US Event: National Park Service

Since 1872 the United States National Park System has grown from a single, public reservation called Yellowstone National Park to embrace over 450 natural, historical, recreational, and cultural areas throughout the United States, its territories, and island possessions. On August 25, 1916, Congress passed the National Park Service Organic Act, which created the US Federal Agency know as the National Park Service. It manages all national parks and monuments. The government recognized a need for an agency to oversee the growing system of national parks that had been increasing ever since the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century. A better system of management was thus implemented. Meanwhile, countries around the world were doing similar things, realizing that their national parks needed better management. From 1914 to 1920, conservationists in New Zealand began
to take notice of the damage that non-native free-roaming goats, who had been released into Tongariro National Park in the early twentieth century, were causing to the ecosystem of Mt. Egmont. This horrified scientists who thought parks should be sanctuaries for native plants and animals. The idea that national parks should protect New Zealand species caught on, prompting conservationists to lobby for two more parks and finally the National Parks Act in 1952.