Yosemite: the Embattled Wilderness

The Embattled Wilderness

Plot

Among all of the debates affecting America's national parks, the most enduring—and most intense—is where to draw the line between preservation and use. This is an account of that classic confrontation, as told from the perspective of natural resources and environment. The focus is Yosemite, where debating environmental change is now a century and a quarter old. Yosemite, as the oldest park of its kind, has the longest history of modification. Tourists were familiar with Yosemite Valley well over a decade before the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone were even explored. The issues of park development were raised and debated first in Yosemite. Even today, no other national park more dramatically reflects America's alleged failures to reconcile nature protection with the wants and demands of the visiting public.