National Parks and the environment

DEFINITION: Areas of scenic, historic, or other value that are set aside by federal governments for the preservation of animals and wildlife and for human recreation

National park systems throughout the world provide protection for wildlife and plant life, preserve spaces for outdoor recreation, and educate people about the importance of protecting ecosystems.

National parks are places where preservation for future generations must be balanced with present-day enjoyment. In the United States, this balance has proved difficult to achieve, but nevertheless, 430 park units—including national parks, historic sites, historical parks, memorials, memorial parks, battlefields, battlefield parks, battlefield sites, lakeshores, seashores, monuments, parkways, scenic trails, scenic rivers, scenic riverways, rivers, capital parks, and recreation areas—have been established across the United States. The process began when the US Congress made Yellowstone the world’s first national park in 1872 (the politicians were willing to protect and preserve the geologic wonders of Yellowstone primarily because they were convinced that the lands were economically useless). Each of these park units was established to preserve and protect geologic wonders, spectacular scenery, wildlife, or a particular aspect of American history or culture. National parks have become important symbols of environmentalism, including the sometimes conflicting forces and goals within the broad environmental movement.

Other countries have also established national parks, frequently using the United States as a model. Starting in the final decades of the twentieth century, the United Nations worked with countries to protect these areas. In 1972, on the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of Yellowstone National Park, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) formed the World Heritage Committee. By 2024, 1 countries had ratified the World Heritage Convention. The committee, at its first meeting in 1977, formulated the World Heritage List, which names cultural and natural sites considered to be of "outstanding universal value." New sites have been added to the list each year. In 2024, the World Heritage List named 1,199 cultural and natural sites.

The list contains more cultural than natural sites, and not all the sites are parks, but many parks have received monetary support and advice from the United Nations to help ameliorate environmental problems which abound in the United States and the rest of the world. The causes of these problems include the difficulties posed by the poaching of wildlife, exploitation of mineral deposits, and finding a balance between use and preservation.

National Coordinating Offices

Initially, national park operations in the United States were complicated because no single central federal office existed to coordinate activities. After much controversy, Congress passed the National Parks Act, or the Organic Act, of 1916. The act established a central authority called the National Park Service and stated its responsibilities, which include conserving and providing for the enjoyment of the scenery, natural and historic objects, and wildlife in the parks while leaving them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.

This was not the first national office of national parks. In 1911 the Canadian parliament passed the Dominion Forest Reserves and Parks Act, which provided for the administration of forest reserves and dominion parks, and allowed dominion parks to be established from forest reserves. Thus the Dominion Parks Service, created as a new branch in the Canadian Department of the Interior, became the first distinct bureau of national parks in the world. John Bernard Harkin served as commissioner from the service’s inception in 1911 to 1936. In addition to working to separate the administration of the parks from that of the forests, Harkin emphasized resource preservation.

The number of national parks, as well as the number of visitors to the parks, continued to grow in both the United States and Canada. After World War II, as the automobile became ubiquitous, visits to national parks increased rapidly. The facilities in place at the parks were old, however, and staffing was minimal. In 1956 the director of the US National Park Service, Conrad L. Wirth, decided that instead of asking Congress for annual appropriations, he would package the national parks’ needs into a program called Mission 66. This one-billion-dollar, ten-year restoration program was designed to end in 1966, the fiftieth anniversary of the National Park Service. Canada was also influenced by Mission 66 and the Parks Policy of 1964, under the leadership of John I. Nicol, director of the Canadian National and Historic Parks Branch, emphasized the importance of protecting natural resources in the parks.

Problems of Overuse

The number of visitors to national parks in both countries increased steadily from the 1960s onward. With larger crowds came overuse, which created its own serious problems, including congestion, pollution, and—in some cases—destruction. Some popular parks banned automobiles from their roads, replacing them with shuttle buses. The park services of both Canada and the United States are continually faced with the problem of encouraging use while protecting valuable national resources and leaving them unimpaired for future generations.

In the United States, most of the service businesses in the national parks, such as restaurants, hotels, and souvenir shops, have traditionally been operated by private concessionaires. The operators usually sign long-term contracts under which small percentages of their profits are returned to the federal government. In the late twentieth century, as public funding for the parks declined and the number of visitors continued to increase, the National Park Service intensified its ties with private agencies to provide public services at national parks and other sites administered by the service. Some proposed projects became controversial and were never implemented, such as a giant theater that was to be built at Gettysburg Historic Site.

The National Park Service recognizes the importance of cooperation with the communities immediately adjacent to the parks, and partnerships and resulting plans have been developed around several national parks. Several of Canada’s national parks, such as Banff and Jasper, actually contain towns, and the animals that live in the parks roam freely among automobiles, homes, and stores.

Management of Plants and Wildlife

National park services around the world must balance use with the preservation of wildlife and plants. In general, the aim of wildlife management is to allow native species to flourish within the parks while protecting the parks from exotic or nonnative species. However, conflicts frequently develop regarding the remedial approaches that should be taken when exotic species are found in the parks. Some parks, such as the Shenandoah National Park and Great Smoky Mountains National Park, have been invaded by exotic insects that have destroyed whole forested areas and the component parts of the ecosystem.

One of the most controversial decisions in US National Park Service history was the decision to reintroduce the gray wolf into the Yellowstone ecosystem in 1995. Wolves in the area had been exterminated by rangers in 1915 because they were seen as a menace to other native animals such as elk, deer, and mountain sheep. After many years of debate, the National Park Service was given permission and funds (approximately $6.7 million) to reintroduce wolves to the Yellowstone ecosystem, which includes the park and neighboring parts of Montana and Idaho. Many park visitors, upon being surveyed, had indicated that they wanted the wolves brought back. Local livestock owners, however, were concerned about the safety of their animals. To balance the competing needs—to serve the desires of park visitors, to restore the natural ecology of the park, to address the economic concerns of the livestock owners, and to support efforts to improve the wolf population—the Park Service developed plans to protect neighboring livestock before it undertook the careful reintroduction of wolves. In January 1995, the first set of gray wolves from Hinton, Alberta, Canada, were brought to Yellowstone. The introduction was deemed successful, and the ecology of the park returned to a more natural state as the wolf population increased and the wolves became significant predators of elk, moose, and deer.

One problem area related to wildlife that affects almost all national parks involves the dangers that arise from human-animal interaction. It is illegal for visitors to feed any wildlife in US and Canadian national parks, but some visitors break the law. Human food is not part of the animals’ natural diet, and some foods can cause digestive problems in animals and even endanger their lives. In addition, animals that come to associate humans with a ready food source can be dangerous to humans. When wild animals enter campgrounds and motor vehicles in search of something to eat, they occasionally harm humans. In extreme cases, to prevent animals from hurting people, park rangers may have to transport or even kill animals that have become too aggressive in searching for humans’ food.

Economic Activities and Environmental Problems

The economic activities taking place outside park boundaries can cause environmental problems inside the parks. In some cases, neighboring mining or logging operations have contaminated waterways or hastened soil erosion. Sometimes compromises are reached that can reduce the impacts of such problems. For example, a planned gold mining operation outside Yellowstone National Park was moved when the US government agreed to exchange other federal lands for the original intended site.

In other cases, distant power plants, factories, or even urban areas as a whole contribute to air pollution within park boundaries. In many parks in the United States, the combination of human-caused pollution and natural geology and meteorology has led to diminished views, more rapid weathering of natural wonders, and harm to wildlife. In South Africa, for example, the industrial district of Saldanha Bay has contributed to air and water pollution in the West Coast National Park.

National parks in parts of Africa and Central America face serious problems of wildlife poaching because of inadequate park administration and law enforcement. In areas such as Benin, disease-carrying livestock sometimes invades parks, resulting in wildlife deaths. Parts of national parks in Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal have been cultivated by farmers, but the governments of both countries have developed successful resettlement programs, thus lessening the impact on the parks.

Individual countries often look for help from the World Heritage Committee in establishing and maintaining national parks. The committee keeps a list of sites known as World Heritage in Danger, with the intent of bringing to worldwide attention the "conditions which threaten the very characteristics for which a property was inscribed on the World Heritage List." In 2022, thirty-five sites were on the World Heritage in Danger list. Sometimes, successful intervention results in a site being removed from the list, as occurred in 1998 with Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. The park had been overdeveloped and overused, but after it was added to the World Heritage in Danger list in 1992, its underground water supply was protected, and a new road was built to decrease truck traffic through the park. By 2024, the number of sites on the World Heritage in Danger list had risen to fifty-six.

Bibliography

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