Anderson Design Group Interviews Great Basin National Park Foundation!
As artists and wilderness explorers, our passion is to venture into the 63 American National Parks, photograph and document the wonder of these natural places, and share our enthusiasm for the parks and other natural wonders by creating original, high-quality poster art for our 63 Illustrated National Parks Collection. In our travels, we’ve also developed an immense appreciation for national monuments, which inspired the American National Monuments and Natural Wonders collection.
The national parks, monuments, historic sites, memorials, recreation areas, forests, and other BLM lands were created to preserve America’s natural beauty and cultural history, with each protected site representing a significant chapter in the great American story. Because we at Anderson Design Group believe strongly in preserving the parks and natural and historic spaces for future generations to enjoy, we’re always looking for opportunities to support the conservancies, foundations, natural history associations, and friend groups that protect these invaluable places.
To raise awareness of the important educational, conservation, fundraising, youth involvement, and preservation activities taking place in a one-of-a-kind national park located in Nevada, we took some time this week to sit down with Aviva O’Neil, Executive Director of Great Basin National Park Foundation. The organization is celebrating Great Basin’s 40th anniversary with a Great Basin Virtual Speaker Series, so this interview could not have come at a better time!
An Interview with Great Basin National Park Foundation
ADG: Thanks for sitting down with us, Aviva. Can you tell us how you describe your group? If you had an elevator pitch for what Great Basin National Park Foundation does, what would that be?
Aviva: Sure! Great Basin National Park Foundation's (GBNPF's) main goal is to help ensure the health and longevity of the fragile Great Basin ecosystem, inspire the next generation of Park stewards, welcome diverse audiences with exceptional visitor experiences, and address the Park’s most pressing problems by generating financial resources and community support. We help support projects and programs beyond the limited budgets arriving from Congress.
ADG: Can you give us some background on GBNPF?
Aviva: The organization was spearheaded by pretty important Nevada public servants. The Bryan family sat in the governor’s mansion for many years, and Governor Richard Bryan’s wife, First Lady Bonnie Bryan, was very passionate about preserving Nevada’s public lands. She saw Great Basin as a hidden gem, so she established our group to advocate for and secure funding for the park. That was in 1998, and since then, the Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, has raised over three million dollars to help Great Basin National Park. Our mission is to enhance, preserve, and interpret the starry night skies, wide-open scenery, cultural heritage, and diverse native ecosystems of Great Basin National Park.
ADG: Can you fill us in on some of the projects your group has worked on since then?
Aviva: Sure! Over the years the Foundation’s projects included things like the construction of a new Visitor Center in Baker, Nevada; purchasing of safety equipment, funding of park interns, creating and managing an education program and funding the expansion of the park’s astronomy programs which eventually led to the planning, building, and oversight of the Great Basin Observatory (GBO). As the first research-grade astronomical observatory ever built in a U.S. national park, the GBO is a robotic, remotely accessible telescope that enables researchers and students worldwide to take advantage of the most outstanding night-sky conditions in the lower 48 states!
Pictured below: Park visitors can view the cosmos during astronomy programs at Great Basin National Park from one of the darkest places in the contiguous United States. Great Basin National Park Foundation has funded all of the park’s telescopes and, each year, funds specialized astronomy interns who make astronomy programs possible. Credit: Tom Auchter
ADG: We noticed you are very involved in education. How does GBNPF support education in the park? Particularly for young people?
Aviva: The park conducts interpretation programs within the park, but it doesn't have capacity to reach beyond its borders. We reach schools outside the park with Great Basin science education programs. We both fund and implement programs that include field trips, classroom programming, and virtual learning programs. We want to inspire the next generation of park stewards, and because the park is remote, we’ve had to think outside the box to connect students to the park, even if they’re hundreds (or thousands) of miles away. We have teacher resources, lesson plans, virtual programs, and more, to support student learning and connection to Great Basin National Park. We also do camping programs for those least likely to have the opportunity to visit a national park.
Pictured below: Great Basin National Park Foundation implements all education programs for the park, extending the park’s capacity to benefit youth beyond the park’s boundaries. Credit: Great Basin National Park Foundation
ADG: Tell us about some of the other projects in the park your group is focused on.
Aviva: We work directly with the park's management team on our priorities, as we want the Park Service to lead the way in determining park needs and priorities. Take outreach, for example. To ensure that members of the tribes closest to Great Basin National Park can experience the park and share their knowledge of the area, we've provided opportunities for tribal engagement that include families and youth coming on multi-day camping trips in the park. The park has wanted to reach tribes in this way. They've also wanted to reach people in urban areas of Nevada, so we created the Great Basin Explorers program to do this.
Pictured below: Great Basin Explorers trips (pictured here) serve populations least likely to benefit from a national park experience. Credit: Great Basin National Park Foundation
ADG: One of the lesser-known aspects of Great Basin National Park is Lehman Caves. Can you tell us about the activities your organization is involved in related to the caves?
Aviva: The caves are a big part of the park. Cave tours are a big draw, so our organization helps fund interns who lead cave tours during the summer months. Also, we help raise awareness of volunteer opportunities in the park, and help fund the annual “Lint Camp” cleanup program which the Park Service organizes and leads. It’s a program in which folks from all over the country come to spend eight hours in the cave each day, cleaning lint off the cave features. Yes, people literally bring lint into the caves from their clothes, and as it has nowhere to go, it accumulates! People love cleaning it up. It’s a very unique and special event that helps conserve the cave's fragile environment. And of course, we lead educational programs in Lehman Caves during student field trips to the park.
Pictured below: A Great Basin National Park Foundation educator leads students on a tour of Lehman Caves, helping students’ science learning come alive. Credit: Great Basin National Park Foundation
ADG: What are some other projects your group has been involved in?
Aviva: Last year, the current federal administration imposed massive layoffs of park employees, which hit Great Basin hard, as it’s already a remote park with few employees to begin with. The administration terminated five probationary employees on Valentine’s Day 2025. GBNPF stepped in to rehire park rangers out of the Foundation’s pocket. We essentially provided a crucial funding bridge for park rangers, ensuring they could remain on duty and perform critical operations in the park while the federal government’s cuts to the Park Service were litigated in court.
ADG: Great Basin has some really unique biology. What is that?
Aviva: Absolutely. Particular to the Great Basin are the bristlecone pines, the oldest living non-clonal organisms on the planet. The Great Basin is incredibly biodiverse. We even have ten endemic species in the many caves here. Endemic means that they live nowhere else on Earth! The park does an incredible job of resource monitoring, research, and management. But unfortunately, this is an area that is threatened right now. That's another thing we do, reach out to congressional leaders to make sure they know the importance of fully funding our national parks.
ADG: Your group has also supported the rise of interest in astronomy in the park, correct?
Aviva: Yes, and we’re super proud of that! Each year, the Foundation provides financial support for two Great Basin National Park 'Scientists in Parks' interns. These highly-qualified young astronomers support the park’s very popular astronomy programs, which reach over 10,000 visitors each year. We provided the telescopes for the astronomy Park programs, equipping their astronomy team with all of the tools needed to share the wonders of the cosmos with visitors. We also support Park astronomy initiatives, including its designation as an International Dark Sky Park and the yearly astronomy festival. And we collaborate with many talented groups to ensure the Great Basin’s dark skies remain protected and available for research and education. This includes university, regional, and local partners, as well as the Basin and Range Dark Sky Cooperative.
Pictured below: Great Basin National Park has the only research-grade observatory in a national park, built and operated by the Great Basin National Park Foundation. Credit: Great Basin National Park Foundation
ADG: Does the remote nature of the park ever make it difficult to advocate for it?
Aviva: It just poses additional factors we have to contend with. For example, finding the people who love Great Basin can be a bit harder. The park doesn’t have the notoriety that Yellowstone or Yosemite do, so finding the people who care enough about the park, that they want to support it financially, takes creativity. But we find ways to go into communities that may be very far from the park and remind folks of the gem that is the Great Basin and the importance of protecting it.
Pictured below: Great Basin National Park is very remote, so events to support the park happen virtually or in cities at a distance, like this event in Reno in 2025. Credit: Great Basin National Park Foundation
ADG: So amazing everything GBNPF is doing, Aviva! Any closing remarks or anything else you want to say about the park and your good works within it?
Aviva: Great Basin National Park is very remote, a quality integral to its identity and what makes it so special. At the same time, this park needs a community of support, as all of America’s national parks do. Being so remote, it can be harder to find the people who care deeply about this area. But the truth is, you don’t even have to visit this park to fall in love with it and all it contains and protects. From the oldest living things on planet Earth to dozens of winding underground caverns that support endemic species, from international dark skies that are some of the darkest and clearest in the U.S., to rich biodiversity and serene beauty where you can get away from it all. Great Basin National Park is a portal to time and space—a place deserving of our care, protection, and support.
ADG: We couldn’t agree more with those sentiments! Thanks for sitting down with us today.
Aviva: Thanks for having me!
The Importance of Supporting National Park Foundations and Friends Groups
You can learn more about Great Basin National Park Foundation at their website. If you want to support their work, you can become a member or participate in a variety of donation options.
If you represent a natural history association, foundation, friend group, conservancy, or preservation association that works in any of the 63 American National Parks or the hundreds of national monuments and other NPS sites across the U.S., contact us today to set up an interview! Just email ren@andersondesigngroup.com.
In the meantime, we’ll get back to creating vintage poster art of the national parks. Let’s enjoy these beautiful, historic places and do our part to preserve them for future generations.
-Ren Brabenec
Anderson Design Group Staff Writer
