Laurie Yung Erika S. Zavaleta Gregory H. Aplet F. Stuart Chapin III David M. Graber Eric S. Higgs Richard J. Hobbs Peter B. Landres Constance I. Millar David J. Parsons John M. Randall Nathan L. Stephenson Kathy A. Tonnessen Peter S. White Stephen Woodley David N. Cole 2008 <p>For most large U.S. parks and wilderness areas, enabling legislation and management policy call for preservation of these protected areas unimpaired in perpetuity. Central to the notions of protection, preservation, and unimpairment has been the concept of maintaining “naturalness,” a condition imagined by many to persist over time in the absence of human intervention. As will be discussed below in more detail, the goal of naturalness has been codified in legislation and protected area policy and built into agency culture. For much of the 20th century, the adequacy of naturalness as the guiding concept for stewardship of protected areas remained largely unchallenged. Scientists, managers, and conservationists assumed that natural conditions could be preserved and that doing so would assure long-term conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems within protected area boundaries.</p> application/pdf en George Wright Society Naturalness and beyond: Protected area stewardship in an era of global environmental change article