National Parks and People - An Ethical Dilemma

An environmental ethical dilemma that I feel significantly impacts environmental quality deals with the creation and access of national parks, within the United States and in other countries. National parks are created with the idea to help conservation and preservation efforts. It is important and necessary to protect and preserve lands. Often without the creation of a nation parks certain species can become extinct.

Once they are created, they become specific pieces of land, which are assigned boundaries, borders and limits. These pieces of land then are given laws and restrictions, that people must obey because governmental enforcement. National parks then become common land.

One problem that appears is that native people use these lands. The use of these lands can range from gathering food, firewood, access to clean water or cultural significance, all which are vital to there way of life or sustainability. How can we force people not to have access to land that they have always depended on? In modern times, this is more of a problem in third world countries then in the United States. This has occurred largely in the U.S. with Native Americans in the past. A present day example of this is the creation of Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This park was created to help conservation efforts and to protect the Northern White Rhino. Once this park was created the native people lost, the ability to have access to land they always depended on.

There is no easy solution to this problem. Each side has different values and ideas on how the land should be used. Often times the groups that place value on the conservation of natural land and its resources usually neglect the values of native people. This lends way to poaching and hostility sometimes violent from the natives. Also many groups that are responsible for the creation of parks are from first world countries that have not experienced the way of life of the natives.

A problem that is more common in the United States is how do we preserve natural areas and still allow them to be common land? The parks suffer negative impacts and are altered because of human interaction. This can be seen with the construction of roads lodges, gas stations, trails and restrooms. Since national parks are common land and limited, in the United States this creates a problem because of the Malthusian idea of population growth. National parks encourage visitors but if everyone in the U.S visited these parks, they suffer tremendous negative changes and no longer serve the purpose for which they were created. Wildlife, plants and ecosystems are already suffering negative impacts from human visitors in the park. For example, while I was in the Grand Canyon National park, I saw three wolves that had no fear of humans. Another example would be from when I hiked through Olympic National Park. There I saw man made clearings for tents, new trails made and litter. Parks like Petrified Forest are being destroyed from people taking pieces of the wood from the park. Restrictions on the number of visitors allowed in a park each year could help, but also raises more problems.

I feel that there has to be nationally protected land. There is a world wide problem of rapid development and land alteration. Natural environments are important for health, existence and well-being of society. In addition, natural environments are homes to millions of living organisms. Each organism performs or is need for specfic functions or reasons that are vital. The environment is important for everyone on a gobal scale and every country must have protected. It is important to protect the environment because with out it we would not exist.

Above is a picture of Garamba National Park
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://wpni01.auroraquanta.com/photos/nationalparks/
The Tragedy of the Commons, Hardin Garrett (1968)
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.nwf.org/yellowstone/images/buffaloRoad