In its scramble for additional funding to spruce up parks for next year’s 100th anniversary celebration, the National Park Service is, apparently, up for whatever.

The park service has waived its policy prohibiting partnerships with alcohol makers, allowing the National Park Foundation to forge a two-year, $2.5 million deal with the world’s largest brewer, Anheuser-Busch InBev.

The alliance, designed to raise both cash and awareness for the park service’s centennial milestone and its ” Find Your Park” campaign, will see Budweiser cans and bottles wrapped in images of the Statue of Liberty, as well as Bud-branded events such as summer concerts inside yet-to-be-named park properties.

Park service director Jonathan Jarvis in his just-released memo approving the partnership said advantages of the deal included: “Aligning the economic and historical legacies of two iconic brands” and “Aligning the NPS brand with a corporate entity that has the same goals surrounding relevancy, diversity and inclusion.”

He also included among the “potential negative impacts” the “possibility that NPS employees will voice concern.”

And indeed the collaboration has struck a nerve with some employees.

“This is yet another example of the park service’s willingness to change its management to accommodate corporate sponsors,” said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

In 1998, then National Park Service Director Robert Stanton issued

“Director’s Order 21” guiding the agency’s fundraising. It prohibited donations “directly associated with any product, service, or enterprise that would reflect adversely on the NPS mission and image, such as alcohol or tobacco products.”

Jarvis’ memo said the Budweiser deal could help develop new policies “as we contemplate potential updates to Director’s Order 21.”

In 2011, Jarvis blocked a proposed ban on bottled water in Grand Canyon National Park after Coca-Cola, which distributes water under the Dasani brand, objected to the deal. Coca-Cola has donated more than $13 million to parks.

“This deal isn’t a slippery slope. It’s a bungy jump,” Ruch said of the Budweiser agreement. “This not a modest, limited step.”

The public-private partnership has become a vital tool for cash-strapped land managers since the late 1990s. Congress’ fiscal 2015 National Defense Authorization Act encouraged the park service to pursue private funding with rules allowing donor recognition for official sponsors and even “naming rights to any unit of the National Park System or a National Park System facility, including a visitor center.”

“All of these centennial partnerships are in keeping with the direction of Congress to leverage private support in tandem with public investment in advance of the centennial,”

the agency’s chief of public affairs April Slayton said.

The park service has suspended the alcohol prohibition before. A 2012 deal allowed a California vintner to sell National Park wines. Sales through 2014 earned the National Parks Foundation $78,000

“The waiver permitting the Budweiser partnership carefully builds on that past successful partnership,” Slayton said.

Budweiser announced the partnership in in a press release that included samples of the “patriotic packaging featuring the iconic silhouette of Lady Liberty” designed by social media landscape photographer 13th Witness.

“We want to encourage a new generation of beer drinkers to get out there and see what America is made of,” Budweiser spokesman Brian Perkins said in the statement. “And where better than in America’s national parks?”

This week the beermaker backed off a slogan that was part of its wider “Up For Whatever” campaign, which came to life last year when the beermaker took over Crested Butte for a three-day party. The phrase — “The Perfect Beer For Removing ‘No’ From Your Vocabulary For The Night” — printed at the bottom of Bud Light labels sparked a social media firestorm, that blasted the campaign as encouraging rape and conflicting with the national “No Means No” campaign.

The park service has been exploring additional funding avenues for several years as its federal budget tightens and visitation climbs. Last year it proposed increases in visitor entrance fees. The agency in March announced an $11.5 billion backlog in deferred maintenance

. Its 2016 budget request included a $243 million annual increase in operational funding and $300 million a year over the next three years to help rehab tired buildings and roads in places including Rocky Mountain National Park.

The Budweiser pact is part of the largest fundraising campaign in park history, National Park Foundation interim president Dan Wenk said in an e-mail. “The goal is hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Earlier this week the foundation announced a three-year collaboration with Disney to get 500,000 kids in national parks by 2017.

The National Park Service recently unveiled its “Find Your Park” campaign, the largest marketing push ever for national parks. The idea is to elevate parks as a destination for millennials and urbanites. The campaign includes big-name stars, innovative social media and a website where visitors can upload pictures from national parks with the intent of sparking a road trip.

The entire “Find Your Park” campaign is privately funded corporate sponsors, Wenk said.

Ruch blasted the idea that a beer campaign will help lure younger people to parks.

“Do they really believe a brewery is the path to reaching a new generation?” Ruch said. “Following that thinking, all of the baby boomers should have become farmers after Woodstock.”

Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374, jblevins@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jasonblevins