Recreation & Leisure Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Recreation & Leisure - Article Example In addition, with the rise of the cities and the encroaching cement fields, more Americans seem to desire escaping into the wilderness as a means of letting go, a trend in nearly complete opposition to the needs of their forebears, creating in this shift some troubling issues to overcome. As more sites of interest were discovered, such as the geysers and mudpots of Yellowstone, the national parks were established as a means of preserving the nation’s most breathtaking vistas and natural oddities for all Americans, current and future. With this viewpoint in mind and in keeping with the concepts of the earlier parks, these wildlife or open space parks were designed to cater to the visiting tourist with little regard to ecological concerns or potential human impact on the region and wildlife. â€Å"Current cultural landscapes are products of past perceptions of needs, reactions to conditions and decisions about ways of meeting demands – regardless of whether the landscape in question is urban, agricultural or a development center in a western national park.† Understanding how parks were first envisioned as well as how they developed into national open spaces for unstructured use begins to outline the problems managers face as they try to update a system that has been long neglected, but an understanding of just how the recreational uses of the public has changed is also necessary if today’s changes are to address probably future developments and needs.