Protecting Yellowstone
Protecting Yellowstone
Science and the Politics of National Park Management
Yellowstone National Park looks like a pristine western landscape populated by wild bison, grizzly bears, and wolves. But the bison do not always range freely, snowmobile noise intrudes upon the park’s winter silence, and some tourist villages are located in prime grizzly bear habitat. These and other issues—including fires and the New World Mine—were the center of a policy-making controversy involving federal politicians and interested stakeholders. Yet outcomes of the controversies varied considerably, depending on politics, science, how well park managers allied themselves with external interests, and public thinking about the effects of park proposals on their access and economies. In Protecting Yellowstone Michael J. Yochim examines the primary influences upon contemporary national park policy making and considers how those influences shaped or constrained the final policy. In addition, Yochim considers how park managers may best work within the contemporary policy-making context to preserve national parks.
Yochim’s copiously detailed assessment of the role of science in wildlife restoration, habitat renewal, and snowmobile and other winter-use activities in Yellowstone could not be timelier. Yochim provides a trenchant analysis of the intricacies of National Park Service decision making.
Michael J. Yochim has worked as a National Park Service planner at Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks. He is also the author of Yellowstone and the Snowmobile: Locking Horns over National Park Use.
