The National Parks Service
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The National Parks Service administers the 367 parks, historical sites, and recreation areas under its purview, while the U.S. Forest Service oversees U.S. forest policy for a much broader wilderness area. When these lands were first designated a national forests, it was clear that they had been set aside for consumptive uses, but new priorities and new forces have brought into question many of the traditional guidelines for the use of this land. The political and social environment of the management of the national parks has changed many times over the years as a re-examination and a re-ordering of priorities have occurred, and as part of this process considerable conflict has been generated among different groups and factions with different ideas about what the priorities should be. Both the National Parks Service (NPS) and the Forest Service face considerable pressure to maintain the lands under their charge in good condition for the use of the public, and yet the public itself is a source of environmental damage that only increases as more and more people are making use of the national parks and national forests for recreation and other uses. There are 120 national forests in forty-one states--nine states have no national forests at all. The forest system, however, is considered to be owned by and of benefit to all of the people. The primary responsibility of the Forest Service is to assure that this is true, but there are many today who charge that the agency is fa
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's Shenandoah and California's Sequoia national parks, where nearby smokestack industries had boosted ozone levels and lowered visibility. Polluted water is another problem, and it flows through the Florida Everglades, which is also affected by human intrusion in the water pattern. This is thought to be responsible for a 90 percent reduction in wading birds since the 1930s. Human fecal matter from surrounding leach fields now contaminates the groundwater in Kentucky's Mammoth Cave (Poindexter, Solberg, and Mason 88-89). Noxious emissions from industrial plants outside the two national parks at Big Bend and the Great Smoky Mountains pose grave threats to their air quality. Some of the plants are in Mexico, and they pump huge amounts of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere each year, dimming visibility at Big Bend in southwest Texas. In Tennessee, a limemanufacturing company with permits from the state is increasing already critical levels of nitrogen oxide in the air around the Smokies. visibility is much reduced at both parks ("Views Threatened at Two National Parks" 10).
The national parks are suffering from their own success in attracting visitors. Visitors to the parks are beginning to notice a number of changes, includi
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Approximate Word count = 2679
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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