This is way long, and I've been trying to bone up on the conversation. I don't feel it's an arguement, although my personal thoughts on are the bottom. I researched some stats along with the NPS charter and it's beginnings.
I personally have no problem conserving the land for the greater good. Motorized travel does not have to be required to enjoy. If our hobby, sport, lifestyle cannot protect the wilderness/park/blm land/etc. Then we go against the prinicpals of what the mentioned NPS charters were set up for.
Main Entry: 1pre·serve
Pronunciation: \pri-ˈzərv\
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): pre·served; pre·serv·ing
Etymology: Middle English, from Medieval Latin praeservare, from Late Latin, to observe beforehand, from Latin prae- + servare to keep, guard, observe — more at conserve
Date: 14th century
transitive verb
1: to keep safe from injury, harm, or destruction : protect
2 a: to keep alive, intact, or free from decay b: maintain
3 a: to keep or save from decomposition b: to can, pickle, or similarly prepare for future use
4: to keep up and reserve for personal or special use
intransitive verb
1: to make preserves
2: to raise and protect game for purposes of sport
3: to be able to be preserved (as by canning)
Main Entry: con·ser·va·tion
Pronunciation: \ˌkän(t)-sər-ˈvā-shən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin conservation-, conservatio, from conservare
Date: 14th century
1: a careful preservation and protection of something ; especially : planned management of a natural resource to prevent exploitation, destruction, or neglect
2: the preservation of a physical quantity during transformations or reactions
The National Park Idea
The NPS "idea" as of the 19th Century (late 1800's)
The idea of a "national park" must have jarred strangely the nineteenth century intellects upon which the words of a Montana lawyer fell as he spoke from the shadows of a campfire in the wilderness of the Yellowstone one autumn night 70 years ago. For Cornelius Hedges addressed a generation dedicated to the winning of the West. He spoke at a time when stout hearted pioneers had their faces determinedly set toward the distant Pacific as they steadily pushed the frontier of civilization and industrialization across prairie and mountain range to claim the land for a Nation between the coasts. His plan was presented to men cast of that die-men whose courage and enterprise characterized the era in which they lived.
But Cornelius Hedges had looked deeply into American character and was not disappointed. He counted upon the altruism which marked that character, and planted in it the ideal which instantly took root and has since flowered as one of America's greatest treasures: the national park system. Thus was a new social concept born to a Nation itself reborn.
The man who broached the national park idea to those men of courageous spirit who comprised the Washarn-Langford-Doane Expedition for exploration of the Yellowstone was indeed the most courageous of all. This expedition of 1870 had set out at its own expense to investigate once and for all the incredible stories of natural wonders which had been coming out of the region for years, from the time the first scouts of fur trading companies blazed their trails across the fantastic wonderland. They found that all of it was true, and that the tallest yarns of the wildest spinners of tales (except perhaps the notorious Jim Bridger, who later simply embellished what nature had already provided) could hardly outstrip what the eye itself beheld. Here were the geysers shooting their columns of boiling water and steam into the sky; here were the hot pools, the mud volcanoes, and other strange phenomena. Here were the gigantic falls of the Yellowstone River in its gorgeously tinted canyon a thousand feet deep. Here were the forests and the abundance of wildlife in every form native to the region. Here, indeed, was a fairyland of unending wonders.
As they sat around their campfire the night of September 19, 1870 near the juncture of the Firehole and Gibbon Rivers (now called Madison Junction), the members of the party quite naturally fell to discussing the commercial value of such wonders, and laying plans for dividing personal claims to the land among the personnel of the expedition. It was into this eager conversation that Hedges introduced his revolutionary idea. He suggested that rather than capitalize on their discoveries, the members of the expedition waive personal claims to the area and seek to have it set aside for all time as a reserve for the use and enjoyment of all the people. The instant approval which this idea received must have been gratifying to its author, for it was a superb expression of civic consciousness.
As the explorers lay that night in the glow of dying embers, their minds were fired with a new purpose. In fact, some of them later admitted that prospects of the campaign for establishment of the Nation's first national park were so exciting that they found no sleep at all.
This, then, was the birth of the national park idea. The idea became a reality, and the reality developed into a system which, through the years, has grown to embrace 21,011,778.58 acres of land and water including 25 national parks, 80 national monuments, and 45 national historical parks, national battlefields and other various classifications of areas.
The advocates of the national park idea lost no time in following their plan through. First steps for carrying out the project to create Yellowstone National Park were taken at Helena, Montana, principally by Cornelius Hedges, Nathaniel P. Langford, and William H. Clagett. Fortunately for the plan, Clagett had just been elected delegate to Congress from Montana and was in a splendid position to advance the cause. In Washington he and Langford drew up the park bill which was introduced in the House of Representatives by the Montana delegate on December 18, 1871. During the preceding summer, the U. S. Geological Survey had changed its program of field work so as to give attention to the wonders described by the civilian explorers. Two Government expeditions, one under Dr. F. V. Hayden and the other under Captains Barlow and Heap of the Engineer Corps of the Army, had traveled together in making Yellowstone studies. W. H. Jackson, who continues to this day to serve as a collaborator on national park studies, was a member of the Hayden party. He obtained a remarkably fine series of Yellowstone photographs, samples of which Dr. Hayden placed on the desks of all Senators and Congressmen. In other ways, Dr. Hayden joined Clagett and his Montana constituents in influencing the passage of the National Park Act. Finally a copy of it was carried personally by Mr. Clagett to the Senate where it was introduced by Senator Pomeroy of Kansas. In response to a request from the House Committee on Public Lands for his opinion, the Secretary of the Interior endorsed the bill. The measure was put through after perhaps the most intensive canvass accorded any bill, in which all the members of Congress were personally visited and, with few exceptions, won over to its support. It was adopted by the House on January 30, 1872, passed by the Senate on February 27, and received the signature of President Grant on March 1.
For the first time the Government had acted to conserve land for a new purpose.
The term "
conservation," so commonly applied to coal, iron, or other raw materials of industry, was now applied to mountains, lakes, canyons, forests and other great and unusual works of nature, and interpreted in terms of public recreation.
Various acts of Congress and regulations set up by the Department and the Service have, during the years, become resolved into general policies for the protection, conservation, and administration of the national park and monument system. These policies were best set forth by Louis C. Cramton, special attorney to the Secretary of the Interior, the results of whose studies were incorporated in the annual report of the Director to the Secretary for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1932. They are:
1. A national park is an area maintained by the Federal Government and "dedicated and set apart for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." Such Federal maintenance should occur only where the preservation of the area in question is of national interest because of its outstanding value from a scenic, scientific, or historical point of view. Whether a certain area is to be so maintained by the Federal Government as a national park should not depend upon the financial capacity of the state within which it is located, or upon its nearness to centers of population which would insure a large attendance therefrom, or upon its remoteness from such centers which would insure its majority attendance from without its state. It should depend up on its own outstanding scenic, scientific, or historical quality and the resultant national interest in its preservation.
2. The national-park system should possess variety, accepting the supreme* in each of the various types and subjects of scenic, scientific, and historical importance. The requisite national interest does not necessarily involve a universal interest, but should imply a wide-spread interest, appealing to many individuals, regardless of residence, because of its outstanding merit in its class.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------* Under present interpretation of this policy, any number of super lative areas may be included in the national system.
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3. The twin purposes of the establishment of such an area as a national park are its enjoyment and use by the present generation, with its preservation unspoiled for the future; to conserve the scenery, the natural and historical objects and the wild life therein, by such means as will insure that their present use leaves them unimpaired. Proper administration will retain these areas in their natural condition, sparing them the vandalism of improvement. Exotic animal or plant life should not be introduced. There should be no capture of fish or game for purposes of merchandise or profit and no destruction of animals except such as are detrimental to use of the parks now and hereafter. Timber should never be considered from a commercial standpoint but may be cut when necessary in order to control the attacks of insects or disease or otherwise conserve the scenery or the natural or historic objects, and dead or down timber may be removed for protection or improvement. Removal of antiquities or scientific specimens should be permitted only for reputable public museums or for universities, colleges, or other recognized scientific or educational institutions, and always under department supervision and careful restriction and never to an extent detrimental to the interest of the area or of the local museum.
4. Education is a major phase of the enjoyment and benefit to be derived by the people from these parks and an important service to individual development is that of inspiration. Containing the supreme in objects of scenic, historical, or scientific interest, the educational opportunities are preeminent, supplementing rather than duplicating those of schools and colleges, and are available to all. There should be no governmental attempt to dominate or to limit such education within definite lines. The effort should be to make available to each park visitor as fully and effectively as possible these opportunities, aiding each to truer interpretation and appreciation and to the working out of his own aspirations and desires, whether they be elementary or technical, casual or constant.
5. Recreation, in its broadest sense, includes much of education and inspiration. Even in its narrower sense, having a good time, it is a proper incidental use. In planning for recreational use of the parks, in this more restricted meaning, the development should be related to their inherent values and calculated to promote the beneficial use thereof by the people. It should not encourage exotic forms of amusement and should never permit that which conflicts with or weakens the enjoyment of these inherent values.
6. These areas are best administered by park-trained civilian authority.
7. Such administration must deal with important problems in forestry, road building and wild life conservation, which it must approach from the angles peculiar to its own responsibilities. It should define its objectives in harmony with the fundamental purposes of the parks. It should carry them into effect through its own personnel except when economy and efficiency can thereby best be served without sacrifice of such objectives, through cooperation with other bureaus of the Federal Government having to do with similar subjects. In forestry, it should consider scenic rather than commercial values and preservation rather than marketable products;
in road building, the route, the type of construction and the treatment of related objects should all contribute to the fullest accomplishment of the intended use of the area; and, in wild life conservation, the preservation of the primitive rather than the development of any artificial ideal should be sought.
A more detailed and comprehensive history on the mentioned NPS can be found here:
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/kieley/kieley1.htm
I choose not to drink the koolaid thats often dispatched in todays press, but I as a Republican, do feel that preservation of areas does not go far enough. I may be in the minority here, and may only be able to hang with JH but I'd rather keep the areas protected.
If I can spend 12K on a trailer, 2K for a camera, 24k for a truck, 6K or more for modifications, I can pay a fee yearly to ensure that access is maintained and preservation continues. I don't see it as a hidden TAX, but as a future investment, maybe for my 11yr old, maybe for his children, maybe for someone else's here.
As a former Scout, the outdoor code asked that we be "conservation" minded not "preservation" minded. I feel that it was more for being selfless than selfish. but it's just my .02
Again my apologies for the length, but I don't just enjoy "statistics" but historical aspect, either from this time (current) the deep past.
God Bless America!
