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In 1872 Yellowstone was established as a National Park. The name caught the public's imagination and by the close of the century, other National Parks had been declared, not only in the USA, but also in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Yet as it has spread, the concept has evolved and diversified. In the absence of any international controlling body, individual countries have been free to adapt the concept for their own physical, social and economic environments. Some have established national parks to protect scenery, others to protect ecosystems or wildlife. Tourism has also been a fundamental component of the national parks concept from the beginning and predates ecological justifications for national park establishment though it has been closely related to landscape conservation rationales at the outset.
Approaches to tourism and visitor management have varied. Some have stripped their parks of signs of human settlement, while increasingly others are blending natural and cultural heritage, and reflecting national identities. This edited volume explores in detail, the origins and multiple meanings of National Parks and their relationship to tourism in a variety of national contexts. It consists of a series of introductory overview chapters followed by case study chapters from around the world including insights from the US, Canada, Australia, UK, Spain, France, Sweden, Indonesia, China and Southern Africa.
Taking a global comparative approach, Tourism and National Parks examines how and why national parks have spread and evolved, how they have been fashioned and used, and the integral role of tourism within national parks. The volume's focus on the long standing connection between tourism and national parks; and the changing concept of national parks over time and space give the book a distinct niche in the national parks and tourism literature. The volume is expected to contribute not only to tourism and national park studies at the upper level undergraduate and graduate levels but also to courses in international and comparative environmental history, conservation studies, and outdoor recreation management.
1. Introduction: The Making of the National Park Concept
2. Reinterpreting the Creation Myth: Yellowstone National Park
3. American Invention to International Concept: The Spread and Evolution of National Parks
4. National Parks and the 'Worthless Lands Hypothesis' Revisited
5. National Parks and National Identity and Tourism New World Perspectives
6. Framing the View: How American National Parks Came to Be
7. John Muir and William Gladstone Steel: Activists and the Establishment of Yosemite and Crater Lake National Parks
8. Tourism and the Canadian National Park System: Protection, Use and Balance
9. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park: Natural Wonder and World Heritage Area
10. 'Welcome to Aboriginal Land': The Uluru -- Kata Tjuta National Park Old World Perspectives
11. The National Park Concept in Spain: Patriotism, Education, Romanticism and Tourism
12. The English Lake District -- National Park or playground?
13. The Peak District National Park UK: Contemporary Complexities and Challenges
14. A Ticket to National Parks? Tourism, Railways, and the Establishment of National Parks in Sweden
15. 'Protect, preserve, present' -- The Role of Tourism in Swedish National Parks Developing World: Beyond The Eurocentric
16. National Parks in Indonesia: An Alien Construct
17. National Parks in Transition: Wuyishan Scenic Park in China
18. 'Full of rubberneck waggons and tourists': The Development of Tourism in South Africa's National Parks and Protected Areas Beyond Nature
19. National Parks as Cultural Landscapes: Indigenous Peoples, Conservation and Tourism
20. National Mall and Memorial Parks: Past, Present and Future Conclusion
21. The Future of the National Park Concept
Warwick Frost is Senior Lecturer in Tourism and Heritage at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. His research interests include environmental history, ecotourism, cultural heritage and the interplay between tourism and the media.
Michael Hall is a Professor in the Department of Management, University of Canterbury, New Zealand and Docent in the Department of Geography, Oulu University Finland. Co-editor of Current Issues in Tourism he has published widely in the tourism and environmental history fields, including a long-standing interest in wilderness, national parks and World Heritage.
"I have to confess that I like an edited book that has a conclusion. Too often, a collection of chapters such as this ends with no attempt to draw together an overaching summary of the topic. That is where this book is different."
– Georgette Leah Burns, Griffith University, Australia, 2011
" [...] a rich critique of the dynamism of national parks in an evolving social, economic, and cultural world. Recommended."
– Choice, March 2010
