Robert B. Keiter

The Greater Yellowstone ecosystem: redefining America's wilderness heritage.

In this important book, experts in science, economics, and law discuss key resource managment issues in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem---among them the managment of fire, elk, wolves, and bison---using them as starting points to debate the matter in which humans should interact with the environment of this region. Generously illustrated with special archival photographs of the Yellowstone area, the book will be the major source of information on this area and a valuable resource for worldwide wildland preservation for years to come. This edition contains a postscript written specifically to bring readers up to date on developments affecting the Yellowstone ecosystem between 1990 and 1993.

Criminal or Delinquent? A Study of Juvenile Cases Transferred to the Criminal Court

Illinois statutes grant the states attorney discretionary author ity to decide whether a case should be removed from the juvenile court. In exercising his authority the states attorney has estab lished evaluation standards based on the seriousness of the of fense, the youths prior record, and the strength of the states case.

Glacier National Park and Its Neighbors: A Study of Federal Interagency Relations

Introduction .............................................. 208 I. External Threats to Glacier National Park ................. 211 II. Park Protection Strategy .................................. 217 A. An Early Surprise: The Unimportance of Law ........ 217 B. Glacier As A Sacred Cow ............................ 222 1. The Parks Moral Capital ......................... 222 2. Glaciers Unexpended Moral Capital .............. 223 C. Some Preliminary Observations ....................... 225 III. Glacier and Its Two National Forest Neighbors ............ 227 A. The Flathead National Forest ........................ 227 1. An Emerging Sensitivity to Glacier ................ 227 2. The Primacy of Managerial Discretion ............. 229 3. Glaciers Tactics: Three Case Studies ............. 230 a. Oil and Gas Development ..................... 231 b. Paving the North Fork Road .................. 233 c. The Cabin Creek Mine ........................ 237 B. The Lewis & Clark Forest ............................ 240 1. The Ineffective Tactic of Silence ................... 241 2. Is Regionalism Inevitable? ........................ 244 IV. Drawing Up A Balance Sheet ............................. 247 A. Is Glaciers Position Uniquely Strong? ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 B. An Evaluation of Glaciers Strategy ................... 249 1. Short-Term: Rearguard Actions ................... 249 2. Long-Term: A Vision of the Future ............... 253 a. The Biosphere Reserve Concept ................ 253

Preserving Nepal's National Parks: Law and Conservation in the Developing World

There is no doubt that tourism could eventually prove to be one of Nepals major industries, and that another Switzerland or Kashmir lies shrouded and unrevealed to the world due only to inaccessibility. -E.P. Gee (1963) The mountains are still there and so is the park, attracting dozens of expeditions and thousands of trekkers from every nation, but over the last thirty years I have seen those forests and parklands being dramatically destroyed in response to the urgent needs of the visitors for firewood for heating and cooking. -Sir Edmund Hillary (1986) It must be understood that without local peoples cooperation and support, the integration of conservation and human development in the protected areas cannot be achieved. -Mingma Norbu Sherpa (1993)

ECOSYSTEMS AND THE LAW: TOWARD AN INTEGRATED APPROACH

American law, with its emphasis on boundary lines and property rights, does not reflect an advanced understanding of ecology. Nonetheless, on the federal public domain, the concept of ecosystem management has now been endorsed by all of the federal land-management agencies. Despite few explicit references to ecosystems or biodiversity, laws like the Endangered Species Act of 1973, National Forest Management Act of 1976, and National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 can and are being interpreted to support recent ecosystem-management initiatives. It is less clear that ecosystem-management principles can be readily transferred to private property. This shortcoming means that the law has not fully absorbed the lessons of ecology. I examine how the law promotes and hinders the movement toward an ecological management and ownership regime. I also suggest that recent ecosystem-management initiatives should provide useful lessons about how ecological principles can be further incorporated into the law.

The Realities of Regional Resource Management: Glacier National Park and its Neighbors Revisited

Twenty years ago Glacier National Park was considered the park most at risk from external threats, such as mining and timber harvesting on adjacent lands. This finding led to an earlier Article that examined whether Glacier officials were effectively defending the park from these external threats. We concluded that the park’s non-confrontational strategies were tenuous at best, but that some protection had been achieved by strong laws enforced by environmental advocates. We also noted the park’s early efforts to promote a regional management vision. Since then, the concept of a regional ecosystem that must be protected across formal borders has progressed significantly, though still imperfectly. This Article, based on detailed interviews and documents, is a twenty-year reassessment of resource management in the Glacier region, revisiting controversies from our earlier study and examining several new ones too. It also evaluates the actual forces that drive – and that impede – efforts to manage land in accord with habitat and watershed realities, rather than boundary lines drawn on a map.

What Is a National Park

For much of its existence, Yellowstone National Park spent the winter months quietly under a blanket of snow. Winter was a time of restoration, for the bears that hibernated on isolated mountain slopes, for the elk and bison relieved from the attention of visitors, and for the park rangers who used the time to recover from the hectic summer season. That is no longer the case, however. The park is now a beehive of activity during the winter months. Snowmobiles dash around the park roads, rangers are on frequent patrol to control wayward visitors, and the winter-stressed wildlife must endure regular encounters with snow machines and cross-country skiers. Along with this new winter season has come controversy that strikes at the heart of what our national parks are and supposed to be.

A Pleasuring Ground

Tourism has long occupied a central role in the national parks. Even before the term national park was coined, Congress directed that Yellowstone and other early parks were set aside as “pleasuring grounds” or “public parks.” The underlying principle was obvious: America’s most spectacular landscapes were open to the general public; they were not preserved for the benefit of a privileged few, unlike the elitist tradition that prevailed in Europe. The National Park Service’s early leaders eagerly embraced the visitation theme as well as automobile tourism. They not only vigorously promoted the growing national park system, but also set about making the parks accessible and attractive to everyone. Once World War II ended, park visitation exploded, calling into question the agency’s commitment to its basic preservation mission in the face of mounting visitation and commercial pressures. Whether these sensitive natural settings can accommodate a steadily rising flow of visitors and their ubiquitous cars and still retain their wilderness attributes, ecological integrity, and scenic beauty is a question that goes to the very heart of the national park concept.

Growing the System

The American national park system, as currently constituted and managed, does not reflect the dramatic evolution we have witnessed in the national park idea. Indeed, the national park system fails to fully capture either the critical ecosystem science principles or the contemporary social values highlighted in previous chapters, a fact reflected in the myriad controversies examined throughout these pages. Most notably, the system fails to encapsulate our modern understanding that national parks must be conceived and managed in a broader ecological context. Important ecosystem types remain unrepresented, key wildlife habitat still lies outside park boundaries, and adjacent development proposals regularly imperil park lands and resources. Sites interpreting the nation’s racial and ethnic heritage are also poorly represented in the system. Moreover, as profound social and demographic changes further alter the relationship between people and nature, the need for new opportunities to expose citizens to our natural heritage and to safeguard ecologically sensitive areas is more apparent than ever.

Nature Conservation in a Changing World

Still widely heralded as “America’s best idea,” the national parks actually represent an assortment of ideas that have evolved over time. As the Park Service’s founding director, Stephen Mather poured his enormous energy, passion, and personal wealth into making the national parks one of the country’s most cherished institutions, and, judging by the extraordinary growth of the national park system and in visitor numbers, he largely succeeded. The national parks inevitably evoke powerful positive images of unsullied landscapes; majestic mountain peaks; free-roaming wildlife; clear, flowing rivers; ranger-led campfire talks; and carefree family vacations. The public rarely contemplates other prevalent but less savory images: car-clogged roads, a cacophony of two-cycle engines, degraded ecosystems, the pervasive taint of commercialism, and unrelenting local development and political pressures. In the midst of such awesome beauty, it is hard to acknowledge that the national park idea is still far from settled, much less that it is often shrouded in controversy. But that has been the reality from the beginning, and it is no less true today.