Yellowstone and the Smithsonian

"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 reco