Parks Stewardship Forum

In this "Letter from Woodstock," our columnist Rolf Diamant shares his detailed analysis of the National Park Service's responses to the Trump administration's order to censor history and science.

Conserving forests at scale is one of the most cost-effective strategies available for addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, and rural economic decline simultaneously. In the United States, family forest owners (FFOs)—who collectively control the largest share of forestland—play an outsized role in determining environmental outcomes. Yet traditional conservation models dependent on public appropriations and philanthropy have struggled to reach this constituency at scale. This paper argues that market based conservation approaches, particularly voluntary carbon markets designed for small landowners, offer a scalable, credible, and economically durable solution. Using the Family Forest Carbon Program developed by the American Forest Foundation (AFF) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) as a case study, this article illustrates how private climate finance can be leveraged to improve forest health, enhance biodiversity, and strengthen rural economies while maintaining high standards of environmental integrity.

An introduction to the three featured theme articles in this issue, which are case studies of university courses focused on national parks.

For the past several years I have taught HIST 476: History of America’s National Parks. Created by one of my predecessors at Colorado State University, the class introduces students to the major events that have shaped the national parks over the past 200 years. Unlike many upper-division history courses, the majority of the students in the class are not history majors. And so, I have had to think about how to teach an upper-division history course to primarily non-majors.

This paper articulates an approach I’ve developed and refined over several decades for teaching the subject of national parks and protected areas to undergraduate students in the college classroom. A similar approach informs my book-length works, which are geared not just to students and academic peers, but to the general public. Consequently, I believe these ideas may also be useful for public outreach. It involves the use of conceptual frameworks and what I refer to as “ladders.” While the frameworks allow students to better contextualize and identify broad themes in their study of national parks and protected areas, the ladders refer to pedagogic strategies for making rather abstract or historical ideas more tangible, concrete, and meaningful for students. The approach illustrated with examples drawn from a seminar course that I teach on US federal public lands at Gettysburg College. The seminar, in turn, follows the structure outlined in my book, America’s Public Lands: From Yellowstone to Smokey Bear.

The United States Air Force Academy is one of five federal military academies in the United States and combines the functions of military training with academic education. The Academy is an entirely undergraduate institution, with about 4,000 cadets, who will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in one of over 30 majors. It was the last of the military academies to be founded, dating from 1954, and is located on a large and park-like campus on the outskirts of Colorado Springs, Colorado. A class on national parks and public lands was taught for the first time (to our knowledge) at the Academy in spring 2025. This paper narrates the history of that course and how it was structured to adapt to the unique environment of a military academy. It also highlights some of the distinctive features of teaching at such a place and the course’s role as “mission essential.”

On November 19, 2021, Deb Haaland, secretary of the interior, issued two orders that launched a watershed federal effort to confront and begin healing from the harmful legacy of derogatory place names on federal lands across the United States. Through Secretarial Order 3404, Haaland formally identified “Squaw” as a derogatory term and acted to remove the long-time slur against Native women from more than 650 geographic features nationwide (Secretary of the Interior 2021a). Secretarial Order 3405 established a mechanism to continue and expand this work by creating the Federal Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names, tasked with addressing derogatory place names more broadly and systematically and facilitating their replacement in partnership with Tribal Nations, states, local communities, and the public. The authors were appointed to the committee. Here we share some of our experiences while serving, as well as guiding visions and principles to carry the work forward after President Trump abolished the Committee in 2025.

Place name reconciliation works to align the nation’s place name landscape with the nation’s ongoing progress toward the values of truth and justice. The emphasis of place name reconciliation is reform. It is not about erasing names and histories from the American landscape, but correcting the use of derogatory place names and addressing the harm they inflict upon discriminated groups along with how they damage wider possibilities for cohesive social relations in the nation. Reconciliation em-phasizes that the nation needs public name symbols that help citizens adequately understand and mutually respect the country’s socio-cultural differences.

Despite the presence of ethics in every management decision, ethics language and tools are unfamiliar to most public land managers. Fortunately, ethics is not a complicated, abstract specialty conducted by toga-wearing Greeks who ponder the imponderable. It is the fundamental activity of deciding what matters, a shared deliberation about what to value and what world we want to live in. Park management includes questions of this kind at every turn.

An excerpt from the book "Conversations About Visiting and Managing the National Parks: Crowdsourcing America’s Best Idea."

An excerpt from the book "Interpretive Theme Writer’s Field Guide: How to Craft Strong Themes from Big Idea to Presentation"

In partnership with the University of Montana, in 2025 the George Wright Society organized the inaugural GWS ParkForum conservation solutions workshop—the first in an annual series of interdisciplinary meetings that share innovations, answers, and training related to the challenges facing parks, protected/conserved areas, historic and cultural sites, and other forms of place-based conservation. GWS ParkForum 2025 was held October 20¬–23 on the campus in Missoula, and was attended by 200 people.. This article provides a summary of the event, followed by the workshop program and the abstracts of all presentations in the Breakout and Poster Sessions.

The growth of the US National Park System is an important preservation story that shows the historical, ecological, political, and cultural character of the nation. Proposals for new units follow both agency plans and individual or group initiatives. The study of proposed units that fail reveals much about NPS criteria and public attitudes. This article adds to the literature about unsuccessful proposals by explaining why NPS does not have a unit interpreting the gold and silver mining rushes that helped open the entire conterminous West. We detail the criteria by which new proposals are judged, the impact of the Historic Sites Act of 1935, and contrast national historic landmarks with other designations that have full inclusion in the park system. After establishing the significance of precious metal mining in American history, we then identify 10 reasons why specific proposals collapsed, five based on public reactions and another five stemming from NPS itself. Finally, we briefly consider whether opportunities still exist to interpret this major part of the American experience.

The federal government has been undergoing dramatic cuts since President Trump took office in January 2025, with ripple effects through partners in state and local government, academia, and the non-profit and private sectors. These changes are affecting all aspects of government, including the place-based conservation roles of agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), US Fish and Wildlife Service, and US Forest Service. This represents an enormous loss of institutional knowledge and capacity. The George Wright Society recognizes that government service, non-profit civil society, and unfettered academic inquiry are foundational to the well-being of the American nation. While the current administration’s policy and budgetary decisions are designed to undermine these values, the Society continues to support them in our focal area—parks, protected/conserved areas, cultural sites, and other forms of place-based conservation. As part of that response, the Society has launched a new program, the RISE Declarations Project, to support conservation colleagues who have recently lost their jobs due to actions by the current administration: people we refer to as Recent Involuntarily Separated Employees (RISEs). What follows is a RISE Declaration: a statement that lets RISEs summarize in their own words the most important aspects of their career in place-based conservation, along with lessons learned. For a complete introduction to the RISE Declarations Project, please go to https://doi.org/10.5070/P5.62005.

The federal government has been undergoing dramatic cuts since President Trump took office in January 2025, with ripple effects through partners in state and local government, academia, and the non-profit and private sectors. These changes are affecting all aspects of government, including the place-based conservation roles of agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), US Fish and Wildlife Service, and US Forest Service. This represents an enormous loss of institutional knowledge and capacity. The George Wright Society recognizes that government service, non-profit civil society, and unfettered academic inquiry are foundational to the well-being of the American nation. While the current administration’s policy and budgetary decisions are designed to undermine these values, the Society continues to support them in our focal area—parks, protected/conserved areas, cultural sites, and other forms of place-based conservation. As part of that response, the Society has launched a new program, the RISE Declarations Project, to support conservation colleagues who have recently lost their jobs due to actions by the current administration: people we refer to as Recent Involuntarily Separated Employees (RISEs). What follows is a RISE Declaration: a statement that lets RISEs summarize in their own words the most important aspects of their career in place-based conservation, along with lessons learned. For a complete introduction to the RISE Declarations Project, please go to https://doi.org/10.5070/P5.62005.

The federal government has been undergoing dramatic cuts since President Trump took office in January 2025, with ripple effects through partners in state and local government, academia, and the non-profit and private sectors. These changes are affecting all aspects of government, including the place-based conservation roles of agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), US Fish and Wildlife Service, and US Forest Service. This represents an enormous loss of institutional knowledge and capacity. The George Wright Society recognizes that government service, non-profit civil society, and unfettered academic inquiry are foundational to the well-being of the American nation. While the current administration’s policy and budgetary decisions are designed to undermine these values, the Society continues to support them in our focal area—parks, protected/conserved areas, cultural sites, and other forms of place-based conservation. As part of that response, the Society has launched a new program, the RISE Declarations Project, to support conservation colleagues who have recently lost their jobs due to actions by the current administration: people we refer to as Recent Involuntarily Separated Employees (RISEs). What follows is a RISE Declaration: a statement that lets RISEs summarize in their own words the most important aspects of their career in place-based conservation, along with lessons learned. For a complete introduction to the RISE Declarations Project, please go to https://doi.org/10.5070/P5.62005.

The federal government has been undergoing dramatic cuts since President Trump took office in January 2025, with ripple effects through partners in state and local government, academia, and the non-profit and private sectors. These changes are affecting all aspects of government, including the place-based conservation roles of agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), US Fish and Wildlife Service, and US Forest Service. This represents an enormous loss of institutional knowledge and capacity. The George Wright Society recognizes that government service, non-profit civil society, and unfettered academic inquiry are foundational to the well-being of the American nation. While the current administration’s policy and budgetary decisions are designed to undermine these values, the Society continues to support them in our focal area—parks, protected/conserved areas, cultural sites, and other forms of place-based conservation. As part of that response, the Society has launched a new program, the RISE Declarations Project, to support conservation colleagues who have recently lost their jobs due to actions by the current administration: people we refer to as Recent Involuntarily Separated Employees (RISEs). What follows is a RISE Declaration: a statement that lets RISEs summarize in their own words the most important aspects of their career in place-based conservation, along with lessons learned. For a complete introduction to the RISE Declarations Project, please go to https://doi.org/10.5070/P5.62005.

A poem in the "Verse in Place" section of Parks Stewardship Forum.