Cultural Brand or Resource Reserve? : a 'Yellowstone Index' of public interest in National Parks
Jepson, P. and Mittermeier, J. (2018). Cultural Brand or Resource Reserve? : a 'Yellowstone Index' of public interest in National Parks. 5th European Congress of Conservation Biology. doi: 10.17011/conference/eccb2018/107558
Date
2018Copyright
© the Authors, 2018
The term national park has public meaning and institutional definition. The first derives from an ideal, promoted by prominent citizens between ca. 1850 and 1970 that, through the preservation and enjoyment of spectacular natures in parks a sense of nationhood, cultural identity and citizenship could be forged or reimagined. In this sense, National Parks act as a brand. Subsequently, the national park term has acquired an institutional definition within the protected area categorisations of the IUCN. This specifies that national parks should be "large areas in an 'intact natural state' protected to conserve biodiversity and functioning ecosystems, to educate and excite people concerning the need for conservation and to provide a foundation for tourism economies". In the IUCN sense, national parks are resource reserves of national significance with the potential to generate co-benefits. Conflating these two distinct concepts of national park within international policy and conservation science has served to generate ambiguity concerning the purpose and implemetation of this 'gold standard' of place-based conservation.
At a time when identity politics is on the rise and international finance for biodiversity is in decline we suggest it is relevant to disaggregate national parks into those that play a role in 'branding' and shaping cultural identities and those that are primarily concerned with the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services. To this end we we have developed a 'Yellowstone Index' of public interest in national parks as a heuristic tool for reassessing their role in public policy. Our index is calcualted from Wikipedia page view data and can be applied at multipe scales. We demonstrate distinct geographies for iconic parks and reveal different national approaches to national park policy. Our Yellowstone index offers a heauristic tool for reassesing the role of national parks in public policy. It supports among other things: i) mapping and quantifying the degree to which nature conservation is part of the cultural identities of nations and regions, ii) identification of NPs and associated natural features that support, of have the potential to support, place branding and tourism economies, iii) identifications of NPs with little public interest and that may be at risk if political support changes in favour of economic land development. Perhaps mostly importantly it enhances democratic transparency of national park policy and thereby the potential to reinvigorate and align the national park designation with wider trends in society.
...
![showless](/themes/JYX2//images/showless.png)
![showmore](/themes/JYX2//images/showmore.png)
Publisher
Open Science Centre, University of JyväskyläConference
ECCB2018: 5th European Congress of Conservation Biology. 12th - 15th of June 2018, Jyväskylä, Finland
Original source
https://peerageofscience.org/conference/eccb2018/107558/Metadata
Show full item recordCollections
- ECCB 2018 [712]
License
Related items
Showing items with similar title or keywords.
-
Trade Unions and Lobbying : Fighting Private Interests While Defending the Public Interest?
Valentini, Chiara; Ihlen, Øyvind; Somerville, Ian; Raknes, Ketil; Davidson, Scott (University of Southern California, 2020)Although framing theory has been extensively studied in strategic communication comparatively, little is known about how trade unions, as a specific type of organization, use framing strategies to achieve their organizational ... -
Research of abandoned Tibetan mastiffs and interaction with local carnivores in Sanjiangyuan National Natural Reserve, Tibetan Plateau
Liu, Mingyu (Open Science Centre, University of Jyväskylä, 2018)Between 2000-2012, a high market demand for Tibetan mastiffs stimulated dog raising in Tibetan Plateau but soon collapsed market led to abandonment of dogs. Due to high reproductive ability and adaptability, increased ... -
Making conservation sustainable under unfavourable conditions : the case of Chimanimani National Reserve, Mozambique
Virtanen, Pekka (Routledge, 2020)Based on a case study from the Chimanimani National Reserve in Mozambique, this article analyses to what extent different types of operational practices can contribute to the sustainability of protected areas in relatively ... -
Where is the public of ‘networked publics’? A critical analysis of the theoretical limitations of online publics research
Ojala, Markus; Ripatti-Torniainen, Leena (SAGE Publications, 2024)The study of online media use has been elemental in shaping the research on publics within communication and media studies in the last few decades. This article takes a critical view of this research by asking to what ... -
Interest-based topology management in unstructured peer-to-peer networks
Soranto, Annemari (University of Jyväskylä, 2012)