Download or read book The Capacity for Wonder written by William Lowry and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The national parks of North America are great public treasures, visited by 300 million people each year. Set aside to be kept in relatively natural condition, these remarkable places of forests, rivers, mountains, and wildlife still inspire our "capacity for wonder." Today, however, the parks are threatened by increasingly difficult problems from both inside and outside their borders. This book, enriched with personal anecdotes of the author's trips throughout the parks of North America, examines changes in the park services of the United States and Canada over the past fifteen years. William Lowry describes the many challenges facing the parks—such as rising crime, tourism, and overcrowding, pollution, eroding funding for environmental research, and the contentious debate over preservation versus use—and the abilities of the agencies to deal with them. The Capacity for Wonder provides a revealing comparison of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) and the Canadian Parks Service (CPS). The author explains that, while the services are similar in many ways, the priorities of these two agencies have changed dramatically in recent years. Lowry shows how increasing conflicts over agency goals and decreasing institutional support have make the NPS vulnerable to interagency disputes, reluctant to take any risks in its operations, and extremely responsive to political pressures. As a result, U.S. national parks are now managed mainly to serve political purposes. Lowry illustrates how in the 1980s politicians pushed the NPS to expand private uses of national parks through development, timber harvesting, grazing, and mining, while environmental groups push the NPS in the other direction. Over the same period, the CPS enjoyed a clarification of goals and increased institutional supports. As a result, the CPS has been able to decentralize its structure, empower its employees, and renew its commitment to preservation. Lowry considers several proposals to change the institutions governing the parks. His own recommendations are more in line with proposals to revitalize public agencies than with those that suggest replacing them with private enterprise, state agencies, or endowment boards. Lowry concludes that preserving nature should be the primary, explicit goal of the park services, and he calls for a stronger commitment to that goal in the United States.

Download or read book Preserving Nature in the National Parks written by Richard West Sellars and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the epic clash of values between traditional scenery-and-tourism management and emerging ecological concepts in the national parks, America’s most treasured landscapes. It spans the period from the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872 to near the present, analyzing the management of fires, predators, elk, bear, and other natural phenomena in parks such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Great Smoky Mountains.

Download or read book National Parks of Costa Rica written by Gregory Basco and published by Comstock Publishing. This book was released on 2015 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book features photographs of, and information about, Costa Rica's network of national parks, which are designed to protect pieces of every type of ecosystem in the country"--

Download or read book National Parks written by Angus O'Reilly and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the major problems concerning National Parks is how to preserve their landscapes and biodiversity.

Download or read book America s National Park System written by Lary M. Dilsaver and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-02-18 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in a fully updated edition, this invaluable reference work is a fundamental resource for scholars, students, conservationists, and citizens interested in America's national park system. The extensive collection of documents illustrates the system's creation, development, and management. The documents include laws that established and shaped the system; policy statements on park management; Park Service self-evaluations; and outside studies by a range of scientists, conservation organizations, private groups, and businesses. A new appendix includes summaries of pivotal court cases that have further interpreted the Park Service mission.

Download or read book Wildlife Management in the National Parks written by and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Mapping America s National Parks written by and published by Esri Press. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Building the National Parks written by Linda Flint McClelland and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency, was founded in 1942 by William 'Wild Bill' Donovan under the direction of President Roosevelt, who realized the need to improve intelligence during wartime. A rigorous recruitment process enlisted agents from both the armed services and civilians to produce operational groups specializing in different foreign areas including Italy, Norway, Yugoslavia and China. At its peak in 1944, the number of men and women working in the service totaled nearly 13,500. This intriguing story of the origins and development of the American espionage forces covers all of the different departments involved, with a particular emphasis on the courageous teams operating in the field. The volume is illustrated with many photographs, including images from the film director John Ford who led the OSS Photographic Unit and parachuted into Burma in 1943.

Download or read book Preserving Nature in the National Parks written by Richard West Sellars and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the epic clash of values between traditional scenery-and-tourism management and emerging ecological concepts in the national parks, America's most treasured landscapes. It spans the period from the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872 to near the present, analyzing the management of fires, predators, elk, bear, and other natural phenomena in parks such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Great Smoky Mountains. Based largely on original documents never before researched, this is the most thorough history of the national parks ever written. Focusing on the decades after the National Park Service was established in 1916, the author reveals the dynamics of policy formulation and change, as landscape architects, foresters, wildlife biologists, and other Park Service professionals contended for dominance and shaped the attitudes and culture of the Service. The book provides a fresh look at the national parks and an analysis of why the Service has not responded in full faith to the environmental concerns of recent times. Richard West Sellars, a historian with the National Park Service, has become uniquely familiar with the history, culture, and dynamics of the Service?including its biases, internal alliances and rivalries, self-image, folklore, and rhetoric. The book will prove indispensable for environmental and governmental specialists and for general readers seeking an in-depth analysis of one of America's most admired federal bureaus.

Download or read book Art of the National Parks written by Susan Hallsten McGarry and published by SF Design, LLC / Frescobooks. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reproductions of paintings depicting eight U.S. national parks.

Download or read book The Art of the National Parks Fifty Nine Parks written by Weldon Owen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Fifty-Nine Parks collaborated with some of the world's foremost contemporary artists and designers to create original posters that celebrate the unique beauty of the U.S. National Park system. Each poster is a contemporary take on the W.P.A. posters of the 1930s, resulting in a one-of-a-kind tribute to the majesty of the national parks"--

Download or read book The National Parks written by Barry Mackintosh and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Our National Parks written by John Muir and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1901, “Our National Parks” is a fantastic guide to the wild mountain forest reservations and national parks of the United States, exploring their beauty and usefulness in an attempt to encourage contemporary readers to go out and enjoy the natural wonders of North America. John Muir (1838–1914) was an influential Scottish-American naturalist, environmental philosopher, botanist, zoologist, author, and glaciologist who famously fought to preserve wilderness in the United States of America. Muir's work describing his adventures in nature have been read by millions the world over and his activism has helped to conserve such important places of natural beauty as the Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park in America. Contents include: “The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West”, “The Yellowstone National Park”, “The Yosemite National Park”, “The Forests of the Yosemite Park”, “The Wild Gardens of the Yosemite Park”, “Among the Animals of the Yosemite”, “Among the Birds of the Yosemite”, “The Fountains and Streams of the Yosemite National Park”, etc. Other notable works by this author include: “My First Summer in the Sierra” (1911), “Steep Trails” (1918), and “The Story of My Boyhood and Youth” (1913). A Thousand Fields is republishing this classic book now complete with a biographical sketch of the author.

Download or read book Federal Historic Preservation Laws written by United States and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Abstract Wild written by Jack Turner and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2021-12-21 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If anything is endangered in America it is our experience of wild nature—gross contact. There is knowledge only the wild can give us, knowledge specific to it, knowledge specific to the experience of it. These are its gifts to us. How wild is wilderness and how wild are our experiences in it, asks Jack Turner in the pages of The Abstract Wild. His answer: not very wild. National parks and even so-called wilderness areas fall far short of offering the primal, mystic connection possible in wild places. And this is so, Turner avows, because any managed land, never mind what it's called, ceases to be wild. Moreover, what little wildness we have left is fast being destroyed by the very systems designed to preserve it. Natural resource managers, conservation biologists, environmental economists, park rangers, zoo directors, and environmental activists: Turner's new book takes aim at these and all others who labor in the name of preservation. He argues for a new conservation ethic that focuses less on preserving things and more on preserving process and "leaving things be." He takes off after zoos and wilderness tourism with a vengeance, and he cautions us to resist language that calls a tree "a resource" and wilderness "a management unit." Eloquent and fast-paced, The Abstract Wild takes a long view to ask whether ecosystem management isn't "a bit of a sham" and the control of grizzlies and wolves "at best a travesty." Next, the author might bring his readers up-close for a look at pelicans, mountain lions, or Shamu the whale. From whatever angle, Turner stirs into his arguments the words of dozens of other American writers including Thoreau, Hemingway, Faulkner, and environmentalist Doug Peacock. We hunger for a kind of experience deep enough to change our selves, our form of life, writes Turner. Readers who take his words to heart will find, if not their selves, their perspectives on the natural world recast in ways that are hard to ignore and harder to forget.

Download or read book The Origin and History of the English Language and of the Early Literature it Embodies written by George Perkins Marsh and published by . This book was released on 1892 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Indigenous Peoples National Parks and Protected Areas written by Stan Stevens and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2014-09-18 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ""This passionate, well-researched book makes a compelling case for a paradigm shift in conservation practice. It explores new policies and practices, which offer alternatives to exclusionary, uninhabited national parks and wilderness areas and make possible new kinds of protected areas that recognize Indigenous peoples' rights and benefit from their knowledge and conservation contributions"--Provided by publisher"--