Nature's Spectacle

The World's First National Parks and Protected Places
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-0-415-84968-5
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 360 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 550 g

National parks have always been an emotive and iconic symbol, ever since the first parks of the modern era were created in the mid-nineteenth century. This book, based on original research, delves deeply into their character and significance, and the larger context in which they developed.

The book celebrates the deserved attractiveness of the parks as wilderness or 'spectacle' to millions of visitors, but also emphasises how there was nothing inevitable, self-sustaining or without cost in their magnificence and accessibility. Those early parks were a powerful unifying force as national 'playgrounds', especially as motor transport democratised their use. However they also provoked bitter conflict in their dispossession of local communities and perhaps deliberate segregation of people from scenery and wildlife.

That first century of national parks, which concluded with the significant break of the Second World War and the subsequent development of more international approaches to conservation, left an uncertain legacy. It was a fragile foundation from which to build what became an integral part of today's conservation movement.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sheail, John

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Biodiversität
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Naturschutzbiologie, Biodiversität
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umweltschutz, Umwelterhaltung

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface 1. Acts of Defiance 2. America's Invention 3. Scenic Reserves 4. The Forest Reserves 5. Wildlife Reserves 6. National Monuments 7. Conservation and the American Parks 8. Parks and Empire-Making 9. The Making of a Parks' System 10. National Playgrounds 11. Parks as Contested Grounds 12. Parks and the Wider Governance 13. An Uncertain Legacy

Über Autor(innen)

John Sheail is a Research Fellow of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UK Natural Environment Research Council). This will be his tenth book, his most recent being An Environmental History of Twentieth Century Britain.