If the Park Service can't--or won't--protect our national parks, who will?

It's high time we figure that out, notes John Freemuth.

Saddled from the beginning with a contradictory mandate--to promote recreational use of parks yet preserve them for future generations--the Park Service has always walked an administrative tightrope. But within the last few years a new kind of threat has appeared, and the Park Service finds itself in an even more precarious position, its effectiveness impaired.

Increasingly national parks have come under environmental attack from sources outside the...

Population growth, industrial development, and renewed resource extraction have put the wide-open spaces and natural resources that define the West under immense stress. Vested interests clash and come to terms over embattled resources such as water, minerals, and even open space. The federal government controls 40 to 80 percent of the land base in many western states, so its sway over the future of the West s communities and environments has prompted the development of unique policies and politics.
In the third edition of "Environmental Politics and Policy in the West," Zachary A. Smith...