cut by 6.6 percent. Budgets during that time increased 9 percent — a dismal figure compared with a 12.7 percent rate of inflation.

Those figures do more than simply illustrate a problem. In Utah, national parks and monuments are huge tourist attractions, and that translates into jobs and money. As the Deseret News report showed, the problem has gotten so bad at Dinosaur National Monument that the visitors center has been closed for lack of maintenance, making trips there much less pleasant than many tourists might expect.

This may be alarming information, but it shouldn't surprise readers of this newspaper, where reports of budget cuts have been published periodically for years.

National parks and monuments are vital parts of the national heritage and identity. They are sources of pride and wonder. Utah's parks are as breathtaking today as they were when early explorers first discovered them. They remind people of nature's fragility and of the need to be wise stewards. The nation can't afford to let them deteriorate from neglect any more than it could afford to let people handle the original Declaration of Independence with greasy fingers.

To our knowledge, questions about the proper funding of national parks have not been a part of any presidential debate. That's too bad. Their preservation may not be as pressing today as the economy or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it would be nice to hear promises that they will be properly funded beyond the 100-year anniversary.