The National Park Service Act Revisited
By William Andrew Shutkin
INTRODUCTION
The end of the 1980's has seen a dramatic surge of environmental awareness among the American public. Environmental issues now commonly make front-page news and even constitute the core of political campaigns. The depletion of the ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, the destruction of ancient forests, acid rain, radioactive waste-these are just some of the more prominent issues, the more provocative terms, routinely invoked by environmentalists and nonenvironmentalists alike to characterize the environmental crisis. And it is a crisis. As Bill McKibben has astutely observed, the “end of nature” is at hand. The notion that nature is an entity independent of human action, everlasting and immutable, is now specious. This is the “end” of nature, McKibben explains, the end of the idea of nature as we know it. Excessive human consumption is to blame. The unchecked use of natural resources and reckless disposal of waste over the decades, indeed centuries, have led to not only the demise of nature the idea, but more importantly, the degeneration and destruction of nature the reality.
The national parks are not immune to the scourge of exorbitant human use and consumption. As pockets of nearly pristine natural beauty amidst our sprawling commercial and technological society, the national parks are vulnerable to over-use5 and residual decay due to the effects of nearby industry and commercial development. Yet aside from wilderness and wildlife areas, the national parks are the only public lands reserved by the government for the preservation of nature. However, unlike wilderness areas and wildlife refuges, where the preservationist mandate is unequivocal, national parks were created with the additional purpose of providing for the use and enjoyment of the public. It is this so-called dual purpose of the Organic Act, to preserve nature “unimpaired” while providing for human use, which has perplexed observers of park policy, leading them to conclude that the intent of the founders of the park system is “ambiguous...since it blessed both preservation and use.” Consequently, this policy has fostered the use of the parks at the expense of their preservation.
The alleged ambiguity of park purpose, based on interpretation of the Organic Act, must be challenged. A study of the events simultaneous with and antecedent to the passage of the National Park Service Act definitively suggests a preservationist intent over a utilitarian or use-oriented one. And while it is appropriate to focus such a reexamination on the Organic Act (since the National Park Service uses park legislation when responding to park management issues), the analysis must go beyond the words and procedures involved in fashioning the Act. The Act represents the culmination of a struggle which occurred in the two decades before its enactment and has roots which reach far back into the nineteenth century. To understand the Act, and the legislative debate which accompanied its passage, one must look to events prior to 1916.
As early as the mid-nineteenth century, George Perkins Marsh called for the conservation of nature, despairing that, “Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste.” By the 1890's,progressive conservation arose as a reaction to the destruction of nature by the “utilitarian plunder economy” of the nineteenth century.
Progressive conservation, spearheaded by Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt, opposed the reckless exploitation of natural resources by “special interests,” namely private corporations and land speculators. Deeply committed to the progressive ideals of rationality and science, progressive conservationists urged the efficient management and “wise-use” of nature while clinging to a utilitarian program emphasizing the use of nature for the greatest good of the greatest number of people. However, whereas prior utilization of natural resources was based on short-term, profit-maximizing exploitation, “wise-use” was concerned with long-term, sustainable yield. Nevertheless, the primary concern of progressive conservation, like the unmitigated use of nature which preceded the movement, was the use of natural resources for people. Nature possessed no value other than economic; no purpose other than for human use. Pinchot and his conservation crusaders, many under the aegis of the Forest Service, were fervently devoted to the credo that “wise use would provide a resource base for unlimited growth” and that science would create “almost unlimited opportunities... for control of man's environment for his own welfare.”
Concurrent with the growth of progressive conservation, the preservation movement developed to protect wild nature from the harmful effects of human consumption. Led by John Muir, preservationists were opposed to the purely economic values imputed to nature by their conservationist cousins and instead upheld the aesthetic and spiritual values of nature. As the most vocal advocates for the parks and later as champions of the Park Service Act, the preservationists were not deaf to the dominant conservation attitudes of their age which placed economic progress above aesthetic purity and technological prowess above spiritual growth. And thus, in order to successfully promote the parks and later the act, preservationists eventually employed progressive slogans and tactics. Circumstances demanded that the preservationists, often reviled as “sentimentalists,” sell the park system as an efficient economic institution that would be of palpable value to the public. Aesthetics and spiritualism were simply not enough. But the preservationists responsible for drafting the Act were not opposed to public use and enjoyment of the parks. Indeed, they encouraged park use not only to sell the park system concept but also to make available to all Americans the benefits of the aesthetic, spiritual, and recreational experience the parks afforded. Preservationists, moreover, demanded a more efficient park system. The very need for the park service and the act which created it was born out of the mismanagement of individual parks throughout the nation, which rendered them inaccessible and subject to abuse. However, while use of the parks is an integral part of their purpose, it is not the primary one. “Use” was more a part of the progressive rhetoric that pervaded the era in which the Act was drafted than a part of the Act itself.
Further, the Congress which received the preservationist bill acceded to its fundamental tenet of preserving nature “unimpaired.” While the Congress was concerned with the creation of a new bureau and its concomitant fiscal demands, as well as the availability of the park lands for limited grazing of livestock, these concerns were tangential to the preservationist policy written into the Act.Congressional opinion, evidenced by the debate, was favorable to that policy. Indeed, the Act itself was promulgated, in large part, to redress public discontent arising from previous park-use decisions which promoted the consumptive use of the parks over their undisturbed preservation.
The ambiguity perceived in the Act ultimately stems from a misconception of the term “use” as employed by the framers of the Act and as intended by preservationists and the Congress. For Muir and the preservationists, there was no clean separation between ideas of use and preservation-the two commingled. “It is impossible,” he wrote, “to stop at preservation. The forests must be, and will be, not only preserved, but used...." Preservation implied not only the protection of nature but also use of it for spiritual nourishment and aesthetic, recreational pleasure. Neither preservationists nor Congress, however, sanctioned the unbridled manipulation of the parks for the sake of public enjoyment. This would defeat the very essence of the legislation. Preservation of nature does not denote the absence of use, and vice versa. It is rather a “diverse, somewhat unsystematic justification for wilderness preservation based on a combination of non-anthropocentric values and a strong belief that wilderness provides a tonic for the ills of modern society.” The preservationist ethic, incorporated in the Organic Act, thus embraces both preservation and use. But the latter is subordinate to the former, as the term “preservation” implies. By adopting a more comprehensive definition of preservation, one may better understand the perceived ambiguity in the statute. Use is not the antithesis of preservation, but rather a component of it. Indeed, preservationists believed that use would serve to preserve nature by infusing the public with awe and respect for it, a “new revelation... that goes far to make the weakest and meanest spectator rich and significant evermore.”
The end of the 1980's has seen a dramatic surge of environmental awareness among the American public. Environmental issues now commonly make front-page news and even constitute the core of political campaigns. The depletion of the ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, the destruction of ancient forests, acid rain, radioactive waste-these are just some of the more prominent issues, the more provocative terms, routinely invoked by environmentalists and nonenvironmentalists alike to characterize the environmental crisis. And it is a crisis. As Bill McKibben has astutely observed, the “end of nature” is at hand. The notion that nature is an entity independent of human action, everlasting and immutable, is now specious. This is the “end” of nature, McKibben explains, the end of the idea of nature as we know it. Excessive human consumption is to blame. The unchecked use of natural resources and reckless disposal of waste over the decades, indeed centuries, have led to not only the demise of nature the idea, but more importantly, the degeneration and destruction of nature the reality.
The national parks are not immune to the scourge of exorbitant human use and consumption. As pockets of nearly pristine natural beauty amidst our sprawling commercial and technological society, the national parks are vulnerable to over-use5 and residual decay due to the effects of nearby industry and commercial development. Yet aside from wilderness and wildlife areas, the national parks are the only public lands reserved by the government for the preservation of nature. However, unlike wilderness areas and wildlife refuges, where the preservationist mandate is unequivocal, national parks were created with the additional purpose of providing for the use and enjoyment of the public. It is this so-called dual purpose of the Organic Act, to preserve nature “unimpaired” while providing for human use, which has perplexed observers of park policy, leading them to conclude that the intent of the founders of the park system is “ambiguous...since it blessed both preservation and use.” Consequently, this policy has fostered the use of the parks at the expense of their preservation.
The alleged ambiguity of park purpose, based on interpretation of the Organic Act, must be challenged. A study of the events simultaneous with and antecedent to the passage of the National Park Service Act definitively suggests a preservationist intent over a utilitarian or use-oriented one. And while it is appropriate to focus such a reexamination on the Organic Act (since the National Park Service uses park legislation when responding to park management issues), the analysis must go beyond the words and procedures involved in fashioning the Act. The Act represents the culmination of a struggle which occurred in the two decades before its enactment and has roots which reach far back into the nineteenth century. To understand the Act, and the legislative debate which accompanied its passage, one must look to events prior to 1916.
As early as the mid-nineteenth century, George Perkins Marsh called for the conservation of nature, despairing that, “Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste.” By the 1890's,progressive conservation arose as a reaction to the destruction of nature by the “utilitarian plunder economy” of the nineteenth century.
Progressive conservation, spearheaded by Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt, opposed the reckless exploitation of natural resources by “special interests,” namely private corporations and land speculators. Deeply committed to the progressive ideals of rationality and science, progressive conservationists urged the efficient management and “wise-use” of nature while clinging to a utilitarian program emphasizing the use of nature for the greatest good of the greatest number of people. However, whereas prior utilization of natural resources was based on short-term, profit-maximizing exploitation, “wise-use” was concerned with long-term, sustainable yield. Nevertheless, the primary concern of progressive conservation, like the unmitigated use of nature which preceded the movement, was the use of natural resources for people. Nature possessed no value other than economic; no purpose other than for human use. Pinchot and his conservation crusaders, many under the aegis of the Forest Service, were fervently devoted to the credo that “wise use would provide a resource base for unlimited growth” and that science would create “almost unlimited opportunities... for control of man's environment for his own welfare.”
Concurrent with the growth of progressive conservation, the preservation movement developed to protect wild nature from the harmful effects of human consumption. Led by John Muir, preservationists were opposed to the purely economic values imputed to nature by their conservationist cousins and instead upheld the aesthetic and spiritual values of nature. As the most vocal advocates for the parks and later as champions of the Park Service Act, the preservationists were not deaf to the dominant conservation attitudes of their age which placed economic progress above aesthetic purity and technological prowess above spiritual growth. And thus, in order to successfully promote the parks and later the act, preservationists eventually employed progressive slogans and tactics. Circumstances demanded that the preservationists, often reviled as “sentimentalists,” sell the park system as an efficient economic institution that would be of palpable value to the public. Aesthetics and spiritualism were simply not enough. But the preservationists responsible for drafting the Act were not opposed to public use and enjoyment of the parks. Indeed, they encouraged park use not only to sell the park system concept but also to make available to all Americans the benefits of the aesthetic, spiritual, and recreational experience the parks afforded. Preservationists, moreover, demanded a more efficient park system. The very need for the park service and the act which created it was born out of the mismanagement of individual parks throughout the nation, which rendered them inaccessible and subject to abuse. However, while use of the parks is an integral part of their purpose, it is not the primary one. “Use” was more a part of the progressive rhetoric that pervaded the era in which the Act was drafted than a part of the Act itself.
Further, the Congress which received the preservationist bill acceded to its fundamental tenet of preserving nature “unimpaired.” While the Congress was concerned with the creation of a new bureau and its concomitant fiscal demands, as well as the availability of the park lands for limited grazing of livestock, these concerns were tangential to the preservationist policy written into the Act.Congressional opinion, evidenced by the debate, was favorable to that policy. Indeed, the Act itself was promulgated, in large part, to redress public discontent arising from previous park-use decisions which promoted the consumptive use of the parks over their undisturbed preservation.
The ambiguity perceived in the Act ultimately stems from a misconception of the term “use” as employed by the framers of the Act and as intended by preservationists and the Congress. For Muir and the preservationists, there was no clean separation between ideas of use and preservation-the two commingled. “It is impossible,” he wrote, “to stop at preservation. The forests must be, and will be, not only preserved, but used...." Preservation implied not only the protection of nature but also use of it for spiritual nourishment and aesthetic, recreational pleasure. Neither preservationists nor Congress, however, sanctioned the unbridled manipulation of the parks for the sake of public enjoyment. This would defeat the very essence of the legislation. Preservation of nature does not denote the absence of use, and vice versa. It is rather a “diverse, somewhat unsystematic justification for wilderness preservation based on a combination of non-anthropocentric values and a strong belief that wilderness provides a tonic for the ills of modern society.” The preservationist ethic, incorporated in the Organic Act, thus embraces both preservation and use. But the latter is subordinate to the former, as the term “preservation” implies. By adopting a more comprehensive definition of preservation, one may better understand the perceived ambiguity in the statute. Use is not the antithesis of preservation, but rather a component of it. Indeed, preservationists believed that use would serve to preserve nature by infusing the public with awe and respect for it, a “new revelation... that goes far to make the weakest and meanest spectator rich and significant evermore.”