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U.S. National Parks conservation
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While Yellowstone, the first National Park, was established in 1872, conservation within the parks has not been consistent. When Yellowstone was founded it was believed it could be protected with no cost to the government. However, the duel purpose of the land (conservation and education) soon required more and more government funding and intervention. The National Park Service, that preserves the parks today, wasn't even established until 1916. Even with the NPS, what it meant to "conserve" these national lands was not a black and white concept. U.S. National Parks continued to go through ideological changes reflective of the society they existed within—a process that still exists today. In addition to internal changes generated by an evolving definition of "conservation", parks also face many external threats and pressures. The conflicts that surround the parks play a huge role in how conservation functions and changes within the parks. National Parks and NPS oftentimes come to represent a resistance to evolving land uses in the greater US. These threats have been prevalent since the parks conception but have had varying success depending on the strength of the federal government to insure their commitment to these preserved lands. History of Conservation Yellowstone and early conservation Yellowstone was established as the first National Park on March 1, 1872 with the passing of the Yellowstone act. While the act protected the established area from settlers, there was not any further protections for wildlife or other natural features, nor was there any funding for the land until 1878. This meant that the use of the park and how it was protected was largely dependent on the whoever was in charge of the park, lacking any other government guidelines or control. In the early years, the Park was overseen by a superintendent that was in charge of evicting trespassers, as the Yellowstone act dictates, but otherwise had little other established control. The first of these Superintendents was Nathaniel P. Langford who only entered the park twice over his five-year appointment and was unpaid for his services. The second superintendent, Philters W. Norris, was much more active in pursuing further legislation to protect this park and secured the first funding in 1878 which he used to build roads and a visitor center. Through his efforts he laid the groundwork for conservation legislation and for National Parks to be a place of education for visitors. Norris’s appointment, however, was during a time of political turmoil and he was eventually removed from his position. He was succeeded by three other superintendents that proved to be ineffectual. Thus, in 1886, the Army takes control of regulating the land. While the troops were effective in protecting the parks from squatters and poachers as well as upholding the protections established by Norris, they fell short on offering visitors knowledge of the areas. Establishing the National Park Service (NPS) The National Park Service was born on August 25, 1916 under the Organic Act. The establishment of this service arose from the need to both protect the lands from the threat of poachers and also make the lands accessible and educational to visitors. Visiting Health Benefits National Parks provide many incentives for visiting including physical, mental, and emotional health benefits. These benefits are mostly preventative or risk-mitigating in nature and can be derived in various ways. National Parks can mediate mental and emotional health benefits through the aesthetic appreciation of nature. Simply viewing or exposure to scenes of national parks lowers blood pressure levels and reduces levels of anxiety. Physical contact with national parks and nature reserves is a more direct method of exposure and results in better emotional health outcomes. Contact with nature in settings such as parks are suggested as a preventative measure for mental illness. The ability to have access to a park or living nearby a park can encourage outdoor physical activity. People living closest to areas considered "formal parks" are more likely to achieve the recommended 30 minutes of exercise daily and are less likely to become overweight or obese. Simple exposure to the outdoors and sunlight in National Parks yields greater absorption of vitamin D, which is essential in preventing a number of diseases including cardiovascular disease and Rickets. For children, spending more time in the outdoors may also prevent myopia or nearsightedness later in life. The elderly also derive benefit from walkable green areas as they increase the longevity of senior citizens living in urban areas. The parks also serve to protect cultural heritage, paying for themselves in an economic equivalent of cultural value. Accessibility Differing levels of accessibility to National Parks between demographics create inequitable distributions of the health benefits resulting from parks. Factors that affect park accessibility include race and class. A typical park visitor possesses the characteristics of being white, middle-aged, earning between $50,000 to $70,000 and from the United States. Communities with people of low-income and Latinos, African-Americans, and Asian-Pacific Islanders are located further from parks than white communities. In addition, areas with communities of color receive fewer funding resources to establish parks. However, it is these low-income communities that may derive the greatest benefits from National Parks. Low income populations that have access to greener surroundings that support good health, such as National parks, encounter less inequality in health outcomes than their less green counterparts. Utilization of park space can help mitigate some of the factors that a low income position may contribute to disease incidence. In areas where black populations have high levels of access to a parks, discrepancies between park quality may persist. In areas Baltimore, Maryland, an area that is predominantly black, the creation of parks for use by black communities was not followed by upkeep resulting in lowered visitation rates over time. Areas with high rates of violence or crime can create barriers to and deincentivize the usage of parks particularly for exercise and recreation. Disparities in park quality also have implications in the rate of usage of the park. Larger parks that have higher levels of upkeep generally attract higher levels of usage for walking and walking greater distances, positively impacting health outcomes. Intrinsic Values of National Parks What does it mean for a National Park to be intrinsically good? It means that National Parks are good in it of themselves. National Parks and their conservation efforts generate benefits even if someone does not visit the park directly. These benefits of conservation are the intrinsic value of the parks. Intrinsic value of National Parks can be considered in different ways such as environmental ethics, maintaining biodiversity and wilderness. Economic Value of National Park Services and Programs A recent research carried out by Harvard and Colorado State University estimated a total value of National Park services and programs. Their total estimation of economic value to the American public is 92 billion dollars. For National Park services such as land, water, and historic sites, their economic value is worth approximately 62 billion dollars, and other National Park service programs are worth approximately 30 billion dollars. Environmental Ethics states that using science and technology to produce food, clothing, shelter, and energy is not a problem as long as it improves the human condition. Homo-centric ethics, like Marx's, is based on Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill's utilitarian ethics: the greatest good for the greatest number of people. When applied to National Parks, their preservation can be seen as moral because they provide the social good of nature. However, it can be argued on the same ground that National Parks, at least in part, do not need to be conserved if another use for the land yields a greater good such as economic gain. Thus, anthropocentric ethics do not always explain the continued moral good of protecting National Parks. On the other hand, eco-centric ethics such as deep ecology states that resources should be preserved for every living thing, not necessarily for human needs. From the environmental-centered ethics perspective, National Parks should be preserved to maintain biodiversity and their ecosystem. Maintaining Biodiversity National Parks promote biodiversity as they protect the habitats of a variety of organisms. This diversity is achieved by the maintenance of ecosystems both in the preservation of habitat and the explicit protection of wildlife. To keep and improve an intrinsic value of nature, however, the National Park service focuses on maintaining biodiversity not only for habitats in National Parks but for how biodiversity contributes to overall preservation. Rangeland management is also very important in the biodiversity project. According to the EPA, rangeland is a vegetation type that has annual precipitation ranges from less than 5 to 60 centimeters, and an air temperature range from -40 to 50 degrees centigrade which includes grassland, savanna, shrubland, desert, forest, tundra, and so on. Thus, many of the United States' National Parks are considered as rangeland, which is uncultivated land that provides the necessities of life for grazing and browsing animals. Managing rangeland is crucial to keep the biodiversity of ecosystems at National Parks. Wilderness Wilderness is a human created space, not naturally occurring, and this space is not the same for every person. Though, for National Parks, the conservation goal is often to preserve the natural ecosystem, the way they go about doing this requires human intervention. In their early history, creating the wilderness of National Parks meant reclaiming frontiers and pushing people off of the land. People section off sets of lands by using rectangular survey systems, and then exploit large swaths of land. States and government are assigning parts of land as wilderness, such as with the case of National Parks, in order to create the illusion of the wild for people to come and visit it. People have this idea of pristine wilderness and untouched by human, and it took a long time for swamplands to become a park because of this preconceived conception. Mountains were more quickly said to be worthy enough to preserve, and preserving wilderness is important to keep intrinsic value of nature in national parks. Extraction and Exploitation With pressures mounting toward the extraction of natural resources to satiate the growing global population, national parks are possibly at the forefront of land exploitation. A shift toward exploitation of protected public land is manifesting into a reality with sentiments of ending the war on coal fostered by the current United States administration. The intention of this section is to evaluate the current risks of land exploitation due to resource extraction that could possibly plague United States National Parks by establishing and disseminating evidence of past land misuse of National Parks internationally and nationally. There are also forces like the Community Natural Resource Management (CNRM) seeking to hold the government accountable for inequity within the United States National Parks. History of Resource Extraction Conservation of U.S. parks have worked to galvanize support for the natural world, but in addition have worked to mobilize political and economic agendas. U.S. national parks are ever-evolving in an attempt to strike the balance between conserving land for benevolent purposes, as well asserting politically and economic institutions. Often times these strategies are at odds with one another. In order to satisfy the expectations of conservation while also using vital land for resource extraction, U.S. national park have historically established strategic park boundaries with the intention of excluding lucrative natural resource extraction sites. It is with great public involvement that national parks to establish protective schemes to preserve land that would be used for lumbering, mining, grazing and agriculture. Resources Extracted From National Parks It is the job of the National Park Service (NPS) to regulate energy and mineral extraction on National Park Lands. The job of the NPS also includes gathering science-based evidence to either permit energy and mineral activity, or restrict those acts if they threaten the sanctity of the land. Organic Act Mandate Congressional mandate to ensure that the National Park Services focus is "to conserve the scenery, natural and historic objects, and wild life in the System units and to provide for the enjoyment of the scenery, natural and historic objects, and wild life in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations" Current/Future Natural Resource Extraction in U.S. National Parks Under Trump Administration The public lands under federal control, particularly United States’ national parks, are anticipated to bear some of the burden of land and resource exploitation under the current Trump administration. Trump’s campaign, built on sentiments of greater job opportunities, potentially threaten national park’s infrastructure. This is beginning to materialize under the guise of promoting less federal mandate over public national park lands. On March 28, 2017 President Donald Trump signed an executive order toward energy independence. This executive action is initiating the rollback of President Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan Act, in an attempt to move “forward on energy production in the US”. Future oil and gas development in National Parks poses a threat to the efforts of the National Park Service. There are currently 12 National Park units that are hosting oil and gas operations, while another 30 units face the risk of future drilling Virunga National Park Case Study Virunga National Park exemplifies the reality of how free-market in a UNESCO park can taint and exploit the land. See Also
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