National Parks and Preserves

Article Outline

Introduction; Early National Parks; National Parks since World War II; Challenges Facing National Parks and Preserves; National Parks around the World

Ensuring Biodiversity

National park management practices based on the concept of biodiversity are intended to protect all natural resources within park boundaries. This involves managing plant and animal species to accommodate both genetic and species diversity. However, biodiversity management often conflicts with public access in national parks that promote recreation as well as wildlife conservation. Tourism development in Yellowstone National Park has greatly reduced the protected habitat for grizzly bears. If the loss of grizzly habitat is not reversed, the bears could end up in isolated breeding populations with a small gene pool. (The gene pool is the collection of genetic, or inheritable, traits within a breeding population.) If the gene pool becomes too small, it would decrease the bears’ ability to reproduce and increase the probability of cubs being born with genetic defects.

Fire plays a natural role in biodiversity by clearing space in forests for new growth of grasses, wildflowers, and trees. New growth benefits wildlife by creating lush meadows for browsing and grazing. However, while lightning-caused fires are allowed to burn in some wilderness areas, they are battled if there is a threat to buildings in or near parks. Some of the fires that raged through parts of Yellowstone National Park in 1988 initially were allowed to burn unchecked, but all fires were battled by the summer’s end. Human-caused fires, set to counterattack the naturally occurring forest fires, burned some forests that might otherwise have remained standing. Human-caused fires also controlled the progress of the lightning-caused fires, which were part of the Yellowstone ecosystem’s natural life cycle.

Securing Funding

Increasing demands on national budgets since the 1980s have reduced funding for national parks and preserves in most countries. Rising costs of health care, education, and supplemental income programs for retired and low-income persons take ever larger percentages of available tax revenues, even as national parks and preserves around the world are asked to meet growing demands for conservation programs and recreational opportunities.

In the United States, a series of annual cuts by Congress in the National Park Service budget has prevented the hiring of adequate numbers of rangers, slowed maintenance of roads and buildings and development of interpretive exhibits, and curtailed some scientific research. By 1996, the NPS faced an $8 billion backlog of needed building and maintenance projects alone. Lack of funding reduced the number of both full-time and seasonal employees, limited the open season some parks are open to visitors, and closed campgrounds in many parks.

National Parks around the World

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The following discussion highlights a few of the world’s key national parks. Other important national parks are described throughout this article.

North America

More land is protected in the national parks and preserves of North America than on any other continent. In Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone with its two spectacular waterfalls cuts through a broad plateau, which provides habitat for grizzly bears, bison, elk, and a growing wolf population. More than 10,000 geysers and hot springs dot this rugged landscape, making it the world’s largest geothermal region.

Great Smoky Mountain National Park (1934) preserves 130 tree species and 26 salamander species in 2165 sq km (813 sq mi) of virgin woodlands in Kentucky and Tennessee. Denali National Park and Preserve (1917), encompassing 20,233 sq km (7812 sq mi) in Alaska’s Interior, protects subarctic tundra habitat for grizzly and black bears, caribou, moose, wolves, and bald eagles. The park surrounds towering Mount McKinley—at 6140 m (20,130 ft), the tallest mountain in North America.

Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park (1922), which stretches 44,807 sq km (17,300 sq mi) from Alberta into the Northwest Territories, is a sanctuary for the largest members of wood buffalo and wolves. Grasslands National Park (1981) in Saskatchewan preserves 907 sq km (350 sq mi) of windswept prairie. The 10,000 sq km (3861 sq mi) of arctic tundra within Ivvavik National Park in the Northwest Territories (1922) provides habitat for the 152,000-head Porcupine Caribou herd.

National parks in Central America protect lush tropical rain forests with a seemingly infinite diversity of plants and animals. Hundreds of reptilian, amphibian, and bird species inhabit these dense forests. Costa Rica established its park system in 1970 to reverse the creeping destruction of wilderness areas. National parks, reserves for native peoples and their traditional lifestyles, biological preserves that protect a vast diversity of plant life, and wildlife refuges and corridors now blanket more than a quarter of the country. The diversity within these parks ranges from tropical rain forests and savannas to coral reefs. Costa Rica’s parks support more than 850 bird species, 10,000 insect species, and 9000 plant species, including 1200 varieties of orchids. Jaguars, ocelots, margays, pumas, and tiger cats roam these protected areas.

Visitors can observe two volcanic craters in the country’s 57 sq km (22 sq mi) Poas Volcano National Park (1971). One crater steams with geysers and bubbling volcanic vents while the other lies dormant, filled with a deep, blue lake. At Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve (1950s), three-toed sloths, jaguars, and tiny orchids are part of the complex ecosystems thriving under the canopy (the uppermost layer of branches) of the protected 106 sq km (41 sq mi) rain forest.

South America

The 6436 km long (4,000 mi long) Amazon River, which supports thousands of ecosystems with its web of rivers, streams, and rain forests, dominates South America’s landscape. Annual rainfall at the headwaters of the Amazon Basin can exceed 3 m (10 ft), and the river funnels one-sixth of the world’s runoff of surface water into the Atlantic Ocean.

Near the source of the Amazon River in the Peruvian Andes lies Manu Biosphere Reserve (1973), which sprawls 18,907 sq km (7,300 sq mi). Manu Biosphere Reserve is a combination of national park, natural preserve, and inhabited cultural zone. The inhabited cultural zone protects traditional lifestyles of native peoples who live and farm there, while the preserve is open for both scientific research and tourism. The biosphere (a group of interdependent ecosystems unique to the region) includes grassy, treeless slopes rising to 3965 m (13,000 ft) dry land forests with scattered groves of trees, ferns, and orchids, and dense rain forests that shelter dozens of plant communities, some older than the last Ice Age. Brilliant macaws, crested owls, storks, monkeys, and snakes are among the wildlife that populates its forests of mahogany and tropical cedar. Aquatic life navigating the Manu River and its tributaries, which lead to the Amazon River, includes turtles, piranha, stingrays, and caiman.