Park management has come a long way since its beginning in 1872 with the establishment of Yellowstone National Park, the first park in American history. There was far less known about ecosystems, life processes, and conservation at this time, and humans had to find it out the hard way: trial and error.
Because it was the nation’s first national park, Yellowstone was the guinea pig of America as we attempted to tweak it, make it safer, and bring in more tourists. The results were often disastrous and they began to realize that the earth’s ecosystems were far more delicate than they ever imagined.
An extreme example of these human blunders would be the management of the elk population in Yellowstone. The elk were a popular tourist attraction, so management decided to increase the number of elk to increase the sightings for visitors; in conjunction with this decision, they carried out predator control of cougars and wolves, which have their own troubling story at the hands of humans. By 1914, they realized their mistake when there was an estimated 35,000 elk in the park and only enough resources and land to successfully support about 5,000. The result was an ecosystem spiraling out of control, with the grasses being eaten to the ground and other life struggling to live on what remained. Years of smaller controlled hunts thinned the herd, but extreme measures were taken in 1961 to get the population down to reasonable numbers, killing 4,283 elk in one season.
It was in response to the public’s outrage at the slaughter of thousands of these beloved animals that the historic “Wildlife Management in National Parks” paper by A. Starker Leopold was published, which has become essential to how America’s national parks are run today. Instead of presenting an almost artificial version of what a tourist would like to see, Leopold instead urged management to try to recreate a landscape reminiscent of pre-white-settler America. He acknowledges that “restoring the primitive scene is not done easily nor can it be done completely. Some species are extinct. Given time, an eastern hardwood forest can be regrown to maturity but the chestnut will be missing and so will the roar of pigeon wings.”
Even with these practices in place, humans continue to make constant errors as we try to try present an unchanging landscape that is constantly adapting and changing in response to our mere presence. Poor decisions continue to be made, from the bear feeding stations that resulted in the injury and death of many visitors to the present trend of taking bison selfies. Our connection and relationship with our parks has been evolving since the beginning as these awe-inspiring destinations continue to enlighten us about the beauty of this ever-changing Earth.
