How park management changed in the past 50 years?

Question

How park management changed in the past 50 years?

Answer 1

There are two institutions that have overseen our wilderness over the last 100 years.  They are the National Park Service (NPS, which is part of the Department of the Interior) and the Forest Service (part of the USDA and now over 100 years old).    Their responsibility covers all nature areas that aren't independent wildlife reserves, Nature Conservancy holdings, NGO habitats, etc.

This is a significant amount of land.

Over the last 50 years they have changed as the Office of the President has changed.  Under Republican administrations there has been a general push to tap into the resources that parks and lands have (think Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge or ANWAR), mostly under the auspices of the Bureau of Land Management.

Democrats have been more progressive about preserving our nation's historic woods and wilderness areas.

It's an ongoing fight that has become very polarized (pardon the pun).

Within the management of these two organizations though the biggest shift in policy has been on wilderness fire management.  At the start of the previous century all wilderness fires where put out as soon as possible.  Smoke jumpers even call the drops they went in on "10:00 and eggs".  Meaning they had the fire out by 10am and breakfast ready.

The trouble is this left a stunning amount of ground fuel building up in our nation's woods.  The result being the massive fires we've seen over the last three decades.

The new approach is what they call "controlled burn".  

We'll see how that works out.  But this is the key shift in park management in the last century, let alone 50 years.