Rethinking Park Protection Treading the Uncommon Ground of Environmental Beliefs

Book excerpt: This book proposes answers to the question of why parks are failing their mandate to be preserved undiminished for future generations. Those answers are deeply embedded in one word: belief. The book provides a practical guide for preparing park managers for a new era where the beliefs that created parks are matched by the beliefs that steward them - an era where promises made to unborn generations are matters of honor, not to be dismissed by the limits of science, the reality of budgets, or the inconvenience of revising management models. The book offers a new way to view parks, as essential public services and as social assets rather than natural resources. The book has 19 chapters and a subject index.