National parks best practices: Lessons from a century's worth of national parks management

Mercury in Fish from National Parks

Mercury (Hg) is a toxic, global contaminant that threatens ecosystem and human health. Human activities have increased atmospheric concentrations 3-5 fold during the past 150 years. Airborne Hg enters environmental cycles in complex ways, resulting in the contamination of even remote places. The National Park Service (NPS) protects some of the most pristine and sensitive wilderness in North Ame...

Exploitation of freshwater eels in National Parks

Parks promoting physical activity: synthesis of findings from interventions in seven national parks.

BACKGROUND We synthesized the results of 7 National Park Service pilot interventions designed to increase awareness of the health benefits from participation in recreation at national parks and to increase physical activity by park visitors. METHODS A content analysis was conducted of the final evaluation reports of the 7 participating parks. Pooled data were also analyzed from a standardized...

Public Participation and Environmental management in Mountain National Parks

Public involvement has become a key concept in conservation management worldwide. This paper provides an overview of the situation in four countries where national parks have been established for over a century, and where their creation often involved clearing the land of earlier indigenous settlements. Since the 1970s, public participation has become common practice in park management, even th...

“national Parks – from Public Playgrounds to Regional Commons”

National parks and protected areas in the northern areas of the planet have for a long period been the prerogative of central governments. With the devolution of responsibilities, powers and property rights to regional authorities and indigenous peoples of the North, the quest for local participation in the governing of protected areas have mounted. At the same time the methods for adaptive eco...