Background

In 1872, our nation’s first national park, Yellowstone, was “dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the ben-efit and enjoyment of the people. ” T h e anthropocentric mission of this first park is clear, and there was in 1872 little indication that this dedication was intended to inaugu-rate what would become the world’s most ambitious national park system. The develop-ment of an actual system of parks did not real-ly begin until the 1890s and early 1900s with the creation of Yo s e m i te, S e q u o i a, C ra te r Lake, Mount Rainier, and Glacier National Parks. Although conservation of nature was a more explicit part of the mission of these new p a rk s, “people pleasuring ” remained the highest priority (Mackintosh 1991). T h e growth of the system was largely driven by opportunity and public appeal, as opposed to what today we might call a strategic conserva-tion plan. There was in these very early park system ye a rs virtually no scientific fra m e wo rk to guide park managers with regard to the con-servation of natural elements. The scientific discipline of ecology was in its early infancy— the first scientific journal dedicated specifical-ly to this topic would not appear until 1916. There was certainly no scientific context for i n te g rating notions of natural disturb a n ce such as fire and successional change into man-agement. In the early years of the national parks, comparatively stiff guidelines were adopted for protection of national forest reserves and p a rks from fire; but they we re vigo ro u s ly debated by some. H.J. Ostrander attacked fire co n t rol policies as wo rse than ineffective because they allowed hazardous fuels to accu-mulate, while John Muir viewed fire as “the master scourge and controller of the distribu-tion of trees ” and staunchly defended thos