杏吧原创

AROUND the world, national parks form the centrepiece of efforts to save nature. Conservationists often look to the parks in the US 鈥� the world鈥檚 oldest and best known 鈥� as a basis upon which to build. So Dwight Rettie鈥檚 book on the US national park system seems like just the ticket for readers who want to use America鈥檚 experience as a departure point for thinking about parks and conservation round the world.

Unfortunately, it鈥檚 not. Rettie, a retired civil servant who spent 11 years in the upper echelons of the US National Park Service, serves up a buffet that is rich in bureaucratic starch and surprisingly short on the meatier issues that a wider audience is likely to care about. Readers who pick up Our National Park Systems expecting to read about Yosemite and the Grand Canyon will be disappointed. Instead, the book is all about budgets and political processes, staff-to-visitor ratios and planning documents.

Despite the minutiae, Rettie鈥檚 main message still comes through loud and clear: to manage its parks properly, the US needs to figure out what exactly it wants to do with them. Even readers outside the US will be able to sympathise with 鈥� and perhaps learn from 鈥� Rettie鈥檚 detailed and authoritative account of decades of flailing about by a parks service in search of an overarching vision.

Rettie doesn鈥檛 give readers much help in finding that vision. Consider, for example, the issue of striking a balance between parks-as-nature-preserves and parks-as-tourist-destinations. Rettie calls this 鈥渢he principal policy dilemma in the national park system鈥�. Can tourist facilities be developed without encroaching on nature? Should parks set visitor quotas to preserve the 鈥渨ilderness experience鈥�? How have parks tried to find a compromise in the past? What has worked?

Rettie ducks all this. Instead, he talks about how budget allocations can be linked more directly to planning documents, how often plans should be reviewed, and how to improve the credibility of plans and planners. Rettie鈥檚 gaze stays firmly fixed on the administrative machinery, lifting only rarely and briefly to higher questions of policy. For example, in 鈥淧lanning for the National Park System鈥� (Aha! the reader says 鈥� what might Kenya or Brazil learn from America鈥檚 experience?) the less than ringing conclusion is: 鈥淚 favor the review of plans by upper levels both in the Park Service and in the Department of the Interior, including, on occasion, the secretary personally.鈥� Rettie鈥檚 book, alas, has the soul of a bureaucrat.

Such details are absolutely crucial, of course, and the small cadre that Americans call 鈥減olicy wonks鈥� will probably find the book riveting reading. The rest of us may have a hard time stifling a yawn.