I began this project to try and solve the environmental predicament of National Parks, whether or not they promoted environmental sustainability. In doing so, I stumbled upon an even larger issue of our environmentally damaging relationship with nature in general. It was a thought provoking roller coaster ride of feeling love and disappointment toward National Parks. But, in the end, I've come to the conclusion that National Parks are something to be loved and supported. They come with some problems, but then again, what doesn't. What matters it the fact that they are little problems that can be compensated for by the benefits they provide and through little tweaks in their interpretative programs.
So I encourage all of you to visit a National Park. Winter break is soon upon us, giving you all the time necessary to take a trip to a National Park and take in the joys of the exquisite environment. Go, have a merry time, and let the parks trigger or re-kindle your love for the environment. If you all need more motivation, then I suggest you to look at these beautiful photos because you can see these in REAL LIFE if you went. And believe me, they are much more aesthetic than the photos make them out to be.
As it was discussed in my previous post, what we perceive nature to be is subjective, dependent on the environment we grew up in. However, no matter where we are raised, our perception of nature is always separate from where we live.
So what are some possible solutions to this and can visiting National Parks help us bridge the divide between nature and civilization allowing us to live more environmentally sustainable lifestyles?
Haluza-Delay, while revealing that visitors had a greater tendency to feel the distinction between nature and civilization in the wilderness, also suggested that this problem can be mitigated with an effective interpretation program. Interpretation programs have already been found to effective in promoting environmental education and fostering pro-environmental behavior. What else needs to be implemented within these programs is to clearly point out the interconnectedness among humans, nature, and the local environment. They need to facilitate the transfer of learning to the home and help visitors become aware of nature, so that they can identify it within their own neighborhood. By teaching individuals to look at the small wonders instead of just the spectacular pristine scenes of nature at National Parks, we increase the possibility for visitors to feel the same emotions they felt at National Parks when they are at home and see nature. This will facilitate pro-environmental behaviors at home as well, break down the nature-civilization divide, and promote environmental conservation in society.
Not only that but Halpenny and Brooks in my previous posts revealed that pro-environmental behaviors have been fostered at home through the place-attachment formulated toward these parks. So, National Parks can aid in mending this division.
William Cronon also mentions solutions along these lines. He states that we need to understand that we are part of the natural world, that we are tied to the ecological systems that sustain us. He even suggests that while National Parks have the potential to propagate our belief of nature separated from civilization, we ought to continue to have them. Because, by recognizing and honoring the undisturbed natural lands, we can be reminded that our interests don't always align with nature's interests. National Parks show us what nature's interests are and from there, we can establish a balance between the two and develop a sustainable community within nature.
Another interesting concept that I think could bridge our separation from nature is to incorporate it into our society. By that, I mean that we could incorporate nature into our calculation of our societal well-being, similarly to Bhutan and its Gross National Happiness.
Now, what in the world is a "Gross National Happiness"?
It's similar to Gross Domestic Product, which measures our nation's well-being and happiness by measuring the amount of money we make as a country. GDP has been used to measure our happiness insofar as, we, as a society, tend to equate money with happiness. But we all know that money does NOT equate to happiness. Research after research shows that to not be the case. Thus, Gross National Happiness (GNH) includes other factors to determine a nation's well-being and their citizens overall happiness. Factors included in their GNH are: Economic self-reliance, a pristine environment, the preservation and promotion of national culture, and good governance in the form of a democracy.
Here a brief yet engaging history of GNH courtesy of the SimpleShow.
By incorporating environmental conservation into the calculation of their nation's well being, Bhutan has been able to economically develop all the while increasing the amount of forest cover within their country. Usually, economic development degrades the environment through measures such as road building, but not for Bhutan. They have been able to find a good balance between the 4 pillars of GNH to increase the well-being of their country and to live interconnected to their natural ecosystem.
This may sound like something crazy only a small rural country, such as Bhutan, could ever pull off. And it may not seem like a probable solution, given our current economic and political situation. Yet, there's no need to be a pessimist. Many developed nations such as the UK, France, and Germany are using Bhutan's model of measuring well-being to redefine their model. Britain and Canada have already made progress by developing and using a new model to calculate their nation's well-being including mental illness, environmental quality, crime rates, and civility.
Although the United States has yet to invest in a new model, there is a growing movement toward that direction. Vermont hosted the 1st US Gross National Happiness Conference in June 2010 to address the need for the US to include other happiness indicators besides income to measure the nation's well-being. And in 2011, the city of Seattle initiated this new model in their calculation of their citizens well-being. Thus, there is hope that one day, hopefully sooner than later, we will as a whole nation use this new method to measure our nation's health.
Ergo, if we change what defines our society, our GDP, to include nature and incorporate it into the measurement of our nation's well-being, then the nature-civilization dichotomy will no longer exist as the very definition of our civilization will include nature. And National Parks will encourage this shift as they provide us with positive experiences and allows us value nature more highly. In doing so, it allows us to understand the importance of nature's well-being in our overall well-being and happiness that we are more likely to include it in our well-being index when we do begin to shift to a more accurate one. So, we ought to value these National Parks and we ought to continue to support them by visiting them because they promote environmental sustainability not only within the parks, but in our daily lives as well.
One very important revelation came up as I was researching and reflecting on the environmental sustainability of visiting National Parks and its this: while we can visit natural places, we do not feel as though we can live within it.
This idea was talked about in my Environmental Studies discussion section. And the fact of the matter is, when we think of nature, we tend to think of it as mutually exclusive from where we live.
For example, when I think of nature, I think of a beautiful green area with trees that I can walk around in. When my friend, who grew up on Lummi Island, thinks of nature, it's the Cascade Mountains near her home. Growing up in well developed cities, I thought of Lummi Island and my friend's home as nature. But for her, she wasn't living in nature, just near it. To be in nature, she had to be away from the built environment, such as her home and the roads around the island. The closest area she could call nature was the mountain you could hike on her island; because, while there was a dirt trail and a wooden fence at the peak (so no one would fall), no one lived up there.
View from the top of the mountain on Lummi Island
View of Mount Baker (a mountain in the Cascade Mountain Chain) from her backyard
The fact that she lived in a house with electricity and other man-made amenities excluded her house from being in nature. This is just another example of the pervasiveness of our attitude toward nature; we simply cannot be a part of it. There's just always something more natural that makes it so that we cannot associate our current environment as natural. Humans destroy our perception of what is natural.
What's more, our notion of what nature is changes when we become accustomed to our conception of nature and it becomes the norm. For example, when I am in Providence, my source of nature is India Point Park. It’s a beautiful park located very close to Brown University, by the bay and has a wonderful trail that loops around a green area with a playground. Unfortunately, it’s situated right next to the highway and zooming cars can be heard in the distance. Yet, it’s close by, has a lot of trees, and is a lot more scenic that a lot of Providence, so I consider it nature.
View of the bay from India Point Park
The pedestrian bride and highway next to the Park
So, when I was in Providence this past summer, I went to India Point Park almost every other day to run in the morning. After a while though, I wanted to go somewhere else to get my dose of nature. India Point Park wasn’t enough nature for me anymore and so I biked 13 miles one way to Colt State Park in Bristol, RI. While there were no negative environmental impacts from this (i.e. – I didn’t drive), it illustrates our problem with nature; when we are in it, we only feel that way for a period of time.
This feeling of separation from nature was expressed by all of my classmates in my discussion section. Those who grew up in a more rural area felt they needed to return to a more undeveloped area to consider themselves as being in nature while those coming from completely urban settings, such as New York City, felt that a city park with a couple of trees was enough.
Nature for a city dweller
Nature for country folks
So why is it that we are unable to think of ourselves as being able to live in nature? Why must nature be mutually exclusive from where we live?
Environmental historian William Cronon provide us with a pretty provokative yet logical explanation in The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.
Nature preservation grew out of our nostalgia for the frontier that occurred from urbanization. People used to have this frontier where they would live off the land. However, with industrialization, we became more urbanized, urban sprawl occurred, people moved into the cities and the frontier life slowly disappeared. The passing away of the frontier led to the desire to protect the wilderness as nostalgia creped in. Society was too urbanized and clustered. People were not as happy being in the urbanized cities. In the frontier, there was more individualism, more freedom, and more liberty. The frontier became idealized as a safe haven from urban civilization and people began to seek out this idealized wilderness as a place for leisure, a place to relax and escape home. In doing so, not only was a false conception of the wilderness created, but they pushed the Native American inhabitants out of the land away because they wanted the wilderness to be in its pristine, original state.
“To this day, for instance, the Blackfeet [Native Americans] continue to be accused of “poaching” on the lands of Glacier National Park that originally belonged to them and that were ceded by treaty only with the proviso that they be permitted to hunt there.” (10)
Thus, we've reconstructed nature as something that is inherently separated from civilization by creating this myth that it is a grandeur place of what the world really is and ought to be. While India Point Park and other city parks are still within civilization, it is still removed enough for us from the urban landscape that some of us are able to consider it our "frontier". This separation is definitely engrained in our minds. My previous blog posts definitively illustrate this problem as I continuously mentioned escaping to nature. And what's worse, National Parks foster this skewed perception of nature by limiting human involvement. For example, the Grand Canyon National Park has created rules restricting the number of people who are allowed to raft along the Colorado River.
What is the implication of our perception of nature?
Well, it prevents us from discovering how humans could live environmentally sustainably in nature. How can we, if we do not believe that we can live in nature? Research by Randolph Haluza-Delay found that because participants did not feel that nature could exist at home, they felt diminished motivation to take care of their home environment. Moreover, the research concluded by stating that trips to the wilderness (such as going to a National Park) have the tendency to reinforce the dichotomy between nature and civilization by illuminating the stark differences between the two settings.
Cronon and Haluza-Delay both seem to contradict the benefits of National Parks visits that were mentioned previously. However, as I will mention in my next post, they do not entirely disregard the benefits of a National Park visit as there are solutions available for our problematic conception of nature.
Quick review. Here's a summary of the benefits and consequences of visiting a National Park.
Benefits
Consequences
- Reduces possible development efforts
- Carbon Dioxide Emissions and pollution problems created in the park
- Aestheticism and park happiness creates place attachment to nature and promotes environmental behavior
- Promotes a false sense of security within the park because of its protected status and leads to wildlife and shoreline degradation
- People are environmentally educated at these parks and these education methods are more effective than the methods that would be utilized in the classroom
- Promotes unsustainable behavior outside park boundaries as they are not seen as ecologically worthy of protection
So, then how can we compare these together and make a conclusion about whether or not we should support these parks by visiting them? How can we weigh them against each other and establish which plays a bigger role when we cannot quantitatively compare the environmental benefits and consequences of National Parks?
Well, let's try and consolidate these benefits and consequences so that it becomes easier to compare.
To begin, I do not think that carbon dioxide emissions or pollution play a big role in establishing the environmental ethics behind National Parks. Not because its effects are not damaging. Sure, all the carbon dioxide emitted from our visits to these parks can be mitigated by the Redwood trees but that's not the reason why. It's because these are actions that our fostered by our attitudes about National Parks. If National Parks are able to stimulate pro-environmental behavior rather than negative ones, then our negative environmental impacts are likely to be reduced in the parks and in our daily lives as well. For instance, our changed environmental attitudes can be the motivation we need to be encouraged to buy carbon offsets to mitigate the carbon dioxide we emitted throughout our travels to the National Parks. Thus, we ought to focus on the behaviors and attitudes National Parks foster to determine the environmental sustainability of these parks.
Maybe I'm biased because I love National Parks so much, but I think that the benefits outweigh the impacts. Here's why. At the beginning of this project, I wasn't so sure about it, but while researching, looking at my summer photos, and talking to friends about National Parks, my fondness for them has grown even more. Just by looking at the photos I've posted on this blog, I've grown re-attached to the places I visited. Sometimes, I forget about just how beautiful these places are but when I am reminded of them, I'm also reminded of why I want to study environmental conservation.
Personal reasons aside, solution to combat the negative environmental consequences exist. With proper efforts through the NPS and the Ranger Program, we can get rid of our false sense of environmental security within the parks and get rid of unsustainable behavior around park boundaries. Carolyn Joy Littlefair from Griffith University found that
Interpretation can be an effective management tool in reducing visitor impacts. Interpretation [was] most effective in reducing impacts when those impacts [were] specifically addressed through verbal appeals, combined with positive role modeling of appropriate behaviors.
Moreover, because of the place attachment that people feel from their park experience, they tend to support conservation policies within the park. Studies from the Arches National Park and the Great Smoky Mountain National Park showed that visitors want to reduce their environmental impacts in the park and have shown enthusiastic support for a mass transit system in the parks to reduce congestion.
Thus, we can gain all the benefits of the NPS without a lot of the harms. Additionally, if we are to consider the amount of people who feel this perceived security and negatively impact the environment, it is smaller than those who feel place attachment. I speculate this insofar as happiness within the National Parks were at 97%. Since human experience tells us that we become attached to places where we had a great time and felt happy, then the 97% are most likely going to feel place attachment. However, since not everyone feels this perceived security, I feel as though more people become place attached than those who feel the parks are inherently protected and degrade them ignorantly.
And to further emphasize the benefits of visiting a National Park, the benefits we gain positively impacts environmental sustainability issues insofar as they encompass a greater scope. The pro-environmental behaviors these parks foster and the environmental knowledge we gain are carried into our everyday lives where we decide on conservation policy legislations and allow us the opportunity to share these behaviors and knowledge with others in society. On the other hand, the detrimental environmental ideals that National Parks foster are localized to the regions where the National Parks lie. Because, while environmental degradation does occur around the park through ignorance of pollution effects, on a wider scope, it was found that, nationally, we do understand the importance of the surrounding areas in the health of the parks and therefore prevent massive industrialization initiatives from taking place.
So, what is my overall conclusion about National Park visits? I'm going to have to give it a YAY approval.
Not only do National Parks promote pro-environmental behavior through its aesthetic appeal and overall feeling of happiness they provide to visitors, they also provide an avenue for visitors to be educated on environmental issues. National Parks are situated in the heart of nature and allow for people to directly gain insight into the environmental issues facing us at the present moment.
At every National Park, visitors have the ability to participate in interpretive tours through the park landscape and learn about the environment and the history of the ecosystems. Barry Mackintosh, environmental historian for the NPS, explains the function of interpretative programs.
"Our function lies in the inspirational enthusiasm which we can develop among our visitors--an enthusiasm based upon a sympathetic interpretation of the main things that the parks represent, whether these be the wonder of animate things living in natural communities, or the story of creation as written in the rocks, or the history of forgotten races as recorded by their picturesque dwellings"
So, how effective are these interpretive programs in educating visitors?
A study done at the Great Smoky Mountain National Park found that 60% of visitors who participated in interpretative programs indicated that their awareness of environmental issues increased.
Also, Doug Knapp, associate professor of Indiana University found that because of the experiential component inherently associated with interpretive programs, visitors retained information gained from these programs for over a year. While that doesn't seem like a long period of time, if you consider how long you retain information you learn in school, it is. When was the last time you retained all the information you studied after you took a test? Yeah...all that information probably got lost right after you walked out of the test. These interpretation programs are much more effective in educating visitors than learning about environmental issues in a traditional school type setting because their approach engages visitors with the environmental surrounding. His research also concluded that visitors continued to experience empathy toward the environment years after they participated in a National Park program.
Not only is environmental education important in promoting environmental conservation efforts (for we all need to know about why the environment requires conservation to actually try and conserve it) but Paivi Tikka, Markku Kuitunen and Salla Tynys found that the more educated we are, the more likely we are to have a positive attitude toward the environment and actually want to conserve it.
So then, with these benefits, can we still justify going to these parks when are travel to and existence at these parks are risking its survival?
To understand the full benefits of National Parks, we also need to determine why people go there in the first place and what our visits mean in terms of environmental sustainability.
The Parks Studies Unit at the University of Idaho revealed that the most common activities at these parks were sightseeing and trail walking. So, what benefits do looking and being surrounded by nature bring?
Well, J. Baird Callicott, in The Land Aesthetic, argues that the aesthetic appeal of the environment fosters ethical values toward the environment and helps develop sound conservation policies.
“What kinds of country we consider to be exceptionally beautiful makes a huge difference when we come to decide which places to save, which to restore or enhance, and which to allocate to other uses. Therefore, a sound natural aesthetics is crucial to sound conservation policy and land management.”
“One of the main reasons that we have set aside certain natural areas as natural, state, and country parks is because they are considered beautiful. In the conservation and resource management arena, historically, natural aesthetic has, indeed, been much more important than environmental ethics. Many more of our conservation and management decisions have been motivated by aesthetic rather than ethical values, by beauty instead of duty.”
Now, from my own perspective, I must agree with Callicott. Those 2 trips were the best summer vacations I’ve had in my life. The natural wonders of the world are not visible in everyday Austin, TX nor in Providence, RI. They are urban cities filled with concrete buildings and cemented roads. It’s nice to escape and see a different view of the world; one that is much more aesthetically pleasing. It reaffirmed my love for nature and I would strongly support any well-written conservation policy proposed by our government. Take a look at some of these pictures taken from my 2 trips. How could anyone look at these photos and say they aren’t beautiful and not worth saving? And any pessimists who argue that these pictures are only pretty because they were taken with a really good camera, that's most definitely FALSE. The pictures from my Family Roadtrip were taken with a standard Samsung digital camera that can be purchased for ~$150. And while the pictures from the BL Roadtrip were taken with an SLR camera, all of these photos are nothing compared to what I actually saw.
Pictures from my Family Roadtrip
Rocky Mountain National Park
Rocky Mountain National Park
Bryce Canyon National Park
Zion National Park
Grand Canyon National Park
Great Sand Dunes National Park
Pictures from BL Roadtrip
Redwoods National Park
Redwoods National Park - NOT Jurassic Park (although it looks like it)
Oregon Sand Dunes National Recreation Center
But, I'm not the only one who feels this way. W.T. Borrie and J.R. Roggenbuck came to the same conclusion after an extensive park visitor survey. They found that visitors' cared more for the wilderness after their visit than when they first entered the park, suggesting that a prolonged interaction with nature raises individual attachment to the environment. And this place attachment has been found to stir pro-environmental behaviors, as Elizabeth Halpenny of the University of Alberta concluded in 2010. Thus, by spending time in National Parks, by exploring the wilderness, we will become more attached to nature and want to preserve it more. Additionally, Halpenny discovered that these place attachment feelings can impact individual's self identity, in which they begin to identify themselves as environmentalists.
Why does it matter that we define ourselves as environmentalists? David Brooks, opinions writer for the New York Times, states that empathy orients people toward moral action but doesn't help much when the moral action comes at a personal cost, unless the empathy we feel develops a sense of identity within us that cultivates a sense of duty. Thus, he argues that while we can be emotionally attached to National Parks and conservation efforts, unless we establish natural environments as something that defines who we are, we are going to prioritize other issues if they conflict with conservation efforts. So, we cannot just have place attachment because while it can foster pro-environmental behavior, the current situation is a consistent battle between economic development and environmental conservation. If environmentalism is not something that defines us, then our policies are always going to favor economic development over environmentalism when we are forced to decide between the two. As National Park visits have the ability to impact how we identify ourselves, then, we're less likely to prioritize other issues and more likely to make progress in conservation efforts by enacting conservation policies.
Not only does environmental aesthetics promote place attachment, but so do positive park experiences. Bjørn P. Kaltenborn & Tore Bjerke of the Norwegian Institute of Nature Research found that individuals who had positive associations with a landscape were more likely to feel attached to it.
Does these parks provide a positive experience to visitors? You bet they do.
Look at Mama Lee. Even after a long strenuous hike up a hill, the surrounding beauty of the landscape and the endorphins rushing through your veins are a perfect set of ingredients for utter happiness.
She works under florescent lighting in a lab with no windows 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and the exercise she does each day just consists of walking a quarter of a mile from her parking garage to her lab. But she’s happy and smiling because Colorado is beautiful and endorphins are probably being released at nanosecond speeds from her neurons in this picture.
As Elle Woods from Legally Blonde would say,
“exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people don’t shoot their husbands. They just don’t…”
And while my overall jubilee was not captured on camera, it's quite fair to say that emotions were on par with my mother's. I had such a great time and longed to return to the scenic environment so badly, that I asked to revisit the Rockies one more time before going to the Denver airport. Our second time around, I really wanted to be a part of the environment, not just surrounded by it and so we were more adventurous and hiked up several summits rather than merely looping around the base and staring at the mountains. Furthermore, my experience walking through the Redwoods was even more spectacular. I've never been a good meditator; I'm always thinking about something. However, during my time surrounded by Redwoods, the allure of the precious trees silenced all thoughts. There just were no words accurate enough to describe what I was seeing/experiencing. I was mentally flabbergasted by what my senses were capturing. There was definitely also a shock factor involved as the pictures I'd seen online and in books did not do the trees any justice.
Even though I cannot qualitatively say that other visitors had similar experiences, the NPS concluded after an extensive visitor survey that visitors tended to have a very positive experience at National Parks. Satisfaction of the National Parks (facilities, services, and recreational activities) was 97% in 2009. So, it's not just me and my nature loving personality that prompted these feelings for me; others felt it too!
Let's hear a bit of positive news about National Parks.
It was discussed in my previous posts that National Parks are being harmed because of the pollution that occurs around the park boundaries. While this is an unfortunate consequence, we must consider the situation if no boundaries existed. Would the area still be as natural as it is now? Would it be in a better condition, or worse?
National Parks were created with the passage of the Organic Act in August 25, 1916 which the mission to
"conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."
While there have been some conservation issues associated with visitors, the National Parks were created to protect opportunists from exploiting the land and have done a successful job. If we didn't have Yellowstone National Park, we would probably have a huge railroad cutting through the middle of the ecosystem and additional development around it.
Also, it is with its protected status as a National Park that the ecosystem is able to stand up to industrialization efforts. Just recently, there was a proposal to allow for uranium mining around the Grand Canyon National Park boundary which would have increased the probability of radioactive water spills, wildlife degradation and urbanization. However, mining has been banned as people understood the importance of the land and understood the negative effects pollution around the parks would have had. Thus, while on a local scale, individual communities may not understand the environmental impacts their actions are having on the ecosystem they surround, when we are viewing the parks through a wider scope, we are able to see that the close proximity of industrialization would negatively impact the parks and are preventing it from occurring.
