Editing National Park Service (section)

====1963: The Leopold Report====
A 1963 report titled "Wildlife Management in the National Parks" was prepared by a five-member advisory board on Wildlife Management, appointed by [[United States Secretary of the Interior]] [[Stewart Udall]].<ref>{{cite web|last1=Leopold|first1=A S|last2=Cain|first2=S A|author-link2=Stanley A. Cain|last3=Cottam|first3=C M|author-link3=Clarence Cottam|last4=Gabrielson|first4=I N|author-link4=Ira Noel Gabrielson|last5=Kimball|first5=T L|title=Wildlife Management in the National Parks |date=March 4, 1963 |url=http://npshistory.com/publications/leopold_report.pdf|access-date=16 October 2021|publisher=U.S. National Park Service|archive-date=August 18, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210818194153/http://npshistory.com/publications/leopold_report.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> This report came to be referred to in later years by its chairman and principal author, [[A. Starker Leopold]]. The [[Leopold Report]] was just fourteen pages in length, but it set forth [[ecosystem management]] recommendations that would guide parks policy until it was revisited in 2012.

The Leopold Report was the first concrete plan for managing park visitors and ecosystems under unified principles.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Norton|first1=Bryan G|title=Toward Unity Among Environmentalists|date=1994|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0-19-509397-6|location=New York|page=160}}</ref> Park management issues and controversies addressed in this report included the difficulties of managing elk populations in [[Yellowstone National Park]] and how "overprotection from natural ground fires" in California's [[Sequoia National Park]], [[Kings Canyon National Park]], and [[Yosemite National Park]] had begun to threaten groves of [[Giant Sequoia]] with catastrophic wildfires. The report also established a historical baseline that read, "The goal of managing the national parks and monuments should be to preserve, or where necessary to recreate, the ecologic scene as viewed by the first European visitors." This baseline would guide [[ecological restoration]] in national parks until a [[climate change adaptation]] policy, "Resist-Adapt-Direct", was established in 2021.