Book review: Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History

Richard W. Sellars Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History is a comprehensive and rather surprising research on the topic. Comprehensive because his three hundred pages book thoroughly covers the period from prior to the creation of the National Park Service to almost nowadays. Rather surprising because, even though Sellars actually works for the Service, this does not prevent him from drawing a somewhat controversial picture of his Service history and situation. Sellars chooses to mainly focus on the environmental and ecological aspects of National Parks management, and his perspective is that throughout the century, those two aspects have never been really dominant. Even though changes have occurred, the improvements are probably not important enough. The problem is that, from the very beginning, scientific research has never been dominant in the management’s philosophy.
Sellars presents the importance of business interests in the development of National Parks, from the very establishment of Yellowstone as a National Park in 1872, continuing with the creation of the National Park Service in 1916. Railroad companies were interested in the development of those Parks, because of the opportunities they brought, for railroads construction, but also hotels and other commodities. From the very beginning, the main focus for the Parks management was aesthetical preoccupations and tourism. The idea was clear, it was to “make business of Scenery” (p. 28). Of course, conserving nature was always something in the back of the mind, but it did not imply the preservation of the natural conditions. Throughout the decades, predators were killed, species becoming too predominant were also killed, fish-growth was strongly encouraged for fishing purposes and nonnative plants were introduced and kept.
An element that is emphasized on from the first chapters of this book is that fact that a tradition in preoccupation was set very early in the history of the Service. Its first directors clearly did not want to involve science in their management, and the management of the land mostly had to be utilitarian in order to keep things nice and attract more tourists. Some hope for ecological concerns emerged some time during the 1930s, but it seems to have been too early and did not get any support from politics or from the public. Therefore, the attempts of a few biologists remained mostly fruitless until the 1960s and 1970s, when a broader ecological movement emerged in society. It seems that the situation for biologists and scientific research has slowly been improving in the last two to three decades. They are not prevalent in the Parks Management, but they have been given a voice and have been able to influence choices. In Sellars’s words, the National Park Service remains nowadays a “House divided”, still torn between one side wanting to become more scientifically and ecologically informed and another side mostly preoccupied with continuing the predominant tradition of the Service: that of being touristically attractive.
In Preserving Nature in the National Parks, Sellars gives lots of examples, shows the management problems that have emerged over the decades, and keeps hinting that the approach should be more scientific. But he never states one thing clearly, or maybe he just misses the beneath-the-surface aspect: it is not just a question of inserting scientifically ecological and environmental research in National Parks management. The deeper question is rather related to the goals given to National Parks. What should they do, what should they bring? That would influence what works need to be performed in order to fulfill those goals. In the United States, it clearly seems that the primary goal of National Parks is to be organized in uniquely beautiful spaces for the visitors’ leisurely enjoyment. But one question stands out of this: aren’t they enough of other places to do that? Shouldn’t National Park first and above all aim at preserving Nature, offering people an opportunity to observe wildlife in its natural and original environment? Shouldn’t parks be more of a preservation area rather than a displayable business card for the country? There is an old reference to Switzerland in this book, and how we have been able to use our beautiful sceneries, bring them in the front stage. However, looking at the website of our National Park, I do not see any trace of “making business of Scenery”; I rather see preservation and protection of wildlife, research, and educating people about their natural environment. Some food for thoughts: http://www.nationalpark.ch/