NATIONAL PARKS

A national park, as distinct from a landscaped urban park, is a place set aside to preserve a natural geology or ecology deemed to possess significant inherent value. The concept of a national park thus constitutes a practical effort to place a specific ethical limit on technological development, sometimes for scientific as well as public benefit.

Historical Origin

Shortly after northwest Wyoming was annexed as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, mountaineers and trappers began returning from their adventures in the American West with stories of a strange and mysterious place where steaming water bubbled from the ground and geysers shot like clockwork into the sky.

Rumors swirled for decades, until, in 1870, several expeditions were organized to explore the area around the Yellowstone River. The first expedition was so awed by the hissing, cauldron-like landscape that upon return members began a campaign for the creation of the world's first national park.

In response the federal government funded a second, scientific expedition, which was led by Dr. F. W. Hayden, then head of the U.S. Geological Survey. The group also included photographer William Henry Jackson, whose photographs (often developed on location in the hot springs) would prove the existence of a national treasure to skeptical Easterners and convince the country that Yellowstone needed to be set aside for the ages. Another participant, Lieutenant Gustavas C. Doane testified before Congress about what he had seen:

[This land] is without parallel; as a field for scientific research, it promises great results; in the branches of geology, mineralogy, botany, zoology, and ornithology, it is probably the greatest laboratory that nature furnishes on the surface of the globe. (Everhart 1972, p. 6)

On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone Act. With the creation of Yellowstone National Park, 2 million acres were established "as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." The act went on to stipulate that regulations would be put in place to provide for the preservation "from injury or spoliation, of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities, or wonders ..."

Many in Congress voted for the creation of Yellowstone National Park because they did not want to see it destroyed by the type of crass commercialization and over-building that had occurred in New York's Niagara Falls. Preservation for its own sake was not a foundational idea. Indeed ideas such as Manifest Destiny and abundance were hallmarks of the frontier sensibility. Few thought the bounty of America had limits. Fewer still thought the government had any business interfering with their right to exploit the scenic wonders and natural resources at the frontier.

Though a great park was created, with visitors came despoliation. By 1886 the cavalry had to be called in to protect the park from vandalism, logging, and hunting. By the time a bill passed, creating a National Park Service within the Department of Interior to administer public lands, there were thirty-one national parks and monuments in the United States and a growing awareness that some type of protection was critical to the survival the nation's wild and scenic places. With the passage of the National Park Service Act of 1916, the debate between conservationists and preservationists over just how to protect the parks was settled: Conservationists arguing for the wise use of the natural resources in the national parks lost out to the preservationists who argued that wilderness areas should remain untouched and unexploited.

One of the authors of the National Park Service Act was landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr.—of New York City's Central Park fame—who supported the notion of preserving places that would provide a contrast to and respite from the pace of the modern world. He envisioned parks where ordinary citizens could rest mind, body, and soul. From spiritual uplift to scientific research, recreation, and education, national parks were seen as a way to enhance the lives of the general public. The spread of the national park idea—that large tracts of wilderness should be protected for all time—could arguably be called one of the great contributions from the United States to world civilization.

Outside the United States

By the outbreak of World War I, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and Sweden had adapted the American concept of national parks to their own lands and needs. (In many of these countries, the primary motive for establishing national parks was the protection of native peoples rather than the flora, fauna, and natural wonders of the area.) In 1914 Switzerland created a national park, but dedicated it to scientific research rather than recreation.

In the inter war period, news of the massive slaughter of African wildlife led to the 1933 London Conference for the Protection of African Fauna and Flora. The conference helped inspire the creation of large national parks in eastern and central Africa to protect game populations and preserve areas for scientific study, but its ideals and goals had much wider influence and were used as a blueprint to help establish national parks worldwide.

As the national parks idea took root, an awareness developed of the need for some type of world organization that could promote nature conservation. In 1948 at a conference sponsored by the United Nations, the International Union of Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) was founded.

In the early twenty first century the IUCN, in coordination with the United Nations Environment Programme, is a self-described green web in which 140 countries, more than 750 non-governmental organizations, and 10,000 internationally renowned scientists generate environmental conventions, global standards, and scientific knowledge. It has become the voice, and often the instrument, for worldwide action to protect the biodiversity of species, ecosystems, and landscapes. The IUCN also monitors and maintains a database of National Parks and Protected Areas.

A protected area was defined at the Fourth World Congress on National Parks and Protected Areas (Caracas, Venezuela, 1992) as "land and/or sea especially dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity, and of natural and associated cultural resources, and managed through legal or other effective means" (World Conservation Monitoring Centre Internet site). Though in the early 2000s there are more than 100,000 protected areas worldwide, not all of them are national parks—defined by the IUCN as a "natural area of land and/or sea, designated to (a) protect the ecological integrity of one or more ecosystems for present and future generations, (b) exclude exploitation or occupation inimical to the purposes of designation of the area and (c) provide a foundation for spiritual, scientific, education, recreational and visitor opportunities, all of which must be environmentally and culturally compatible" (UNEP Protected Areas Programme: "Definition of a Protected Area" Internet site).

In the IUCN category of national parks, there are more than 3,300 worldwide. Other protected areas categories include Strict Nature Reserves/Wilderness Areas: protected areas managed mainly for science or wilderness protection; Natural Monuments: protected areas managed mainly for conservation of specific natural features; Habitat/Species Management Areas: protected areas managed mainly for conservation through management intervention; Protected Landscape/Seascape: protected areas managed mainly for landscape/seascape conservation and recreation; and Managed Resource Protection Areas: protected areas managed mainly for the sustainable use of natural ecosystems. Though fewer in number than the other protected areas, national parks account for 30 percent of the global network of protected areas, due to the fact that they are often much larger in size.

Ethical Defense of National Park Concept

As the global population passes 6 billion, pressure increases for human occupation of national parks as well as the exploitation of their natural resources. But the arguments for protection remain strong: It is important to preserve the genetic resources and diversity of species found in the world national parks in order to preserve the strains from which our modern and increasingly vulnerable food crops derive. These areas also serve as a repository of edible and medicinal plants and for vital watersheds that provide water to urban and agricultural regions. And they protect cultural, archeological, and natural monuments.

Visits to national parks can also revivify a sensitivity to nature and perhaps even strengthen an environmental ethic that is so essential for human survival and the continuation of all species. Finally the national parks can, as former U.S. National Park Service Director George Hartzog, Jr., so eloquently put it, help us "better understand, or perceive, our place in the universe" (Everhart 1972, foreword by George Hartzog.)

MARILYN BERLIN SNELL

SEE ALSO Conservation and Preservation;Deforestation and Desertification;Environmental Ethics;Environmental Regulatory Agencies;Nature.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Everhart, William C. (1972). The National Park Service. New York: Praeger.

Green, Michael J. B., and James Paine. (1997). State of the Worlds Protected Areas at the End of the Twentieth Century. (Paper presented at IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas Symposium on "Protected Areas in the 21st Century: From Islands to Networks.") Cambridge, UK: World Conservation Monitoring Centre.

Quigg, Philip W. (1978). Protecting Natural Areas: An Introduction to the Creation of National Parks and Reserves. New York: National Audubon Society.

Whitman, Sylvia. (1994). This Land is Your Land: The American Conservation Movement. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner.

INTERNET RESOURCES

Pitcaithley, Dwight T. (2001). "Philosophical Underpinnings of the National Park Idea." National Park Service. Available from http://www.cr.nps.gov/history//hisnps/NPSThinking/underpinnings.htm.

World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Protected Areas Programme. Available from http://www.wcmc.org.uk/protected_areas/data/cnppa.html.

World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Protected Areas Programme. "Definition of a Protected Area." Available from http://www.wcmc.org.uk/protected_areas/data/sample/iucn_cat.htm.