The NBS collaborated with the National Park Service to monitor natural resources in and around national parks and developed a pollution-monitoring system for use in national wildlife ref
Trang 1Nanotubes See Carbon fiber and
carbon nanotubes
National Audubon Society
Category: Organizations, agencies, and programs
Date: Established January 5, 1905
The National Audubon Society seeks to preserve
wild-life and habitats through education and active
protec-tive measures.
Background
The National Audubon Society (NAS) grew out of
concern over the widespread use of bird plumes in
women’s fashions in the late nineteenth century
Be-ginning in the late 1880’s, several state and local
Au-dubon societies were founded, taking their name
from famed painter John James Audubon, whose art
depicted more than one thousand bird species By
1903 societies existed in thirty-seven states Viewing
wildlife as part of the country’s heritage, the societies
united and founded a national office in 1905 The
or-ganization instituted a policy of educating the public
and promoting awareness of the depletion of birds
and other wildlife Its successes include helping to
preserve whooping cranes, flamingos, and bald
ea-gles
Impact on Resource Use
During the mid-twentieth century, the organization
expanded its policy to promote awareness and
protec-tion of all natural resources, including wildlife
habi-tats Through educational endeavors, the NAS
ex-panded into creating nature centers and reserves that
conferred renewed importance on their conservation
cause
Aware of the importance of grassroots
environ-mental efforts (like those from which it had come),
the NAS adopted a new motto in the late 1970’s,
call-ing on citizens to “Think Globally, Act Locally.” The
idea spread, and the phrase became a rallying cry for
conservation groups across the country In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the NAS focused on environmental issues such as global warming and con-tinued to set up sanctuaries throughout the United States
Jennifer Davis
Web Site Audubon http://www.audubon.org/
See also: Conservation; Endangered species; Endan-gered Species Act; Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S.; Greenpeace; National Wildlife Federation; Sierra Club; Wildlife
National Biological Service
Category: Organizations, agencies, and programs Date: Established 1993; abolished 1996
The National Biological Service, though short-lived, was an important clearinghouse to make available in-formation on the state and trends of flora, fauna, bird and mammal species, and the condition of selected eco-systems and ecoregions.
Background The National Biological Service (NBS) was estab-lished by President Bill Clinton in 1993 The agency’s mission was to inventory and monitor various biologi-cal resources in an effort to understand, or at least record the impact of human activities upon, various biological resources The agency also was to provide information sufficient to construct options for uses and protection of biological resources
Vice President Al Gore was instrumental in estab-lishing the NBS The agency collected information from its own research projects, other federal and state natural resource agencies, private organizations, and volunteers, and it worked to develop standardized methods for recording and disseminating this
Trang 2in-formation to other government agencies, policy
mak-ers, and members of the public The NBS was also
di-rected to make available as much information as
possible on the country’s biological resources to
gov-ernment officials, to other organizations engaged in
similar studies of biological resources, and to
con-cerned citizens
Impact on Resource Use
Scientists with the NBS took “big picture” views Rather
than study an individual species, NBS researchers
studied the current state and possible futures of
en-tire ecosystems This holistic approach allowed
re-searchers to analyze the health of groups of plants and
animals, as well as the condition of air, soil, and water
resources in ecosystems upon which these plants and
animals depended Only an agency with access to
the resources and expertise of the federal
govern-ment could attempt to study the conditions of entire
ecoregions, each composed of several types of
ecosys-tems with common topographic, climatic, and biotic
characteristics The overall goal of the NBS’s
multi-disciplinary projects was the protection and
preserva-tion of the current state of biodiversity
NBS publications stated that the agency’s
research-ers took no advocacy positions that would
compro-mise the credibility of the agency’s research findings
Opponents in Congress, however, disagreed These
opponents argued that the use of other
organiza-tions—such as the Sierra Club and the Nature
Con-servancy—in data collection amounted to advocacy
positions that could not but compromise research
results Congressional opponents also pointed out
that the terms “ecosystem” and “ecoregion” lacked
agreed-upon, official definitions Thus, NBS projects
were not specific enough to be useful to federal policy
makers Even if “ecosystem” and “ecoregion” could be
suitably defined, opponents wanted guarantees that
the rights of private landowners in these locations
would be respected Government researchers were
forbidden to trespass on privately owned land without
prior permission from the landowner Researchers
ar-gued that surveying animals or waterfowl, monitoring
pollution spills, and documenting the numbers and
state of habitats of endangered species would be
im-possible without access to information located on
pri-vate property Congressional opponents also argued
that the activities of the NBS were already largely
per-formed by other federal and state agencies In an
ef-fort to balance the federal budget by fiscal year 2000,
Congress slashed the agency’s budget in fiscal year
1995 In October, 1996, the entire NBS was folded into the United States Geological Survey and renamed the Biological Resources Division
While it existed as an independent agency, the NBS published a number of important documents
Fore-most among them was Our Living Resources (1995), a
collection of more than two hundred articles on the state of health of U.S plants, animals, and ecosystems These articles were written by field experts and of-fered in-depth information to state, regional, and fed-eral policy makers regarding how best to protect and utilize the country’s biological resources One of the ecosystems studied by NBS scientists was Prince Wil-liam Sound off the coast of Alaska Combining infor-mation from thirty-five other government agencies, the NBS produced a compact disc explaining the geo-graphical features and human activities throughout the area, as well as information necessary to construct plans to restore the sound
Researchers at the NBS developed computer pro-grams to allow information in biological-resources electronic databases to be accessible to researchers worldwide through the use of standardized taxonomic (scientific) names and information NBS researchers began to use this standardized format for all North American plants and animals NBS researchers also constructed a network to link all state Natural Heri-tage Programs to a centralized Internet portal All state-collected research information would be avail-able to anyone with access to the portal
NBS researchers made a concerted effort to pro-duce up-to-date findings in the most usable format pos-sible for other researchers For example, the agency developed a system to track the distribution of zebra mussels in order to map the rapid spread of this inva-sive species throughout the Mississippi River drainage system The NBS collaborated with the National Park Service to monitor natural resources in and around national parks and developed a pollution-monitoring system for use in national wildlife refuges The agency also developed cooperative agreements with fifteen state natural resources departments to provide finan-cial resources and expertise in the study of twelve dif-ferent ecosystems throughout the United States
Victoria Erhart
Further Reading
LaRoe, Edward, ed Our Living Resources: A Report to the
Nation on the Distribution, Abundance, and Health of
Global Resources National Biological Service • 789
Trang 3U.S Plants, Animals and Ecosystems Washington,
D.C.: U.S Department of the Interior, National
Bi-ological Service, 1995
Web Site
U.S Geological Survey
Biology
http://biology.usgs.gov/
See also: Department of the Interior, U.S.;
Environ-ment and Natural Resources Division
National Environmental Policy Act
Categories: Laws and conventions; government
and resources
Date: Signed into law January 1, 1970
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is a
U.S law that set forth a national policy to protect the
environment It established a requirement that
envi-ronmental impact statements be prepared for major
federal actions that would have a significant effect on
the environment.
Background
The 1960’s marked a time of increasing public
aware-ness of the environmental consequences of human
activity Silent Spring (1962), Rachel Carson’s book on
the dangers of widespread pesticide use, reached
best-seller status, and alarming environmental episodes—
a 1966 air-pollution emergency in New York City; a
massive oil spill near Santa Barbara, California, in
early 1969; and a fire on the Cuyahoga River in
Cleve-land, Ohio, later that year—drew national media
at-tention In 1969, Congress acknowledged the impact
humans were making on the natural environment
and the importance of restoring and maintaining
en-vironmental quality with the introduction of House
Resolution 6750 and Senate Bill 1075 Both of these
formed the basis of NEPA, which President Richard
Nixon signed into law on January 1, 1970
Provisions
NEPA establishes a broad national environmental
policy for the United States Its goal is a harmonious,
productive coexistence between humankind and
na-ture, in which beneficial use of resources and
mainte-nance of a high standard of living cause the least possi-ble harm to human and ecosystem health
NEPA requires all branches of the federal govern-ment to consider the environgovern-ment when planning major projects Title I of NEPA states that proposals for major federal actions (including legislation) that could significantly affect the environment must in-clude a detailed analysis of potential environmental affects in the form of an environmental impact state-ment (EIS) The EIS must include an analysis of short-term resource use in light of long-short-term sustainability Title I also requires that the U.S president submit an annual environmental quality report (EQR) to Con-gress
Title II of NEPA established the Council on Envi-ronmental Quality (CEQ), a council of three presi-dential appointees with environmental expertise, to ensure that federal agencies meet Title I requirements CEQ advises the president and provides assistance in preparing the EQR The council, which initially served
as the federal government’s environmental policy
790 • National Environmental Policy Act Global Resources
Senator Henry Jackson wrote the National Environmental Policy Act, which became law in 1970 (Time & Life Pictures/Getty
Images)
Trang 4arm, developed major legislation and policy
regard-ing pollution control as well as guidelines for the EIS
process Policy-making responsibilities have since been
given to the U.S Environmental Protection Agency,
although CEQ still coordinates some large programs
Impact on Resource Use
Because of NEPA, major federal-government projects
routinely include environmental quality
consider-ations Many state governments have adopted
require-ments similar to those of NEPA Airports, military
com-plexes, highways, power plants, urban development,
resource exploitation, and more are subject to NEPA
requirements Many projects have been modified or
even abandoned based on their determined
environ-mental impacts By requiring federal agencies to
con-sider the environment during planning, NEPA has
helped to protect water and air quality, rein in
run-away community growth, and reduce adverse impacts
on sensitive areas such as wetlands, forests,
flood-plains, prime agricultural lands, and archaeological
and historical sites
Karen N Kähler
Web Site
U.S Environmental Protection Agency
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
http://www.epa.gov/compliance/nepa
See also: Carson, Rachel; Clean Air Act; Clean Water
Act; Ecology; Energy Policy Act; Environmental
impact statement; Environmental law in the United
States; Environmental Protection Agency
National Mining Association
Category: Organizations, agencies, and programs
Date: Established 1995
The National Mining Association promotes American
mining products in national and international
mar-kets and represents the mining industry before the U.S.
Congress, federal agencies, state governments, and
in-ternational agencies.
Background
The National Mining Association (NMA) was formed
by the merger of the National Coal Association and
the American Mining Congress The National Coal Association was formed in 1917 and the American Mining Congress in 1897 The merger of these two strong groups enabled a single voice to represent all the businesses affiliated with the U.S mining indus-try Groups belonging to the NMA include mining companies (in the areas of coal, metals, hard rock, and minerals), mining equipment manufacturers, mineral processors, bulk transporters, and financial and engineering firms and other support services companies
Impact on Resource Use The purpose of the NMA is to promote mineral re-sources developed from U.S mines The organization fosters both domestic use and exports to interna-tional markets It maintains a strong political pres-ence in Washington, D.C., and represents U.S min-ing interests in international deliberations The NMA has two political action committees, COALPAC and MinePAC The NMA provides legal counsel and rep-resentation in judicial, administrative, and regulatory proceedings that involve the U.S mining industry Finally, the NMA conducts public education pro-grams, informing people of their dependency on minerals that are used in producing common items such as carpeting, telephones, automobiles, and even doorknobs
Dion C Stewart
Web Site National Mining Association http://www.nma.org/
See also: American Mining Congress; Mining safety and health issues; Mining wastes and mine reclama-tion; Reclamation Act; Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act; United States
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Category: Organizations, agencies, and programs Date: Established October 3, 1970
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra-tion has a wide range of responsibilities relating to
Global Resources National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration • 791
Trang 5resources and the environment It is
charged with exploring the ocean and
conserving ocean resources, with
mon-itoring and predicting weather and
at-mospheric conditions, and, after the
disbanding of the U.S Coast and
Geo-detic Survey, with providing precise
geodetic surveys.
Background
The National Oceanic and
Atmo-spheric Administration (NOAA,
pro-nounced NOH-ah), part of the
De-partment of Commerce, was founded
in 1970 to study and predict changes
in the ocean and atmosphere and to
help conserve U.S coasts and
ma-rine resources It is a descendant of
an army weather warning service and
a fishing commission begun one
hun-dred years earlier Its earliest
prede-cessor was a coastal survey that took place in 1807
NOAA both performs scientific research—some of
it concerned with long-term environmental and
re-source issues—and helps formulate government
pol-icy in such areas as ocean mining and energy
Subdivi-sions of NOAA include the National Weather Service;
the National Marine Fisheries Service; the National
Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information
Ser-vice; the National Ocean SerSer-vice; and the Office of
Oceanic and Atmospheric Research
Impact on Resource Use
Preserving coastlines is a priority of the NOAA
be-cause more than half the U.S population lives near
the coasts In recent decades uncontrolled pollution,
overfishing, and coastal development have begun to
make even the oceans appear fragile To combat
dete-rioration of the oceans, the NOAA works with the
En-vironmental Protection Agency (EPA), also founded
in 1970 NOAA monitors activities that affect the
envi-ronment, and the EPA, working with the Justice
De-partment, enforces measures to protect it Together
these two agencies help enforce several acts of
Con-gress, notably the Marine Mammal Protection Act;
the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries
Act; the Coastal Zone Management Act; the
Endan-gered Species Act; the Magnuson Fisheries
Conserva-tion and Management Act; and the Deep Seabed
Hard Minerals Resources Act
NOAA scientists study how the ocean and atmo-sphere influence each other For example, the Gulf Stream current moves with the force of 750 Missis-sippi Rivers as it brings the warm waters of the Carib-bean up the Atlantic coast and moves them eastward
to England For such studies NOAA works with other agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), whose TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite charted ocean currents in a joint project with France from 1992 to 2006
NOAA has a number of other functions It is dedi-cated to building sustainable fisheries and helping en-dangered marine life to recover When overfishing cuts fish populations such as cod and salmon, it also shrinks their gene pool, making them more suscepti-ble to disease Part of the solution is to identify key species and their habitat requirements
NOAA gives advance warnings of hazardous weather Each year in the United States hundreds of lives and billions of dollars are lost to severe storms, floods, and other natural disturbances To minimize these losses, NOAA modernized the National Weather Service by refining the computer models it uses to predict impending disasters and upgrading the means
of disseminating warnings
The NOAA also promotes safe navigation Begin-ning in the 1940’s the size of ships greatly increased, and maritime commerce expanded significantly, leading to more than eleven hundred groundings or
792 • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Global Resources
Members of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, an early incarnation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, at work near Prince William Sound in Alaska around
1910 (Family of Captain Gilbert T Rude, Coast and Geodetic Survey)
Trang 6collisions of oil tankers beginning in 1974 NOAA’s
Office of Coast Survey not only creates and maintains
the nation’s nautical charts but also integrates these
data with digital geographic information systems
avail-able via the Internet
Charles V Cordaro
Web Site
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration
http://www.noaa.gov/
See also: Coast and Geodetic Survey, U.S.; Coastal
engineering; Environmental Protection Agency;
Fish-eries; Landsat satellites and satellite technologies;
Oceans; U.S Geological Survey; Weather and
re-sources
National Park Service
Category: Organizations, agencies, and programs
The U.S Congress established the National Park
Ser-vice to manage and promote the use of federal parks,
monuments, and reservations Its purpose was to
en-sure that the scenery, natural and historic objects, and
wildlife in the parks could be enjoyed by the public and
at the same time left unimpaired for future
genera-tions.
Background
Thirty-seven national parks were already in existence
when Congress formed the National Park Service on
August 25, 1916 The creation of Yellowstone, the first
national park in the world, like that of later parks,
en-gendered struggles between those who wanted to
pre-serve federal lands, preservationists, and those who
wanted to use them, utilitarians In general, Congress
encouraged the economic development of federal
lands Yet many different groups—preservationists,
local businessmen, the railroad industry, and
scien-tists—each with its own particular interests, were able
to convince Congress to pass the Yellowstone Act in
1872, thereby preserving more than 800,000 hectares
Despite the law, Yellowstone’s pristine status was soon
under attack Conflicts continued at the end of the
century: An attempt to establish a gold mine outside
the park was blocked by President Bill Clinton;
ranch-ers were upset with the reestablishment of wolves inside the park in 1995, though this venture has been considered a success by scientists and the public Fur-thermore, in 2003, the government put restrictions
on snowmobile use within the park
Congress used the Yellowstone Act as the basis for establishing other parks For most of these, preserva-tion was more theoretical than practical For exam-ple, in Yosemite National Park, established in 1890, preservationists, including John Muir, lost a long bat-tle to utilitarians, including Gifford Pinchot, over the flooding of the Hetch Hetchy valley to provide San Francisco with water in 1913 This loss would later be used by preservationists as a rallying cry against future attempts to impinge on the national parks Debate about Hetch Hetchy continued into the twenty-first century
The Antiquities Act
In 1906, Congress passed the Antiquities Act to pro-tect federal lands of historical, scientific, and cultural interest Congressman John Lacey of Iowa had recog-nized that scenic wonders were not the only lands wor-thy of preservation Lacey’s original objective was to protect American Indian ruins and artifacts of the Southwest from looters, vandals, and other criminals The wording of the act, however, has allowed presi-dents to have considerable latitude in setting aside sites as national monuments Some national parks, in-cluding Mesa Verde and Grand Canyon, were first made into national monuments Their conversion into national parks involved compromise, including permitting railroad rights of way, farming by Ameri-can Indians, and the recognition of valid land claims and mining rights within park boundaries
Establishment of the National Park Service Without a central federal office coordinating national parks, many problems developed The parks com-peted with one another for federal appropriations
No government agency had the authority to deter-mine national park criteria, thus allowing local inter-ests to convince Congress of the value of protecting natural wonders in places few people had seen Pro-tection of resources from economic exploitation in all parks was difficult Congress was not interested in adding to the federal bureaucracy and establishing a new government agency to administer the parks The Forest Service, in the Department of Agricul-ture, wanted to maintain its role as a major federal
Trang 7landholding agency It and the Reclamation Service,
in the Department of the Interior, opposed new
na-tional parks in general, since, from their viewpoint,
parks overemphasized preservation of federal lands
and did not allow sufficient economic use Years of
campaigning by such men as secretaries of the
inte-rior Richard Ballinger, Walter Fisher, and Franklin
Lane, J Horace McFarland (president of the
Ameri-can Civic Association), Representative William Kent,
Senator Reed Smoot, and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr
(son of Frederick Law Olmsted and a renowned
land-scape architect in his own right) helped to convince
Congress of the value of a new agency After much
controversy, in 1916, Congress passed the National
Parks Act, establishing a central authority within the
Department of the Interior and stating its
responsibil-ities
Impact of the Park Service
The law that established the National Park Service,
the Organic Act of 1916, has been interpreted in
many ways, not always emphasizing conservation and
preservation The first director of the National Park
Service, Stephen Mather, tried to enforce his
pres-ervationist beliefs but was not always successful Mather
worked hard to make the service a professional
orga-nization and an influential part of the Washington
bureaucracy
He also recognized that, in order to make the
na-tional park system truly nana-tional, some parks needed
to be established in the East All existing parks were in
the West, but the majority of the country’s population
and wealth were in the East Although the scenery of
the East was not considered as spectacular as that of
the West, local groups worked with state and local
governments as well as with residents to establish Shenandoah, Great Smoky Mountains, Acadia, and Mammoth Cave National Parks in the 1920’s and 1930’s
Evolving Responsibilities
In 1933, the federal government expanded the role of the National Park Service to include federal lands that had been under the control of the Departments of War and Agriculture, including monuments, historic sites and buildings, and national military parks By preserving and managing important historical sites along with natural ones, the Park Service enlarged its role and more completely fulfilled its mission of 1916 There are almost four hundred national park units Their popularity with Americans and foreigners con-tinues to grow, frequently resulting in damage to the very resources that the visitors come to enjoy Because federal funds have not always kept pace, the National Park Service has been forced to close sections of parks and to depend more on volunteers Yet the national parks remain unique national treasures, and the Na-tional Park Service continues to manage the parks by balancing use and preservation
Margaret F Boorstein
Further Reading Frome, M., R W Waver, and P Pritchard “United
States: National Parks.” In International Handbook of
National Parks and Nature Reserves, edited by Craig
W Allin New York: Greenwood Press, 1990
Grusin, Richard Culture, Technology, and the Creation of
America’s National Parks New York: Cambridge
Uni-versity Press, 2004
Heacox, Kim An American Idea: The Making of the
U.S National Park System Statistics
Expenditures $1.833 billion $2.451 billion $2.412 billion Revenue from operations $234 million $286 million $346 million Recreational visitors 285,900,000 273,500,000 275,600,000 Overnight stays 15,400,000 13,500,000 13,800,000 Park system lands 78,200,000 79,048,000 78,845,000
Source: U.S Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2009, 2009.
Note: Includes visitor data for national parks, monuments, recreation areas, seashores, and miscellaneous other areas.
Trang 8tional Parks Washington, D.C.: National Geo
-graphic Society, 2001
Kaufman, Polly Welts National Parks and the Woman’s
Voice: A History Updated ed Albuquerque:
Univer-sity of New Mexico Press, 2006
Mason, Kathy S Natural Museums: U.S National Parks,
1872-1916 East Lansing: Michigan State University
Press, 2004
Mateo, Rony, ed American National Parks: Current
Is-sues and Developments New York: Novinka Books,
2004
Ridenour, James M The National Parks Compromised:
Pork Barrel Politics and America’s Treasures
Merrill-ville, Ind.: ICS Books, 1994
Runte, Alfred National Parks: The American Experience.
3d ed Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997
Whiteman, David “The National Park System.” In
Fed-eral Land Management Agencies, edited by Pamela D.
Baldwin New York: Novinka Books, 2005
Web Site
National Park Service, U.S Department of
the Interior
http://www.nps.gov/
See also: Antiquities Act; Department of the Interior,
U.S.; Forest Service, U.S.; Muir, John; National parks
and nature reserves; National Parks Act, Canadian;
Pinchot, Gifford; Roosevelt, Theodore
National Parks Act, Canadian
Categories: Laws and conventions; government
and resources
Date: May 30, 1930
The Canadian National Parks Act removed the parks
from authority of the Dominion Forest Reserves and
Parks Act and stated that they should be used but left
unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.
Background
The 1930 National Parks Act changed the purpose of
Canada’s existing national parks from serving as areas
of resource exploitation to becoming places to be
pre-served for future generations J B Harkin, the
com-missioner of national parks, was the primary force
be-hind the National Parks Act passage, which involved
many compromises among national ministries as well
as the provinces The act was passed concurrently with other acts that transferred natural resources within the boundaries of their respective provinces from the Dominion to the provinces themselves New national park boundaries were also drawn The resources in-side the parks remained attractive, and conflict con-tinued for decades over whether they should be pre-served or exploited
Provisions The act permitted, under government regulation, the granting of leases in town sites for lots for residence and trade, and it provided for public works and utili-ties Therefore, the national parks were to be places where plants and animals were protected, but they were also to contain permanent homes and places of business for human beings
The act has undergone some modifications over the years The first “parks policy” was developed in
1964 to change the parks from serving primarily as ar-eas of recreation to arar-eas of natural conservation and
to deal with the great increase of visitors over the 1950’s and early 1960’s This modification was devel-oped under the administration of John I Nicol, direc-tor of the National and Hisdirec-toric Parks Branch Federal expropriation of Indian lands was ended The Na-tional Parks branch became part of Environment Canada, Parks, contained in the Department of the Environment
Impact on Resource Use
In the 1970’s, Canada identified thirty-nine natural regions within its borders to be represented by its na-tional parks Canada had designated three addina-tional national parks The 1979 Parks Canada Policy called for both protection of natural ecological processes with little human interference and provision of qual-ity visitor services and recreational opportunities In
1988, amendments to the National Parks Act of Can-ada emphasized the overall importance of preserving natural ecological processes
Conflicts over the national parks system remain Al-though the parks are protected from development, many contain towns and the concomitant human ac-tivities and natural disruptions Highways running through parks bring visitors while serving as vital com-ponents of major transportation routes In the newly established northern parks, indigenous peoples are permitted to use resources as part of their traditional Global Resources National Parks Act, Canadian • 795
Trang 9ways of life In outside areas adjacent to the parks,
activities such as logging and mining affect wildlife
and contribute to air and water pollution within and
around the parks
In 1994, the Canadian parliament replaced the
Parks Canada Policy of 1979 with Guiding Principles
and Operational Policies, placing more emphasis on
protecting natural and historic heritage areas It called
for ecosystem management while meeting social and
economic needs, including tourism The document
emphasized the importance of cooperation with the
public and with adherence to international
conven-tions such as the World Heritage Convention and the
Convention on Biological Diversity
Margaret F Boorstein
See also: Biodiversity; Canadian Environmental
Pro-tection Act; Department of the Interior, U.S.;
Na-tional Park Service; NaNa-tional parks and nature
re-serves; Public lands
National parks and nature reserves
Categories: Ecological resources; environment,
conservation, and resource management
National parks and nature reserves form about 12
per-cent of Earth’s land area and contain valuable
natu-ral resources and representative samples of species and
ecosystems upon which humanity depends Of the
fif-teen regions recognized by the United Nations
Environ-ment Programme World Conservation Monitoring
Centre (UNEP-WCMC), North America has the most
protected area; Europe has the most individual
pro-tected sites; and with more than 20 percent of its region
protected, South America has the highest percentage of
protected land compared to total land area.
Background
Since the mid-twentieth century, Earth’s human
pop-ulation has tripled, raising demand for resources that
include not only land and fresh water but also plants
and animals for food, medicine, and scientific
re-search There is continuing controversy over
manage-ment of public lands with respect to these and other
resources, such as carbon, natural gas, timber, and
minerals There are more than 120,000 protected
areas worldwide Environmental protection agencies
can be found in more than one hundred countries, and more than five hundred international environ-mental treaties and agreements have been estab-lished
National governments usually designate land for preservation Several nonprofit organizations work internationally to call attention to ecosystems that are
of global value and need protection National parks and nature reserves were among the first protected ar-eas of the modern conservation movement, which be-gan in the United States in the nineteenth century and spread worldwide
IUCN Designations The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) broadly defines a protected area to include any geographical location in which protection of bio-diversity is a priority Protected areas are internation-ally designated for conserving species and ecosys-tems For effective biodiversity protection, adequate funding for protected area management is funda-mental Ensuring that the needs of a growing human population are balanced with the need to conserve the world’s biological diversity is also essential Nationally designated protected areas are those that are recognized, designated, and supported by na-tional legislation or nana-tional authority Internana-tional organizations, such as the United Nations, have en-couraged national governments to jointly create a sys-tem of collective protection International sites are thus defined as areas that are recognized and pro-tected by international agreements, such as treaties
or conventions International cooperation is assumed
to assure greater protection than national initiatives alone Since the 1970’s, international organizations and conventions have promoted the establishment
of international sites and have encouraged national governments to set a number of protection targets Several international conventions have produced agreements affecting protected areas In June, 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), commonly known as the Earth Summit, was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil It brought nations together to reach global agreement
on sustainable development The Convention on Bio-logical Diversity (CBD), which recognized that biodi-versity is fundamental to human life and therefore created policies and incentives for sustaining biodi-versity, was one of the major agreements to come out
of the Earth Summit In 2004, the Seventh
Confer-796 • National parks and nature reserves Global Resources
Trang 10ence of the Parties to the CBD established the
Pro-gram of Work on Protected Areas (POWPA) to
sup-port the establishment and maintenance of protected
areas, to set goals and dates for reducing the rate of
biodiversity loss, to work to reduce poverty, and to
pursue sustainable development
In 2000, at the U.N Millennium Summit in New
York City, world leaders set eight Millennium
Devel-opment Goals (MDGs) to be achieved by 2015 Among
these goals was the establishment of protected areas
to ensure environmental sustainability and reduce
biodiversity loss by integrating principles of
sustain-able development into national policies and programs
Both the CBD and the MDGs have established
terres-trial and marine goals for protected area coverage
These goals call for at least 10 percent of each of the
world’s ecological regions to be effectively conserved
IUCN Management
Protected areas such as parks and reserves can differ
widely in their purpose and management Through a
classification system developed by the IUCN and
en-couraged by the CBD, categorization of these areas is
established in accordance with the area’s manage-ment objectives: A strict “nature reserve” is managed mainly for scientific research; a “wilderness area” is managed to preserve its natural condition; a “national park” is managed mainly for ecosystem protection and recreation; a “natural monument” is managed mainly for conservation of specific natural features; a
“habitat/species area” is managed to ensure the main-tenance of habitats and/or to meet the requirements
of specific species; a “protected landscape/seascape”
is managed mainly for conservation and recreation; and a “managed resource area” is managed to ensure long-term protection and maintenance of biological diversity while also providing for sustainability of re-sources
These IUCN categories are used for diverse pur-poses, including site planning, setting regulations, land and water use negotiations, and progress reports
on establishing and maintaining protected areas At the Durban, South Africa, Worlds Parks Congress (2003) and the Bangkok, Thailand, World Conserva-tion Congress (2004) proposals were made to add a governance dimension to the categories The IUCN Global Resources National parks and nature reserves • 797
A family stops to admire the view of the Grand Canyon from Duck on the Rock Overlook in 1958 (U.S National Park Service)