ABSTRACT

National parks have become an international movement. This is a cause for rejoicing: no one would challenge the assertion that parks are an excellent tonic for the human spirit. To judge the growing international status of the national-park movement, we need only take a brief look at the recommendations and follow-up of the Second World Conference on National Parks, held in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks in 1972. The conservation of tropical rain-forest ecosystems is a major project for both International Union for the Conservation of Nature and World Wildlife Fund. The intense beauty and stupendous proportions of these proposed parks are factors of Alaska’s untouched and fragile vastness. Like church for the people, the national-park system has become a way of atoning for the country’s environmental sins, the ideal salve for the conscience of the United States materialist. In the US and perhaps elsewhere, the establishment of national parks has tended to deflect attention from other environmental problems.