David Muench's National Parks , livre ebook

D AVID M UENCH S N ATIONAL P ARKS

To those with the foresight to set aside parts of America s original wildlands, and to those with the fortitude to protect them in our national parks, to the framers of the Wilderness Act and to those who uphold its tenets, often against preposterous odds, we offer what we can-our images, our words, our thanks.
Pinnacles NATIONAL PARK

Central California s Pinnacles National Park, established by Congress in 2013, is our fifty-ninth national park. Designated a national monument by Theodore Roosevelt in 1908, its name pays homage to volcanic spires formed by the eruption of the Neenach Volcano more than 23 million years ago. It is home to 149 bird species (including the endangered California condor), forty-nine mammals, numerous reptiles, amphibians, butterflies, dragonflies, damselflies, bees, and other invertebrates.
Preface

Established in 1872, Yellowstone National Park was the beginning of the national park idea, perhaps the best idea America ever had. In celebrating the country s hugely diverse natural landcapes, our national parks commemorate our shared history-offering us the memory of who we are, and where it is we live.
But they are more. In this age of an imperiled earth, they provide hope for the health of the planet. . . . in Wildness is the preservation of the World, Henry David Thoreau wrote 150 years ago in Walking . David and I agree with him. It is the wildland in our national parks we present in this book. Life consists with wildness, Thoreau continued. The most alive is the wildest. . . I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness.
The wild land and water providing habitat for plants and animals endemic to a region, is the powerful, and for us, personal, reason for our natural national parks to exist. Untamed land moves us the same way an eagle aloft moves us, a grizzly bear silhouetted on a ridgetop, a great waterfall plunging irrevocably down its river.
Wilderness inspires us. But we re not the only ones. The framers of the Organic Act that created the National Park System in August 1916 understood inspiration as a vital function of the parks. Immortalized in law is the idea that the parks are to be preserved and managed for the benefit and inspiration of all the people of the United States.
Of course, inspiration needs to be accessible. The depths of wild land do not draw everyone. Those who enter it, craving adventure, craving the sustenance of wildness, craving connection with our primordial beginnings are rewarded by their own intimacy with nature s power, its comforts, its discomforts, its magnificence, its indifference. But statistics show that only a small percentage of visitors to national parks ever go more than a mile from a road. One of the great gifts of our parks is that they offer vignettes of wildness to front-country visitors, allowing everyone to taste the landscapes of the parks, to find inspiration in their experience of the parks. Even from the road, it is possible to gather impressions of the wilderness a park was created to protect. Standing at the edge and looking in can also be enough.
In some parks, Wilderness-with a capital W-is managed according to the tenets of the Wilderness Act. In others, wild land is managed as de facto wilderness, land that could, one day, be included in the Wilderness inventory. What seems vital is the intention of wildness. In the wisdom to set aside large tracts of land retaining their primordial character, the architects of the parks have provided for the existence of intact land still nurturing of its ecosystem. By inventing a system to protect our most precious landscapes from the destruction of those who would use them as landscapes of commodity-lumber, water, minerals, hunting, pleasure resorts, ranching, farming-we have retained for ourselves the wild birthright of all Americans.
The National Park System will be one hundred years old in 2016. This anniversary, coming at a time of enormous planetary changes, seems a good one for reassessing the role of the parks. What are we doing right in them? What can we do better? How do we serve the visitors who come? How do we serve the ecosystems of the parks? How does what we do in these truly sacred tracts of land serve the health of this country?
We have tried in this book, in both images and words, to capture the power of wild land protected by our national parks. Whether one chooses to hike or ride or float through these wildlands or not, the land itself is forever protected. These landscapes, properly cared for, will be forever alive. Any of us may enter whenever we are ready.

-Ruth Rudner
Contents

Preface
Map
Introduction: An American Invention

H AWAI I V OLCANOES N ATIONAL P ARK , H AWAI I
H ALEAKALA N ATIONAL P ARK , H AWAI I
C HANNEL I SLANDS N ATIONAL P ARK, C ALIFORNIA
R EDWOOD N ATIONAL P ARK, C ALIFORNIA
O LYMPIC N ATIONAL P ARK, W ASHINGTON
G LACIER B AY N ATIONAL P ARK A ND P RESERVE, A LASKA
W RANGELL -S T . E LIAS N ATIONAL P ARK A ND P RESERVE, A LASKA
K ENAI F JORDS N ATIONAL P ARK, A LASKA
D ENALI N ATIONAL P ARK A ND P RESERVE, A LASKA
G ATES O F T HE A RCTIC N ATIONAL P ARK A ND P RESERVE, A LASKA
N ORTH C ASCADES N ATIONAL P ARK, W ASHINGTON
M OUNT R AINIER N ATIONAL P ARK, W ASHINGTON
C RATER L AKE N ATIONAL P ARK, O REGON
L ASSEN V OLCANIC N ATIONAL P ARK, C ALIFORNIA
Y OSEMITE N ATIONAL P ARK, C ALIFORNIA
S EQUOIA N ATIONAL P ARK, C ALIFORNIA
K INGS C ANYON N ATIONAL P ARK, C ALIFORNIA
D EATH V ALLEY N ATIONAL P ARK, C ALIFORNIA
J OSHUA T REE N ATIONAL P ARK, C ALIFORNIA
S AGUARO N ATIONAL P ARK, A RIZONA
G RAND C ANYON N ATIONAL P ARK, A RIZONA
P ETRIFIED F OREST N ATIONAL P ARK, A RIZONA
Z ION N ATIONAL P ARK, U TAH
B RYCE C ANYON N ATIONAL P ARK, U TAH
C APITOL R EEF N ATIONAL P ARK, U TAH
C ANYONLANDS N ATIONAL P ARK, U TAH
A RCHES N ATIONAL P ARK, U TAH
M ESA V ERDE N ATIONAL P ARK, C OLORADO
B LACK C ANYON O F T HE G UNNISON N ATIONAL P ARK, C OLORADO
G REAT S AND D UNES N ATIONAL P ARK A ND P RESERVE, C OLORADO
G REAT B ASIN N ATIONAL P ARK, N EVADA
Y ELLOWSTONE N ATIONAL P ARK, W YOMING
G RAND T ETON N ATIONAL P ARK, W YOMING
G LACIER N ATIONAL P ARK, M ONTANA
R OCKY M OUNTAIN N ATIONAL P ARK, C OLORADO
G UADALUPE M OUNTAINS N ATIONAL P ARK, T EXAS
C ARLSBAD C AVERNS N ATIONAL P ARK, N EW M EXICO
B IG B END N ATIONAL P ARK, T EXAS
B ADLANDS N ATIONAL P ARK, S OUTH D AKOTA
W IND C AVE N ATIONAL P ARK, S OUTH D AKOTA
T HEODORE R OOSEVELT N ATIONAL P ARK, N ORTH D AKOTA
V OYAGEURS N ATIONAL P ARK, M INNESOTA
I SLE R OYALE N ATIONAL P ARK, M ICHIGAN
C UYAHOGA V ALLEY N ATIONAL P ARK, O HIO
M AMMOTH C AVE N ATIONAL P ARK, K ENTUCKY
V IRGIN I SLANDS N ATIONAL P ARK, V IRGIN I SLANDS
D RY T ORTUGAS N ATIONAL P ARK, F LORIDA
B ISCAYNE N ATIONAL P ARK, F LORIDA
E VERGLADES N ATIONAL P ARK, F LORIDA
C ONGAREE N ATIONAL P ARK, S OUTH C AROLINA
G REAT S MOKY M OUNTAINS N ATIONAL P ARK, TN/NC
S HENANDOAH N ATIONAL P ARK, V IRGINIA
A CADIA N ATIONAL P ARK, M AINE

Photo Notes
Acknowledgments
Sources

LOWER FALLS, YELLOWSTONE RIVER, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
BISON IN HAYDEN VALLEY, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

INTRODUCTION
An American Invention

The national park is an American invention. Expression of the American soul, the parks are our treasures, our history, our pride, and our solace. In the immensity of their diversity, they provide us the fullest sense of who we are. By setting aside pieces of America s original wildland, we have protected our birthright for ourselves and given an enormous gift to the world. Our national parks represent us to the world with honor.
Since the inception of the national park idea with the designation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, fifty-eight U.S. national parks, units of the National Park System (NPS) celebrating the country s natural values, have so far been designated. Altogether, there are 388 units of a variety of designations in the National Park System. Emulating our idea, more than 100 other countries have designated over 1200 national parks. Some parks, repositories of wildness, protectors of millions of acres of biologically diverse areas, are recognized as World Heritage Sites and Biosphere Reserves by the United Nations for their importance to Earth.
Within the parks, managed wilderness offers us the perpetuity of wildness. It offers us hope and memory. It offers us the earth as it was and, so long as its protection remains intact, as it will be.
Although they are legislated facts-entities with defined borders, infrastructures, administrations, natural history associations, and constituencies of dedicated partisans who will fight for their protection forever-no park is big enough or isolated enough to be totally protected. Polluting industries at their boundaries, acid rain, invasive exotic species, suburban sprawl and the roads and traffic it creates, mining, logging, gas and oil extraction at park edges are serious problems. Equally so are chronic lack of funding proscribing adequate ranger staff, resource protection, and necessary maintenance. Even those defined borders are often a problem. Drawn to protect a specific feature or features, they are frequently without reference to the area s true ecological boundaries, so that lands vital to the ecosystem are left vulnerable to sprawl, extractive industries, road building, and other developments.
By setting aside pieces of America s original wildland, we have protected our birthright for ourselves and given an enormous gift to the world. Our national parks represent us to the world with honor.

From the start, the national parks have had to fight for appropriate funding. There was none allocated to Yellowstone for the first six years of its existence. Even the founding of the National Park Service in 1916 did not inspire Congress to appropriate