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Yosemite and Manzanar, Yellowstone and Auschwitz
By Brandon Nickerson
"Herd 'em up, pack 'em off, and give 'em the inside room in the badlands…" I guess that's when it started…when I read those words. I'd never really thought of it that way before, but I sure did now. National parks would never be the same again.
The realization I speak of occurred one sunny October day as I left the heat of the Owens Valley for the cooler climes of the Manzanar Interpretive Center. The mission was to learn about the internment of thousands of Japanese, many of them U.S. citizens, during World War II. And learn about them I did. But that was expected. What was not expected was the connection that Manzanar would come to have with other national parks around the country. Suddenly they all became concentration camps. Never mind that the quote mentioned above finished with "I hate the Japanese. And that goes for all of them." For me it was too late, the connection made, the ideas intertwined. That quote might as well have condemned nature in the way it condemned the Japanese. From now on all inhabitants of parks-plants, animals, and landscapes-had become internees.
This probably sounds like a stretch to most people, as very different connotations are typically reserved for Yosemite and Manzanar. But as I walked among the displays of the Interpretive Center those dissimilarities began to fade away for me. No longer could I think of a park as magnificent, breathtaking, or beautiful. Instead, the words that sprang to mind would have been more fitting for a concentration camp. Horrific, tragic, and inhumane now accompanied the thought of Yellowstone.
But why the transition? How can a biology bum such as I think so negatively of the Park Service's crown jewel? What is horrific, tragic, or inhumane about seeing a lumbering grizzly, a loping wolf, or a lazing bison? I should be eating up a place like Yellowstone. And to tell you the truth, while I was there I did just that. Seeing bears, wolves, and bison were the highlights of the week. So it is not the park itself that bothers me, but rather the situation the necessitated its creation.
The circumstances of which I speak are well known to all of you, and comprise the history of the human hand upon the land and its inhabitants. As a whole our species' ecological report card would not be destined for a galactic refrigerator, but rather the universe's black hole-garbage can. The same animals that so amazed me in the confines of the park are largely absent from the rest of the country-extirpated by thoughtless bipeds. In the same way that oppression outside Manzanar forced the opening of the camp, the subjugation of nature necessitated the creation of national parks, forests, and wilderness areas. This common history is what now allows me to adopt the rhetoric I have.
It has been said that ethics and science are the two components that make up environmentalism. If that is the case, it seems to me that every self proclaimed tree-hugger would be up in arms against the establishment of national parks for all that they entail. Not only do parks preserve nature, they also preserve the notion that it is acceptable to round up nature and stuff it into a cramped space much as you would people into a concentration camp. The comparison does not end there, either. In both circumstances an inhabitant attempting to leave either respective institution faces the probability of being shot. Parks and camps are both patrolled. And each is subjected to the whims of an authority which may decide to cull the populations within. A Yellowstone ranger shed a little light on this when he claimed that "officials have powers that the KGB would be jealous of." But park practices aside, the preservation of the status quo also promotes another moral dilemma: shouldn't people be willing to live within nature and not relegate it to specific tracts of land? It doesn't say much for us if we can't live alongside our neighbors on this earth. Is a segregated world ethically sound?
While the ethical considerations alone might be enough to warrant reconsideration of the park system, the scientific side of things also could support a revolution. The fact is that while parks preserve natural habitat, they are not large enough or well-connected enough to harbor a healthy ecosystem. It's the continental version of island biogeography incarnate. Parks are simply too few and too far between to provide what they are meant to provide. It would be far more effective to integrate society into nature in a way that promotes intact ecosystems across the country rather than in a patchwork of parks.
In many ways the world has become a much greener place than it was at the dawn of the National Park era. People now know that predators aren't pests, that buying organic helps the environment, and that wilderness is something to be enjoyed, not tamed. However, the dissolution of the park system in favor of a more comprehensive solution may not as yet even be on the horizon. Not when we still have human concentration camps among us despite history's lessons. If we can't respect and live with our fellow human beings what hope is there for the rest of the world?