Cover

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1: Creating Tradition: The Roots of National Park Management

• Growth of the National Park Concept
• Resorts, Spas, and Early National Parks
• The Management of Nature

Chapter 2: Codifying Tradition: The National Park Service Act of 1916

• Advocates and Opponents
• The Statement of Purpose
• A Utilitarian Act

Chapter 3: Perpetuating Tradition: The National Parks under Stephen T. Mather, 1916-1929

• Building Park Service Leadership
• A Formal Policy and a Bureaucratic Rivalry
• Appropriate and Inappropriate Park Development
• Deletions and Additions of Park Lands
• Nature Management
• The Predator Problem
• Popular Wildlife Species
• Forest Management
• Ecological Concerns and Mather's Leadership
• Utilitarian Aesthetics and National Park Management

Chapter 4: The Rise and Decline of Ecological Attitudes, 1929-1940

• Park Service Leadership and the Wildlife Problem
• Conflict over Park Development
• Biological Research
• Rangelands and the Grazing Species
• Predators
• Fish
• Forests
• Expanding Park Service Programs
• New Deal Impacts on the Park Service
• Declining Influence of the Wildlife Biologists

Chapter 5: The War and Postwar Years, 1940-1963

• Wartime and Postwar Pressures
• Natural Resource Issues under Drury and Wirth
• The Status of Wildlife Biology
• The Road to Mission 66
• Mission 66
• Changes in Wilderness and Recreation Programs
• The Public Hunting and Crisis and a New Look at National Parks

Chapter 6: Science and the Struggle for Bureaucratic Power: The Leopold Era, 1963-1981

• Mission 66 and Parkscape U.S.A.
• The Leopold and National Academy Reports
• The Pursuit of Bureaucratic Power
• Environmental Legislation and Change
• Policies-New and Old
• Natural Regulation and Elk
• Grizzly Bears
• Forests
• Exotic Species
• The State of the Parks Report

Chapter 7: A House Divided: The National Park Service and Environmental Leadership

• Building an Environmental Record
• The Vail Agenda
• National Park Service Culture and Recreational Tourism

Abbreviations

Notes

Acknowledgments

Photos

Index (omitted from the online edition)

This book is published partially through a generous grant from Eastern National Park and Monument Association.

All royalties from this book go to the Albright-Wirth Employee Development Fund to advance the professional skills of National Park Service employees.

Earlier versions of portions of this book have appeared in the Washington Post, Wilderness, Journal of Forestry, Montana The Magazine of Western History, and The George Wright Forum.

Copyright © 1997 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U. S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.

Printed edition designed by James J. Johnson and set in Caledonia types by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Printed in the United States of America by Edwards Brothers, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sellars, Richard West, 1935—
Preserving nature in the national parks: a history/Richard West Sellars.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-300-06931-6 (cloth)
0-300-07578-2 (pbk.)
1. United States. National Park Service—
History. 2. National parks and reserves—
United States—Management—
History. 3. Nature conservation—United
States—History. 4. Natural resources—
United States—Management—
History. I. Title
SB482.A4 S44 1977
333.7'0973—dc21     97-16154

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

For John E. Cook,
of the National Park Service,
and for my wife,
Judith Stevenson Sellars

But our national heritage is richer than just scenic features; the realization is coming that perhaps our greatest national heritage is nature itself, with all its complexity and its abundance of life, which, when combined with great scenic beauty as it is in the national parks, becomes of unlimited value. This is what we would attain in the national parks.
—GEORGE M. WRIGHT, JOSEPH S. DIXON, and BEN H. THOMPSON, Fauna of the National Parks of the United States, 1933

A national park should represent a vignette of primitive America. . . . Yet if the goal cannot be fully achieved it can be approached. A reasonable illusion of primitive America could be recreated, using the utmost in skill, judgment and ecologic sensitivity. This in our opinion should be the objective of every national park and monument.
—A. STARKER LEOPOLD et al., "Wildlife Management in the National Parks" (The Leopold Report), March 1963

I have always thought of our Service as an institution, more than any other bureau, engaged in a field essentially of morality—the aim of man to rise above himself, and to choose the option of quality rather than material superfluity.
—FREEMAN TILDEN to GEORGE B. HARTZOG, JR., ca. 1971

Many of our problems are historical, but history can't be wiped out.
—JOHN A. CARVER, JR., Assistant Secretary of the Interior, to the National Park Superintendents "Conference of Challenges," Yosemite National Park, October 1963