Talk:Protected areas of the United States

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2019 and 31 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Kianakd.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:47, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Priest95, Snekkirino, Gino1017, Laurenahn. Peer reviewers: Davidmartinez, Jibrilkyser, Spence Defense.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:20, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wilderness preservation systems in the United States
I don't see what this new article is for that isn't already covered here, Merge suggested. Rmhermen (talk) 02:04, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Agree.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:49, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I completely agree with you. JMcDaniel8 (talk) 03:04, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Reason for protection missing
This is a great article, I enjoyed reading it. It told me what areas are protected in the United States. It discussed the protected areas and told who they were managed by, federal, state, and local. One thing I think it should include, is why are these areas protected? The areas are protected because some animal species are unique to a geographic location. The middle to southern Blue Ridge Mountains, the Florida Keys and panhandle, and the southern part of the Sierra Nevada Mountains are priority areas to broaden conservation. The main threat to the survival of a species is habitat loss (Sainato, 2015).

--Adegood (talk) 21:57, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Animal species is only one reason areas are protected. Some are cultural/historic areas, some are habitat-related, some are tourism-related, some protect water/timber/other natural resources. Rmhermen (talk) 19:12, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * As I read through this article thought the same thing. This article needs to explain why these lands are protected in detail. JMcDaniel8 (talk) 04:47, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

What's Missing?
Review

I think you might add a section about the philosophical arguments surrounding protecting land. For example, include a section about preservationists (Muir) and conservationists (Pinchot). There is some interesting literature on the implications of setting land away at the federal/state level. What are the implications for Native Americans who lay claim to religious access (look up Devils Tower). Similarly there are also some interesting articles (see William Cronan) on the implications of calling something "wilderness" or protected. In a nut shell Cronan's argument is that by setting land apart that is out of reach of humans we are essentially saying you cannot pollute that area but the rest of "unprotected land" is fair game. His argument can be simplified with what is more sacred; the tree in a national park or a tree in the backyard.

In the section about history you should think about going back to the Louisiana Purchase and the various expeditions westward. There should be a section about John Muir and the Hetch Hetchy Valley (Yosemite). Moving forward, you also might think about adding a section about Aldo Leopold and his land ethic. He was an extremely important figure in the Park Service and his mention might be necessary for this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kadepercy (talk • contribs) 21:44, 12 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I agree that adding a section about John Muir is important because he was considered the father of National Parks. JMcDaniel8 (talk) 01:39, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Protected areas of the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20101109155026/http://www.protectedlands.net/padus/ to http://www.protectedlands.net/padus/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 02:07, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Policy Analysis Critique
The topic of protected areas of the United States was not clearly defined in the lead sentence. The topic sentence diverted directly into land being managed which doesn't necessarily mean protected. Then states “varying levels of protection” which in my opinion needs further explanation prior to the following paragraphs of the types of protection. What is a protected area? Then, how does each level of government protects these certain areas? More information needs to be added to the State and local level protected areas. The link structure needs to be addressed. There are multiple links that go to the same location for example → National Forests (list here, list of largest National Forests here) are the same link which seems redundant. Some of the links are no longer reliable as all three of the references are dead links, leading me to believe this page may be in need of a major overhaul. Small grammatical errors here and there but nothing extreme. The images are well captioned, but oddly John Muir’s photo and description are on the page without mention within the article itself. As stated by Rmhermen above, Wilderness preservation systems in the United States already exist and a merge would be highly suggested. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JMcDaniel8 (talk • contribs) 03:12, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

TVA Small Wild Areas
The Tennessee Valley Authority maintains a network of 15 quasi-parks referred to as Small Wild Areas in Tennessee and northern Alabama. These are natural areas on TVA land along the Tennessee River that have trail, camp sites, parking for visitors, etc., and are free to access. As of right now, only one of these areas has an associated Wikipedia article (Lady's Bluff Small Wild Area). Is it worth including these in this list, since they are technically federally-run parks? TVA's website has a section on them here. nf utvol (talk) 17:01, 25 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Well, I guess I'll have to presume that silence equals consensus here. I'm going to go ahead and start building this out unless someone has any major issues! nf utvol (talk) 17:15, 6 June 2023 (UTC)