Thomas McNamee

Is it a fern in a pot? Is it a peregrine falcon nesting on one of New York City's bridges or skyscrapers? Is it a national park surrounded by ski resorts, pulp mills, and oil wells?

In this brief meditation on the "nature of nature," Thomas McNamee explores the meaning of conservation and the tendency of our current American categories--national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges--to fragment vital ecosystems. The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, for example, comprises no fewer than ten separate (and often conflicting) federal jurisdictions. Whereas the management goal of Yellowstone National Park is preservation, commodity output requirements in adjacent national forests create something of an ecological gauntlet for such wide-ranging species as the grizzly bear. If the conservationist idea of nature is wildness--wildness not just of vital organisms but of places, processes, ecosystems--then, McNamee insists, "the greatest obstacle to nature conservation in the national parks and wildernesses is the disparity between official boundaries and biological ones.

The ultimate solution to the problem may lie outside the scope of existing laws, but McNamee proposes a remedy that would ease the problem of ecosystem fragmentation while honoring current political jurisdictions: an American system of National Biosphere Reserves, in which nature conservation would be the primary goal of land management. And as the first such reserve, he proposes the multijurisdictional region surrounding and including the world's first national park, Yellowstone.