Research Catalog

Yellowstone and the Smithsonian : centers of wildlife conservation

Title: Yellowstone and the Smithsonian : centers of wildlife conservation / Diane Smith.
Author: Smith, Diane, 1949-
Publication: Lawrence, Kansas : University Press of Kansas, [2017]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Filter by

1 Item

Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	JFE 17-4479	Schwarzman Building - Milstein Division Room 121

Details

Description

ix, 198 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

"As America's first national park--established thirty years before the creation of the National Park Service--Yellowstone lacked any sort of systems or procedures to shape and direct its early wildlife conservation practices. The soldiers who manned the park thus spent a considerable amount of time establishing connections with scientific institutions and arranging to transfer specimens from the park to researchers and collectors elsewhere. In Centers of Conservation, Diane Smith examines the early years of the Smithsonian Institution and Yellowstone in tandem, from the Smithsonian's founding in 1848 through the establishment of the NPS in 1916. She argues that the two developed together as places where wildlife was both protected from extinction and displayed for a variety of uses, with Yellowstone serving as the Smithsonian's major source of specimens from the American West"--Provided by publisher.
"In the winter of 1996-97, state and federal authorities shot or shipped to slaughter more than 1,100 Yellowstone National Park bison. Since that time, thousands more have been killed or hazed back into the park, as wildlife managers struggle to accommodate an animal that does not recognize man-made borders. Tensions over the hunting and preservation of the bison, an animal sacred to many Native Americans and an icon of the American West, are at least as old as the nation's first national park. Established in 1872, in part 'to protect against the wanton destruction of fish and game,' Yellowstone has from the first been dedicated to preserving wildlife along with the park's other natural wonders. The Smithsonian Institution, itself founded in 1848, viewed the park's resources as critical to its own mission, looking to Yellowstone for specimens to augment its natural history collections, and later to stock the National Zoo. How this relationship developed around the conservation and display of American wildlife, with these two distinct organizations coming to mirror one another, is the little-known story Diane Smith tells in Yellowstone and the Smithsonian. Even before its founding as a national park, and well before the creation of the National Park Service in 1916, the Yellowstone region served as a source of specimens for scientists centered in Washington, D.C. Tracing the Yellowstone-Washington reciprocity to the earliest government-sponsored exploration of the region, Smith provides background and context for many of the practices, such as animal transfers and captive breeding, pursued a century later by a new generation of conservation biologists. She shows how Yellowstone, through its relationship with the Smithsonian, the National Museum, and ultimately the National Zoo, helped elevate the iconic nature of representative wildlife of the American West, particularly bison. Her book helps all of us, not least of all historians and biologists, to better understand the wildlife management and conservation policies that followed"--Provided by publisher.

Subject

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 151-186) and index.

Contents

Introduction -- Part I. Center of new knowledge. The Smithsonian Institution : type specimens and the origins of specimen exchange -- Yellowstone National Park : the survival of the specimens -- Centennial exhibition : object maps of US commercial resources -- Part II. Centers of conservation. In the beginning were the bison : habitat groups and the vital spark -- A national and zoological park : "a home and city of refuge for the vanishing races of the continent" -- Part III. Animals and artifacts. An almost certain fate : animal displays and the contest for Yellowstone resources -- The greatest game preserve in the country : city of refuge or a national zoological park -- Yellowstone and wild animal displays : "the most wonderful and best known of the great government reservations" -- Conclusion.

Call Number

JFE 17-4479

ISBN

9780700623884
0700623884
9780700623891
0700623892

LCCN

2016051185

OCLC

960894879

Author

Smith, Diane, 1949- author.

Title

Yellowstone and the Smithsonian : centers of wildlife conservation / Diane Smith.

Publisher

Lawrence, Kansas : University Press of Kansas, [2017]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 151-186) and index.

Research Call Number

JFE 17-4479

View in Legacy Catalog