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PATRICK KUPPER
science and the national parks: a
TRANSATLANTIC
PERSPECTIVE ON THE INTERWAR YEARS
ABSTRACT
The years between the two World Wars were a vital period in the global diffusion and the transnational modification and multiplication of the national park idea. It was during these decades that the American national park system took its distinct shape and the first national parks in Europe were established. At the same time, the science of ecology and ecological attitudes achieved prominence and offered a challenge as well as a new scientific underpinning of the national park idea on both sides of the Atlantic. The implementation of ecological ideas in national park policies, however, varied considerably from place to place. While ecological thinking failed to exert a lasting influence on the development of American national parks before World War II, it was of higher significance in Europe. The Swiss National Park stood out as a nature reserve extensively shaped by scientific theories and practices. The investigation of the intersection of science and national parks in a transatlantic perspective reveals that these variations essentially stemmed from a different role of science and scientists both in the establishment and administration of national parks and in their public justification.
| IN 1963 TWO INDEPENDENT scientific committees, named after their chairs A. Starker Leopold and William J. Robbins respectively, assessed the National Park Service's efforts in the areas of ecological management and scientific research. Both reports openly criticized the performance of the Park Service in the past and strongly recommended the reinforcement of its science program in the future. The criticism of the Robbins report was particularly frank: It complained that "research by the National Park Service has lacked continuity, coordination, and depth.... It has in general lacked direction, has been fragmented between divisions and branches, has been applied piecemeal, has suffered because of a failure to recognize the distinctions between research and administrative decision-making, and has failed to insure the implementation of the results of research in operational management."1 |
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Among all these accusations, however, the Robbins report highlighted a short period of remarkable, although not enduring advances in natural history research in the 1930s. This rise and decline of research-oriented ecological attitudes within the Park Service has since been investigated several times. But all accounts so far have concentrated on the fate of the Park Service's Wildlife Division and its charismatic leader George M. Wright. Moreover, their scope of analysis has been confined and defined by the paradigm of the nation-state.2 |
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However, neither the science of ecology nor the management of national parks is merely a national affair. Although the United States is justly credited with the invention of the national park idea, European parks were ahead when it came to the application of scientific research within the boundaries of the parks. This essay therefore seeks to analyze the American debate on science in the national parks from a wider transnational perspective. It explores and compares the relationship between park management and ecological science in both the United States and Europe and it traces the mutual transfer of concepts and ideas between park authorities and scientists on both continents. Breaking with the analytic confines of the nation-state and reconstructing international transfers in the past yields several returns. The comparative approach allows historical processes in different national settings to be juxtaposed, while the transfer approach permits evaluation of how transnational exchange processes influenced national outcomes. The tendency in comparative research designs toward reinforcing their own analytic categories is thereby counterbalanced. Employing these approaches concurrently offers a promising method of analyzing and evaluating seemingly national experiences in a broader setting.3 |
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