Preserving Yellowstone's Natural Conditions: Science and the Perception of NatureAmerican ecologists seeking to influence the founders of the National Park Service had hoped that protection of the parks would create preserves where ?natural conditions? could exist in an idealized presettlement state. These hopes, however, produced a bitter irony. In order to secure a naturally functioning park, officials had to provide intensive management to preserve ?nature at work.? For the better part of the twentieth century, the forms this management has taken have polarized public opinion. ø James A. Pritchard?s Preserving Yellowstone?s Natural Conditions demonstrates that even the most up-to-date scientific policy could not reckon with public expectations and animal behavior. When Yellowstone stopped its bear feeding program in an attempt to restore naturally regulated bear populations, the public bemoaned the loss of the spectacle. The bears, meanwhile, had learned to associate humans with food, and the loss of reliable meals brought them into campsites. Park officials had to shoot bears that made a menace of themselves, leaving many people frustrated with the park?s attempts to preserve Yellowstone as a natural ecosystem. ø Pritchard believes that restoring natural conditions for bears and other animals is a sound idea. Yellowstone, he argues, represents an ecological anchor, a relatively untrammeled slice of nature. Despite decades of tampering, the park provides scientists and managers with an outdoor laboratory for examining natural processes that existed before extensive settlement. |
Contents
A Preservationist Yellowstone 18721915 | 1 |
Conservation Thought and Yellowstone 19161930 | 23 |
The Wildlife Division and the Ecology of Intervention | 75 |
Managing the Natural During the Postwar Era | 147 |
A Natural Yellowstone 19631974 | 201 |
A Greater Yellowstone 19751995 | 251 |
Epilogue | 307 |
Notes | 315 |
Sources | 357 |
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Common terms and phrases
Absaroka ACC minutes Adams agencies American bear population Biological Survey biologists birds bison Cole Committee concept conservation conservationists coyote Craighead created director Dixon Drury early ecological ecologists ecosystem elk herd entry federal file Yellowstone fires Fish and Game Forest Service garbage grazing Greater Yellowstone Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Grinnell grizzly bear habitat Horace Albright Houston human hunters idea killed Lamar land landscape lowstone Memo NACP National Forest National Park Service natural conditions natural regulation NAYNP northern range Northern Yellowstone Elk number of elk Olaus Murie park naturalist park rangers park's pelicans predators preservation problem protection Rush scientific scientists species suggested superintendent thought tion tional Park Toll tourists trout trumpeter swan U.S. Forest Service ungulate USFWS visitors wild animals wilderness Wildlife Division wildlife management winter range wolf wolves Wright wrote Wyoming Yellow Yellowstone Lake Yellowstone National Park Yellowstone Park Yellowstone Photo Archives YNPL