Alaska Region
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Southeast Region
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Pacific Northwest Region
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Mid-Atlantic Region
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Western Region
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National Capital Region
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Rocky Mountain Region
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North Atlantic Region
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Southwest Region
Midwest Region
Activities
Vocabulary
site
monument
memorial
region
preserve
Questions
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1. What makes a park ‘nationally’ significant?
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2. Identify an example of each category of parks and explain the distinguishing characteristics.
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3. Which park area is most popular with Americans?
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4. Rank park areas in terms of significance.
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5. What additional categories should be included in the national park system?
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6. Are there major regional differences between the parks?
III
Parks Harbor Special Memories
All the parks, whatever their specific names, have a common denominator. They renew us in one way or another, re-create something deep within us. Let me illustrate in a small and personal way.
When I look from the North Platte Valley in western Nebraska at the massive promontory rising above it, Scotts Bluff National Monument, I do not see only the famous landmark of westering covered-wagon trains. I go back in memory to a small boy who was fortunate enough to spend a summer or two in its presence, exploring it when chores on the farm permitted.
Or take Fort Mason, the old Army post on San Francisco Bay, now headquarters of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Culture is big at the fort today, filling a big need. You can participate in art and theater, dance, concerts, seminars, discussions, workshops, classes in health, recreation, and physical education.
Fine. Fort Mason also happens to be the place where I—and a million other soldiers, no doubt, but I—disembarked to embrace America again after many months overseas in World War II.
The parks touch all of us, I say, in one way or another, which is why the Statue of Liberty is now preserved as a national monument, and Tuskegee Institute has become a national historic site. For some, the battlegrounds of Gettysburg and Vicksburg have intense personal meaning; grandchildren and great-grandchildren walk those haunting fields now, and wonder.
We all wonder, in the parks, and sometimes we grow closer to one another. (I am not referring to the exasperating traffic congestion). It happens when, assembled near Old Faithful in Yellowstone, we marvel at the faithful miracle. Grouped in dread fascination beneath El Capitan in Yosemite, we are linked more subtly.
El Captain’s sheer granite face rises 3,000 feet. Specks of humanity are toiling upward on it. You and I are secure, our feet anchored to earth, our view of the world level—normal. To us, the world of those climbers is frightfully askew; we are disturbed for them, and we stare.
“What if,” someone asks a ranger, “A climber freezes in fear and can’t continue?”
“A team of expert rock climbers rescues him. Sometimes a helicopter is called in, and we lift him off.”
“How often . . . ?”
“Not often. But sometimes we reach a climber in trouble and find that we have rescued him before.”
Climbers do fall, yes. Half a dozen have plunged to their deaths. There will be more. “As long as there are mountains,” the ranger said, “there will be climbers.”
Yosemite may be signaling the future of all parks afflicted with overcrowding and resultant pollution and litter. Its proposed master plan—a draft in which the public participated widely—aims at restoring the natural scene as much as possible. How? By controlling, which means limiting, visitor use.
7
Activities
The above excerpt of “Will Success Spoil Our Parks” by Robert Paul Jordan raises many interesting issues. After reading the following passage and reviewing the vocabulary, discuss the following questions.
Vocabulary
Define the following terminology in the context of national parks and the author’s experience.
common denominator
massive promontory
historic site
national monument
dread fascination
afflicted with overcrowding
specks of humanity
Discussion questions
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1. What is the common denomination that all parks possess?
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2. What does the author mean in stating, “Culture is big at the fort today, filling a big need?”
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3. Identify some of the ways that the park touches everyone.
IV
ECO-WARRIOR DAVE FOREMAN WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES IN HIS FIGHT TO SAVE MOTHER EARTH
At 7 a.m. last May 31, Dave Foreman lay sleeping in the bedroom of his suburban brick house on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona. His wife, Nancy, who was already awake, was startled by a loud knocking at the door.
As she went to open it, four men barged past her. “FBI!” they shouted, racing toward the bedroom. “I heard a voice I didn’t know yelling my name,” Foreman recalls. “When I opened my eyes, I saw three guys standing around my bed pointing .357 Magnums at me. The first thing I thought of was Allen Funt and Candid Camera. Then they told me I was under arrest. They jerked off the sheet, and I was stark naked. I never felt so naked in my life,” he says, chuckling at the recollection.
The FBI wasn’t amused. The night before, 30 agents armed with semiautomatic weapons and waring night-vision goggles had arrested three of Foreman’s friends—fellow members of the radical environmental group Earth First!—as they allegedly blowtorched the legs off a Central Arizona Project power-line tower 200 miles away. Based on more than 1,000 hours of bugged conversations and a yearlong sting operation, the FBI claims Foreman bankrolled the operation, which was a dry run for the planned sabotage of electrical transmission towers at three Western nuclear power plants. “It was a shock, but in the back of my mind I wasn’t really surprised, “ says Foreman, 43. “The FBI never got the message that I retired from a leadership role in Earth First! a year ago. They wanted to make an example of me.”
Foreman’s trial on charges of conspiring to destroy government property—scheduled to begin Tuesday, April 10— has become a cause celebre in the environmental world. A self-described “ecowarrior,” Foreman has led a ragtag 15,000 member army in a decade-long war against what he calls “the destruction of the wild and the spread of urban cancer.” Foreman, who claims he was framed, is pleading innocent.
8
Activities
The arrest and trial of Dave Foreman raises many issues relating to conservation and preservation, public property and individual rights. Read the following passage and adopt a position on the resolutions.
Resolved
, when the environment is threatened, the destruction of government property is constitutionally defensible (affirmative).
Resolved
individuals who destroy government property for any purpose should be punished (negative).
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1. Two teams consisting of 2 students should prepare arguments and present speeches representing both the affirmative and negative resolutions.
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2. Each argument should include 4 elements.
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a. Quote (to support argument)
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b. status quo (what happens if things remain as they are)
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c. Harms caused by the present condition
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d. Action (to correct the problem)
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3. After researching the topic and writing the speech, teams should present their speech adhering to the following schedule.
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1. Affirmative (5 minutes)
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2. Cross-examination from negative side (5 minutes)
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3. Negative (5 minutes)
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4. Cross-examination from affirmative side (5 minutes)
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5. Rebuttal—Affirmative (5 minutes)
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6. Rebuttal—Negative (5 minutes)
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4. Class will vote on the debate winners.
V
The U.S. House of Representatives voted in 1978 to set aside more than 100 million acres of federally owned lands and waters in Alaska as national parks, wild life refuges, forests, and wild and scenic rivers. Unfortunately the House bill encountered opposition, and stimulated considerable debate. Jay S. Hammond, the former Governor of Alaska and Cecil D. Andrus, former Secretary of the interior argue about who should control wild lands and for what purposes.
Jay S. Hammond, Governor of Alaska
Like the citizens of any state, Alaskans are both developers and environmentalists, with the majority in the middle between these poles. The majority agrees that Alaska should be given some say in deciding the state’s destiny. But Alaska’s voice has been drowned out in the contests over land disposition.
The common proponent of the developmental and environmental campaigns for Alaska lands has been the federal government. In both instances, Alaska and the American public have been ill served by poorly thought-out government solutions.
For example, the pipeline superheated Alaska’s economy. When it was completed, it fell to my administration to slow runaway inflation in a state that now has the nation’s highest cost of living and highest unemployment rate, the latter running up to 65 percent in some towns and villages. Now the federal government wants to withdraw a third of Alaska in a way that could cool our economy to the point where we could not afford to balance adequate resource protection with adequate resource development. This would be tragic for all interests.
Alaskans are not against providing the resources the nation needs or the greatest extent of protected acreage in the world. We know there are enough resources and land to do both. But we know it must be done properly.
The ecology and economics of Alaska are somewhat different from those in other places. To impose inappropriate economic and environmental standards is punitive to Alaska’s people, and, in the long run, to the national interest itself. Alaskans have been distraught over federal incursions.
Cecil Andrus, U.S. Secretary of interior
There are sincerely motivated critics who charge that the administration seeks to “lock up” Alaska’s mineral, timber, other economic potential. We respond by noting that the boundary lines for national monuments and our other proposals were drawn to exclude the overwhelming majority of those known resources. Under our plan, some two-thirds of Alaska’s land will remain open for multiple uses such as logging, mining, and oil and gas development under federal, state, Eskimo-Indian-Aleut, and private ownership.
Furthermore, lands now designated as wilderness can be opened for development in the future. But, with Alaska’s harsh climate and fragile soils, lands now clear-cut or stripmined or opened up with high-grade roads will never regain their pristine character.
The administration also seeks to conserve entire natural ecosystems and watersheds to avoid repetition of the kind of costly mistakes made for more than a century in the lower forty-eight. American taxpayers over the years have had to pay premium prices to buy back from private ownership lands that never should have left the public estate. A prime example is Redwood National Park in California. In Alaska we have a last chance to do it right the first time.
Alaska has been deeply involved in the unresolved national parkland debate. Since the U.S. Secretary of State, William H. Seward, purchased Alaska in 1867 from the Russians for 72 million dollars, the debate on what to do with it has been steeped in controversy. Since Alaska is so distant from mainland America and has a very harsh climate, many believed that these conditions protected it from the adverse effects of development and exploitation. However, with the discovery of valuable mineral resources, the government’s approval of the building of the Alaskan pipeline and all of its ramifications, Alaska’s insular position was no longer protected. Also, the federal management of resources, and unfulfilled promises of land and services, led to increased discussion and even dismay for many in recent years.
The 1971 Alaska Native claims Settlement Act was designed to provide for the final division of the land. New parklands were to be designated and Alaska was to become the only state whose land use was planned before development. As the two above positions reflect, the proposed boundaries for national parks and protected areas remained unsettled and open to different interpretations.
9
The issue with Alaska and other similar lands is the status of important natural resources.
Activities
Vocabulary enrichment. In order to understand both sides of the debate, the following terminology must be defined in the context of national parks.
environmental
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economic potential
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developer
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ecosystem
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land disposition
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statutory, protection
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resource protection
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national monuments
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ecology
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public estate
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federal incursions
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pristine
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Discussion Questions
(state)
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1. How does the Alaskan pipeline example support Jay S. Hammond’s allegations against the federal government?
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2. Should Alaskans be given the responsibility in allocating publicly owned lands in their state?
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3. What distinguishes Alaska’s ecology and economics from other states?
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4. What is the federal government’s response to charges that they want to ‘lock-up’ Alaska’s resources?
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5. Should the designated wilderness land be open to future development?
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6. What were some of the costly mistakes made in the lower forty-eight states?
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7. What is meant by “we have a last chance to do it right the first time”?
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8. Who makes the strongest argument (Hammond or Andrus) and why?
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9. What are several options to resolve the conflicting positions?
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10. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 divided the land between Eskimos, Indians, and Aleuts. The state received allocations, including new parklands and reserves.
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1. Procure a copy of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act
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2. Determine the specific allocations
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3. Calculate the percentage of the allocations that were to designated for national parks
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4. Compare original parks and monuments with new monument lands and additional protected areas.