Traces the conservation movement by ranchers, farmers, river workers, and fishermen who in spite of separating themselves from political environmentalism are helping to restore and protect America's grasslands, wildlife, wetlands, and oceans.

In the early 20th century, America has a dozen national parks, but they are a haphazard patchwork of special places under the supervision of different federal agencies. The conservation movement, after failing to stop the Hetch Hetchy dam, pushes the government to establish one unified agency to oversee all the parks, leading to the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916. Its first director, Stephen Mather, a wealthy businessman and passionate...

Following World War II, the parks are overwhelmed as visitation reaches 62 million people a year. A new billion-dollar campaign – Mission 66 – is created to build facilities and infrastructure that can accommodate the flood of visitors. A biologist named Adolph Murie introduces the revolutionary notion that predatory animals, which are still hunted, deserve the same protection as other wildlife. In Florida, Lancelot Jones, the grandson of a slave,...

The National Parks: America's Best Idea is the story of an idea as uniquely American as the Declaration of Independence and just as radical: that the most special places in the nation should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone. As such, it follows in the tradition of Burns's exploration of other American inventions, such as baseball and jazz. The narrative traces the birth of the national park idea in the mid-1800s and follows...

Evaluates Theodore Roosevelt's role in launching modern conservationsim, identifying the contributions of such influences as James Audubon and John Muir while describing how Roosevelt's exposure to natural wonders in his early life shaped his environmental values.

Not a travel guide, this book is a collection of essays that delve into issues affecting America's national parks and historic sites. The authors, who all have deep personal and professional connections to the national parks, explore how the nation's biological and cultural diversity is represented; the importance of balancing between recreation and preservation; the dynamics of nature as they are shaped by a changing climate; and innovations in technology,...

"The surprising story of our "naturalist president" Theodore Roosevelt and how his lifelong passion for the natural world set the stage for America's wildlife conservation movement. No United States president is more popularly associated with nature and wildlife than Theodore Roosevelt--prodigious hunter, tireless adventurer, and ardent conservationist. We think of him as a larger-than-life original, yet in The Naturalist, Darrin Lunde has located...