America's National Parks ( Part I ) The National Park Service of the U.S.A. controls more than 77 million acres of land, divided up into 320 park sites of extraordinary variety, the latest covering huge areas of wilderness in Alaska1. There are urban or city parks, there are ancient buildings and historic sites, seashore parks, national rivers, and more and more recreation areas where priority is given to the amusement of the public. Finally there are the National Parks themselves, which are visited by millions, but where the priority is conservation2. In a country of free enterprise3, where business interests are so powerful, these parks play an essential role. It was the conservationists who saved the remaining giant redwood trees and created the National Redwood Park, on the far side of the Golden Gate Bridge4 which spans the entrance to San Francisco Bay. The lumberjacks7 were so furious that they marched into the city to protest, shouting “No more parks!” But the environmentalists and conservationists have always been allowed to have their say in the “Land of the Free,”5 and their influence has been greater than in most countries. Yellowstone6, established by the U.S. Congress as a national park on March 1, 1872, is located primarily in the U.S. state of Wyoming, though it also extends into Montana and Idaho. Spanning an area of 3,468 square miles, the park was the first of its kind, and is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features. Yellowstone has everything which appeals to the romantic, geysers7 which shoot jets of boiling water 200 feet up into the air, a deep canyon where a rushing river pours over mighty waterfalls. There are snowy mountain peaks, tree-fringed lakes and vast forests, as well as broad water meadows8, across which the Yellowstone River glides gently on its way to the canyon. On these meadows bison, elk, moose and deer9 come to graze in the evening. The park is the centerpiece of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest remaining, nearly intact ecosystem in the Earth’s northern temperate zone. American national parks represent one of the finest examples of nature conservation in the world. All the parks are kept as “natural” as possible. In the Far West10, lumbermen devastated whole forests. But no tree-felling is allowed in the parks. When a tree falls, it is left to rot and enrich the soil, and so encourage young trees to grow. Even natural forest fires, those not started by man, are allowed, in many parks, to burn themselves out. Animals learned years ago that man was not their enemy in the national parks. Many of them became so tame that they were a nuisance, and sometimes even a danger. Bears, in particular, lined the roads and begged for food. They were so comical that people stopped to feed them, thus breaking one of the strictest rules of the parks. This was not nature conservation! Cookies and candy are not part of a bear’s normal diet! There were also some unfortunate accidents, for even the fairly mild black bear cannot tell where the cookie ends and the hand begins. In Yellowstone, the bears have been taken miles away into the wilderness, but in a few other parks they are still a nuisance.