Manning's newest book, A Thinking Person’s Guide to America’s National Parks (George Braziller), was published in April 2016 and will help mark the centennial of the National Park Service.
Ten National Parks Issues Robert Manning Could Address
1.) What Happens When Saguaro Disappear From Saguaro National Park and Other Tales of the Anthropocene. The world may be entering a new geologic epoch that is being called the Anthropocene. This is a period in which humans are having a significant, even dominant impact on the planet. Human-caused climate change is a high-profile example of these impacts. The Anthropocene raises a number of vexing questions for the national parks, including what will we do when there are no more glaciers in Glacier National Park and when Joshua Trees and Saguaro cactus have migrated out of their namesake parks. If preserving nature is the goal in national parks, then what is “natural” in the Anthropocene?
2.) Admired but Depressed: The National Park Service Turns 100. Despite the increasingly dismal public assessment of American government, the National Park Service consistently enjoys the very highest ratings by the American people. But paradoxically, surveys of government employees find especially low morale among Park Service professionals. Part of the problem is that the National Park Service is thinly funded and staffed, creating growing unease about the ability of the agency to carry out its mission, and this is a problem that is growing more urgent. The budget of the National Park Service is less than one tenth of one percent of the federal budget, there are fewer permanent Park Service employees than the staff at Disney World, and the national parks have accumulated more than $11 billion in deferred maintenance.
3.) Needed: More Parks That Attract All Americans. African-Americans and Hispanics have historically been underrepresented in the national parks. As the American population continues to diversify, this shifting demographic must be integrated more fully into the national parks. This will require new parks that honor the heritage and culture of diverse racial and ethnic groups and reinterpretation of existing parks to tell more diverse stories. New national parks such as Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site, Cesar E. Chavez National Monument, and Manzanar National Historic Site are good examples of the former, while interpretation of the historic role of the Buffalo Soldiers, an all-black Army regiment in the early 20th century at Yosemite National Park, is a high-profile example of the latter.
4.) The National Ecosystem Service?. Most national parks are not large enough to include a full range of wildlife habitats and intact ecosystems and were established when there was little understanding of ecology. Consequently, there is a growing consensus that we need to “scale up” conservation to embrace larger, more complete ecosystems. The national parks have a critical role to play in this approach, serving as vital cores of larger landscapes. Surrounding lands can serve as buffers to these core areas and as corridors for wide-ranging wildlife and regional ecosystem processes. This idea has created excitement in the conservation community as manifested in proposals for a Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the Crown of the Continent, Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y), Greater Grand Canyon and the Path of the Pronghorns.
5.) “Places to Play,” but How Much Is Too Much? Countering the American focus on material goods and services in the early 20th century, national park prophet John Muir wrote that parks are “places to play in and pray in." Recreation is one of the most important and obvious values of the national parks. From the very beginning, the National Park Service has encouraged recreational visits to the national parks to advance appreciation of the parks and to build a strong constituency. But the agency has historically struggled with this use of the national parks; how much and what types of recreation can be accommodated in the national parks without unacceptable impacts to park resources and the quality of the visitor experience?
6.) Valuable, Little Appreciated Park “Services” Require Careful Management. The history of the national park system has documented the increasing values of national parks: monumental scenery, recreation, ecological protection, historical and cultural resources, scientific reserves and more. These values are additive and evolving. “New” park resources continue to attract professional and public recognition, including a wide-ranging set of ecological services. Examples include carbon sequestration, natural soundscapes and night skies and human health. The growing consciousness and importance of these ecological services demands that they be monitored and managed more closely.
7.) Seeing Behind the Scenery: National Parks for the 21st Century. It would be irresponsible to celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service without also taking stock of the issues facing the national parks in their second century. We must commit ourselves to “see behind the scenery” of the national parks by examining them more closely from the perspective of scientists and practitioners. In this light, the national park system is remarkable, but imperfect; it is incomplete, inadequately protected and subject to an array of environmental, economic and political pressures. Addressing these issues will require thoughtful and creative study, but ultimately the national parks need an action-oriented agenda for their next century and an informed and engaged citizenry.
8.) Health Parks, Healthy People. It’s a happy circumstance that visiting national parks and related areas can contribute to our physical and mental wellbeing. It seems common sense that being more active can contribute to human health, and a rapidly growing scientific and professional literature is adding convincing evidence in support of this hypothesis. Physical activity can be an antidote to the epidemic of obesity and related diseases such as diabetes. Moreover, studies are demonstrating that being outdoors can reduce stress, minimize attention disorders, maximize self-esteem, increase memory and cognitive function and promote healing and social cohesion.
9.) How “Parknerships” Are Leveraging the National Parks. Given the small and shrinking staff and budget of the National Park Service, “parkners” – individuals and organizations that help advance the national parks and their multiple values to the American people – will become an increasingly important asset. Over the last two decades, there has been a renaissance in national park partnerships that includes non-profit organizations, schools, friends groups, conservancies, philanthropists and volunteers. This is helping to leverage the management and effectiveness of the national parks and will be increasingly important in the future.
10.) New Models of National Parks. The conventional model of American national parks is a large area of land where few or no people live and which is managed primarily for preservation. But there are few opportunities to create such parks in the U.S. today. Countries that have much higher population densities employ another model of national parks, one that is focused on a geographic region defined by significant natural and/or cultural resources and is likely to include local communities and their residents. In this model, significant resources are defined and mapped and local communities help protect these resources through cooperative management, zoning and subdivision regulations, and other mechanisms. The National Park Service is using this approach in its recently established system of national heritage areas.
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