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Can Bureaucracies Change Policy?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

William R. Lowry
Affiliation:
Washington University

Extract

In the 1990s, policymakers at Yellowstone and Banff National Parks enacted two of the most controversial programs in the history of protected lands. At Yellowstone, the U.S. National Park Service (nps) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (fws) personnel reintroduced wolves into the Yellowstone ecosystem. This program restored a crucial element to the park ecosystem that had been eliminated decades before and not returned since extermination. At Banff, federal authorities imposed strict limits to growth of the town of Banff. This action reversed a policy dating to the park's establishment in the late nineteenth century of allowing and encouraging growth and development of the town within Banff. How did these policy changes occur?

Type
Critical Perspectives
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2008

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References

Notes

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