Robert Sterling Yard - Conflict and The Forest Service

Conflict and The Forest Service

Despite agreeing on most issues regarding the protection of national parks, friction between the NPA and NPS was seemingly unavoidable. Mather and Yard disagreed on many issues; whereas Mather was not interested in the protection of wildlife and accepted the Biological Survey's efforts to exterminate predators within parks, Yard criticized the program as early as 1924. Yard was also highly critical of Mather's administration of the parks. Mather advocated plush accommodations, city comforts and various entertainments to encourage park visitation. These plans clashed with Yard's ideals, and he considered such urbanization of the nation's parks misguided. While visiting Yosemite National Park in 1926, he stated that the valley was "lost" after he found crowds, automobiles, jazz music and a bear show.

In 1924, the United States Forest Service started a program to set aside "primitive areas" in the national forests to protect wilderness while opening it to use. Yard, who preferred to give the land that did not meet his standards to the Forest Service rather than the NPS, began to work closely with the USFS. Beginning in 1925, he served as secretary of the Joint Committee on the Recreational Survey of Federal Lands, a position he held until 1930. Composed of members of both the NPA and the USFS, the committee sought a separate national recreation policy that would distinguish between recreational and preservation areas. The NPA and Yard were both criticized by activists who feared that the association would be eclipsed by the Forest Service's own program goals. Yard at times felt isolated and under-appreciated by his peers. He wrote in 1926, "I wonder whether I'm justified in forcing this work upon people who seem to care so little about it."

By the late 1920s, Yard had come to believe preservation of wilderness was a solution to more commercially motivated park making. He continued to clash with others regarding legislation on park proposals. These included the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, which Yard thought was too recreational and not of the caliber of a national park. He hesitated at the nomination of the Everglades National Park in Florida. When the Tropic Everglades National Park Association was founded in 1928 to promote the idea of a national park in south Florida, Yard was initially skeptical that it was necessary. Although he recognized the need for preservation, he did not accept proposals for a national park unless the area met his high scenic standards. He slowly warmed to the Everglades idea, and in 1931 supported the proposal under conditions that the area remain pristine, with limited tourist development. The Everglades National Park was authorized by Congress in 1934.