ABSTRACT
Introduction National parks in the United States have a challenging mission, to serve as both protected wilderness and tourist attraction for the general public. The first involves isolating parks from human impacts, the second encouraging and supporting access and use. When President Ulysses S. Grant signed a law in 1872 declaring that Yellowstone National Park would forever be “dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people,” he likely had no idea that national parks could become battlegrounds for competing visions about the purpose and mission of these lands (Orr and Humphreys 2012). Supporters of untamed wilderness are often at odds with those who favor yearround commercial tourism, particularly as such areas become increasingly rare in a country consumed by urban sprawl. For some, the meaning of a national park is found in its isolation from society; for others, the accoutrements of society including fast-food restaurants and retail shops only serve to enhance the national park experience:
The happy convergence of many disparate interests permitted Congress and the public to sustain contradictory, but compatible beliefs that permitted a park system to flourish: On one side the repugnance of the seemingly boundless materialism that infused American life, a spiritual attachment to untrammeled nature, and a self-congratulatory attitude toward the preservation of nature’s bounty; and on the other
a commitment to economic progress wherever it could be exacted, nationalistic pride, and the practical uses of nature as a commodity supportive of tourism and commercial recreation. (Sax 1981)
Management of national parks in the United States falls under the auspices of the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service (NPS), which was created in 1916 to administer national parks and monuments. The stated purpose of the 1916 National Parks Service Organic Act is to “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” Congress expanded this policy in 1978 by directing that “the protection, management, and administration of these areas… shall not be exercised in derogation of the values and purposes for which these various areas have been established.” These seemingly contradictory values have created extensive management challenges for the NPS as they struggle to develop policy that serves both public and environmental interests.
