Distributed to some depository libraries in microfiche.

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.

Includes eight separate committee reports with a title page, introduction, and list of contents.

National parks are one of the most important and successful institutions in global environmentalism. Since their first designation in the United States in the 1860s and 1870s they have become a global phenomenon. The development of these ecological and political systems cannot be understood as a simple reaction to mounting environmental problems, nor can it be explained by the spread of environmental sensibilities. Shifting the focus from the usual emphasis on national parks in the United States, this volume adopts an historical and transnational perspective on the global geography of protected areas and its changes over time. It focuses especially on the actors, networks, mechanisms, arenas, and institutions responsible for the global spread of the national park and the associated utilization and mobilization of asymmetrical relationships of power and knowledge, contributing to scholarly discussions of globalization and the emergence of global environmental institutions and governance.

Two men played a crucial role in the creation and early history of the National Park Service: Stephen T. Mather, a public relations genius of sweeping vision, and Horace M. Albright, an able lawyer and administrator who helped transform that vision into reality. In Creating the National Park Service, Albright and his daughter, Marian Albright Schenck, reveal the previously untold story of the critical "missing years" in the history of the service. During this period, 1917 and 1918, Mather's problems with manic depression were kept hidden from public view, and Albright, his able and devoted assistant, served as acting director and assumed Mather's responsibilities. Albright played a decisive part in the passage of the National Park Service Organic Act of 1916; the formulation of principles and policies for management of the parks; the defense of the parks against exploitation by ranchers, lumber companies, and mining interests during World War I; and other issues crucial to the future of the fledgling park system. This authoritative behind-the-scenes history sheds light on the early days of the most popular of all federal agencies while painting a vivid picture of American life in the early twentieth century.

Yellowstone: A Natural and Human History, Yellowstone National Park, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming This colorful and profusely illustrated official Handbook from the National Park Service explores the exciting home of steaming geysers, hot springs, grizzly bears, wolves, elk, buffalo, big horn sheep, moose and other wildlife. This book also includes a travel guide and detailed reference material for touring the parks.

An intimate and candid account of our national parks and their strengths, vulnerabilities, and essential role in American life Part memoir, part critique, and paean to the value of national parks, American Covenant distills the experience and insights from two long careers in conservation. Michael A. Soukup and Gary E. Machlis show how the national parks are essential to maintaining the essence of our national heritage, and key to America’s future in a changing climate and political landscape. Sharing real-world examples of both victories and defeats in protecting national parks, this candid, thoughtful book reminds us that the national parks are a promise—a covenant—within and between generations of Americans. The book is also a call to revitalize, reconstitute, reconfigure, and reform the National Park Service, which the authors believe is governed too much by outdated management practices and politics instead of a foundation of expertise and science.