大学与国家公园的合作伙伴关系：课堂、户外实验室与世界之窗

著：（美）韦恩·弗赖蒙德 译：黄澄 校：庄优波

在美国，国家公园系统与世界各地的高等教育系统有着密切的互动。作为课堂或户外实验室，国家公园为学生们提供了实践培训的机会。许多实习过的学生在毕业后都选择从事与国家公园相关的工作。国家公园是为子孙后代保护自然资源这项全球使命的重要组成部分。通过参与国际合作，国家公园成为学生和管理者向全球保护区网络学习和贡献的窗口。

1 国家公园作为教室

1.1 实地考察和学校互动

美国国家公园是帮助学生建立与公园深厚联系，识别资源重要性，了解并保护遗产与文化的教室。对于很多学生来说，实地考察国家公园是其开启国家公园系统或其他土地保护相关行业职业生涯的一种方式。通过国家公园与学校的合作项目，学生们有机会实地参观考察国家公园。作为这些合作项目的成果，国家公园管理局每年都要接待数以千计的学生，从小学到大学都有。美国国家公园管理局（National Park Service）非常重视与青少年建立友好关系，下面就是一个典型例证。作为百年庆典的一部分，国家公园管理局在2016年发起了“公园里的孩子”计划（图1）[1]。通过这个计划，每个四年级的美国学生都可携家人免费进入国家公园参观游览。这种与学校捆绑的鼓励参观国家公园的形式，建立了社会公众与自然/遗产之间有意义的联系。通过向学生介绍国家公园的精彩故事，学生们有机会接触这些自然之地，并可能从此开启未来职业生涯的大门。

高中生通常在中学最后两年选择就读哪所大学。高中时在公园的游访经历对他们选择与公园管理相关的大学项目有很大帮助。大学和公园之间的紧密联系可以成为大学招生的重要卖点。例如，蒙大拿大学或克莱姆森大学这样强大的学术机构在地理位置上就分别靠近冰川国家公园和大烟山国家公园等标志性公园。很多大学通过强调自己在地理位置上邻近国家公园来突显优势，作为吸引学生的竞争条件。

1.2 实习与工作机会

在美国，大多数以专业为导向的大学课程要求学生在其受教育过程中积累专业实践经验。这些专业实践经验包括实习、暑期工作、实践课以及在导师指导下做项目。这些项目为学生提供可以直接用于毕业的学分。大学是一个激发灵感的好地方，年轻人在国家公园里的实习历练通常对整体提升他们在大学里的教育有很好的帮助。与此同时，国家公园在这一过程中也受益匪浅，由于这些良好教育背景年轻人的参与，公园项目取得了更好的效果；大量学生也因此在毕业后被招入相关的工作岗位。

除了实习之外，大学还经常与公园管理者合作参加学术会议，充分发挥学术和应用管理结合的优势，并合作举办招聘会，促进管理者和学生之间的互动。这些活动往往独立于学校教学活动，带动了暑期短期就业。对于一个大学生来说，在他们读完大学的时候积累了将近一年的专业经验是很正常的事。而实习经验为学生们顺利踏上工作岗位奠定了基础。这种经历激发了学生的自信，当他们被聘用到一个职位上时，可以立即进入正轨。

这些实习项目也获得了学校课程设计的支持，这些教育项目通常可被学者、科学家、相关从业者及管理机构所认可，认证包含了社会经验在内的实践经历（图2）。

1.3 管理者培训与组织

截至2018年年中，世界保护地数据库中记录了238 563个保护地。这些地区占地球陆地面积的近15%和世界海洋的7.3%[2]。这些保护地的管理工作需要应对快速变化的社会和生态环境。通常保护地所需的财政资源往往缺乏长久支持。与此同时，技术创新、管理框架创新、案例研究创新，以及对以往管理方法的批评和新理念则不断涌现。这种高强度的变化和复杂的环境需要永无止境的学习、分享和培训加以支撑。

当大学合作伙伴了解公园管理者们所面临的问题时，学校就可以更好地满足培训的需求，设计有针对性的培训活动，并且成为一个理想的培训活动中心。因为大学的责任就在于推进课程发展、传播知识、展开科研填补知识空白，并评估学生对所学事物的掌握能力。

继续教育课程项目既可以在大学开展，也可以通过国家公园现场教学，或是通过远程教育技术来实现。在进行培训项目的同时，大学教授们通常能够对管理者遇到的问题有更深入细致的了解。因此，对这些实践问题的认知能够使大学教授们更好地培养未来的学生，并使得研究对策更加具有针对性和落地性。克莱姆森大学目前正在筹办一个针对国家、州立和市立公园管理者的培训学院，该项目旨在将大学科研实力的优势与公园管理政策部门的优质领导力和经验相结合，直接解决公园保护的领导力培训难题。该项目还包含在线的研究生学位、密集的创新和领导力主题讨论会、国家公园问题解决的实践机会，和众多的网络讨论会议。教师则由大学教授团队与国家公园高级管理人员组成。

1.4 大学作为技术设施资源支持

在美国，大学通常拥有比单个公园更先进的技术设施。因此，在大学里运用地理信息系统、数据管理、可视化和信息档案的能力都更加出色，并且信息管理是大学使命的核心。除此之外，大学通常以独特和客观的方式主导各种有关保护区适当管理和愿景设计的讨论，并且大学对保护地管理的远见可以提供整体指导，这与数据和数据使用者都有密切联系。例如，克莱姆森大学的开放公园网络为全美国家公园提供数字存档服务①。通过与国家公园管理局的合作，克莱姆森图书馆将国家公园的许多摄影作品或文档进行了数字化，建立了一个向世界提供这些文件的平台（图3）。

大学还可被视为一个信息交换所，提供各种各样的信息②。由蒙大拿大学主办的荒野连接站位于国家荒野保护系统的中心位置。这种伙伴关系包括大学和4个管理荒野的联邦机构。该站点为研究、培训和教育提供支持信息，并拥有国家荒野保护系统中每个区域的位置和相关信息内容。

2 国家公园作为户外实验室

从大学的角度来看，我们的国家公园在实践层面提供了监测以及更好地理解社会与生态方面变化的机会。国家公园作为户外实验室，使得研究者能更好地理解国家公园内部的资源，认识到这些资源的相互关系以及这些资源与更广阔的社会的相互关系。尽管这里涉及的研究有很多方式，但本文将选择与作者密切相关的监测、评价研究以及促进合作研究的框架设计3个方面展开讨论。

2.1 监测

国家公园的管理方式是按照各种管理规划中确立的目标而开展的。一些目标很具挑战性，寻求提升公园内部状况；而另一些目标属于补救型，寻求恢复遭受破坏的现状。无论变化是好是坏，在任何状况下了解现状条件，分析导致这些条件发生变化的影响力量，探究资源变化发生的原因都非常重要 。认识变化并向决策者提供必要的反馈需要专业监测的帮忙。监测是一项管理职能，经常受到缺乏财政资源或公园工作人员能力有限的困扰，无法建立有效、高效和创新的监测系统。而大学有资源接触到更先进的新兴技术，并且有精力充沛的学生需要实习机会，因此大学已成为国家公园发展监测项目的优秀合作伙伴。

1 9～10岁儿童及其家庭免费进入所有公共土地Free pass to all public lands for kids of 9-10 years of age and their families

2 在大烟山国家公园会见国家公园科学家Meeting with national park scientists at Great Smokey Mountain National Park

通过这些合作关系，学生与老师可以与公园工作人员合作，建立监测系统，并收集有关变化指标的数据。监测内容涉及野生动物遗传信息和数量变化、水质、资金支出、游客体验、影响公园游憩的区域人口变化等。例如，蒙大拿州的冰川国家公园与蒙大拿大学合作开发了一个道路和车辆计数器系统（图4），以了解公路上的交通和在野外小径上徒步旅行的人数之间的关系。这些数据大大提升了管理人员对拥挤与高质量游客体验相关指标的理解。该系统是在公园决定进行道路改善时设计的，他们假设这将影响游客体验的其他部分。通过观察试验中小径使用者的人数，评估人数变化对公园不同区域的影响和压力，最终帮助界定游客进入的相关要求。

国家公园还进行大量由国家公园工作人员主导的生态监测。例如，2018年在大烟山国家公园，工作人员通过监测发现了第1 000个物种。再如，国家社会人口监测项目发现，每年有超过3.2亿访客游览国家公园系统。除此之外还有物理资源监测项目有助于观察大气变化，如气候变化的影响等。

2.2 评价研究

国家公园土地管理问题可能存在众多争议，大学可以作为一个客观的第三方，在识别和评估问题的过程中扮演一个相对没有偏见的角色。在寻求最佳解决方案的过程中，当社区成员和国家公园服务管理团队之间发生冲突时，大学可以帮助建立双方的信任。例如，黄石国家公园内冬季的使用管理问题引起公园管理团队和一些公众的关注，认为大量使用雪地摩托的访客对野牛及其栖息地的保护产生了负面影响。然而，当地社区部分居民不同意这个观点，并拒绝了管理团队提出的管理措施。结果，反对管理措施的访客不相信公园管理者所坚持的科学性方案，他们认为管理措施包含了政治成分，导致不支持摩托、雪橇的使用。大学研究小组进行了进一步的调查来评估这个问题[3]。最后，大学的深入评估成为双方达成一致意见的可靠证据来源。

2.3 促进合作研究的框架设计

促进国家公园和大学网络之间有意义的互动需要大量的组织工作。尽管许多合作来自各地公园和当地教授之间的紧密联系，但正规合作进入国家一级的系统需要构建一个完整的框架。为了帮助应对美国国内的这些挑战，我们开发了生态系统合作研究单元（CESU）网络。这个网络提供了以下关键功能。首先，它提供了一个研究需求的交流平台，可以通过平台与对该研究需求感兴趣的专家建立联系。由于许多问题具有区域性特征，CESU网络将美国全国分为了17个区域（图5）。目前这17个区域内有“超过435个非联邦合作伙伴和15个联邦机构，代表了所有50个州和美国领土的生物地理区域”[4]。CESE合作机制得到了合作伙伴研究机构的支持，不仅降低了研究成本，同时方便公园接触专业研究人员。大学还经常为研究结果的存储库提供高度复杂的资源。通过这些伙伴合作建立的个人关系也为学术研究的所有要素提供了基础，包括为本科生和研究生提供咨询专业意见的机会，提供研究、教育和培训的机会等，这些对于国家公园的管理也产生了切实的影响。

3 国家公园作为世界之窗

如前所述，美国国家公园是全球为子孙后代保护自然和遗产所作的巨大努力的一部分。作为世界上最早建立的国家公园体系之一，美国国家公园提供了许多机会来展示管理工作是如何随着时间的推移而成功或失败的。因此，我们有许多机会与全球各地同行进行对话，这些同行正在迎接同样的挑战，他们尝试着不同的治理方法，拥有着不同的文化结构视角。通过这些对话，我们可以一起学习保护，偶尔也可以展示国家公园在推进全球外交中所能发挥的独特作用（图6）。

3.1 基于保护的外交和共同学习

1932年，美国蒙大拿州和加拿大阿尔伯塔省建立了沃特顿冰川和平公园，这是世界上第一个和平公园。它被指定用来庆祝世界上最长的无防护的国际边界，即美国和加拿大之间的边界。每年，加拿大人和美国人都会排队站在国家公园内的国境线上跨过边界握手。这是一种象征性声明，说明我们两个国家拥有的共同点远超于不同点。和平公园的概念现在已经扩展到世界各地，有数百个公园努力做出类似的象征性声明。我们知道，当人们来到一个公园，他们关注于培养、加强或重新建立与自然的关系，在这个享受自然的过程中，人与人之间建立友好关系是比较常见的。因为当人类共同面对大自然令人敬畏的力量时，人与人之间的分歧会显得微不足道，而人们的共同利益则会凸显出来。

3.2 宏观思维

随着我们对自然系统在地球可持续发展中的地位的理解和认识不断加深，我们意识到人类需要从宏观的空间和时间尺度来思考问题。从时间尺度来说，我们已经实践了足够长的时间来检验之前的决策是否增强或限制了我们的未来。例如，在20世纪30年代后期，为了保护牲畜，美国消灭了48个州的所有狼群。几代人之后，人们意识到自然需要完整的生态系统，因此决定让狼群回归自然。黄石国家公园成为此方案的一个试点。如果上一代没有为下一代保住黄石公园，之后的人们就没有机会改正错误，使生态系统得到恢复。

虽然我们在全球范围内有相当数量的土地处于保护状态，但很明显，对于许多野生物种来说，还需要保护更大面积的景观以确保它们的生存。超大型公园，如南非的卡万戈-赞比西跨界公园（Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Park，简称Kaza），被规划设计用于保护大象等迁徙物种的迁徙过程。这种大尺度的保护要获得成功，需要将本文所描述的一切配合得恰到好处。需要建立合作关系，将管理问题与尽可能多的科学知识进行结合；需要在财政支持非常有限的情况下开展监测项目；需要针对具体环境进行创新，以缓解不同利益方之间必然出现的多重冲突；最后，必然需要跨越国境线的外交，以延续多种文化的传承和多种物种的生存演替。

4 结论

虽然美国国家公园在公园管理方面取得了相当大的成功，但仍面临许多挑战。我们面临挑战的本质往往集中在几个基本问题上。人与人之间是否能包容相处？人与自然之间是否能包容相处？不同的文化之间是否可以和睦相处并朝着共同的目标努力？人们需要了解如何跨语言和跨文化合作。笔者所述的合作伙伴关系类型表明，在美国，我们将国家公园管理文化和大学的优势融合到高效的合作伙伴关系中，并取得了相当大的合作进展。这些合作在解决众多困难的问题上取得了相当大的成效。

3 参观黄石国家公园的游客，照片日期不详Undated photograph of visitors to Yellowstone National Park

随着中国建立自己的国家公园系统，中国将面临如何统筹管理机构的能力和大学潜力。通过与大学建立牢固的合作关系，管理机构将投资于培训未来的管理人员，同时也会激发来自多个领域的人们为国家公园做工作。大学还提供专门的研究项目，以帮助应对持续管理这些宝贵地方的挑战。学术研究不仅可帮助个别保护地，而且也体现了批判并深入地思考保护地系统内在价值的重要性。通过发表研究成果，中国国家公园体系将参与到关于国家公园和自然保护地重要性的国际学术对话。大学也是高科技支持的源泉，大学里的计算系统、专家和技术设施对有意合作的管理者大有益处。这种技术能力有助于在监测、大数据存储、时空数据分析、信息宣传等领域进行创新。这些资源联合起来，能够共同为国家公园的员工提供持续培训和继续教育的平台。

目前，中国管理部门正在咨询和寻求与世界其他地方国家公园系统协同合作的机会，这种协同合作对象可以扩展到美国大学。这是两个绝佳的机会，通过将自然保护地视为通往世界的窗口，来展示科学研究和管理实践的结合是如何促进我们对自然的理解。

注释：

① 参见 https://openparksnetwork.org/about。

② 参见 https://wilderness.net。

③ 图1来源于 Everykidnapart.gov；图 2、4、6来源于Wayne A. Freimund；图3来源于open parks network, Clemson University；图5来源于Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit National Network. www.CESU.psu.edu。

In the United States, the National Park system has close interaction with the higher education systems from around the world. As classrooms or outdoor laboratories, they provide practical training for students. Many of those students pursue careers in the National Parks. National Parks are part of a global mission to appreciate and conserve nature for future generations. By engaging international systems, parks become windows to the world for our students and managers to learn from and contribute to the global network of protected areas.

1 National Parks as Classrooms

1.1 Field Trips and School Interaction

National parks in the United States are classrooms that help students to build meaningful relationships with parks, their resources and the value of conservation our heritage and culture.For many students field visits are a way to prepare for a profession in the national park system or another land conservation related career. Through partnerships with schools, students are given the opportunities for field trips to visit Nationals Parks. As a result, the National Park Service ends up hosting thousands of students every year that are in primary school to college. One demonstration of the seriousness the National Park Service places on building relationships with youth is the “Every Kid in a Park” program that was initiated during 2016, as part of the centennial celebration (Fig. 1)[1]. Through this program, every U.S. student in grade four has free access to the national park system for themselves and their family. This kind of encouragement, tied to the school system, is developing meaningful relationships between society and nature or heritage through education. By exposing students to the great stories of National Parks, students are provided with opportunities to get attached to these places and start developing their careers.

High school students often choose which university to attend when they are in the last two years of their secondary education. The influence of those youth experiences in parks are often mentioned when they enroll in college programs dedicated to education about park management.Having close ties between Universities and Parks can become a selling point of the university. Strong academic programs such as the University of Montana or Clemson University are close to iconic parks such as Glacier National Park and Great Smoky National Park respectively. Universities prefer to define themselves by proximity to these national parks, which turns out to be a competitive advantage to attract students.

1.2 Internships Lead to Jobs

Most professionally oriented University programs in the United States require students to include supervised professional experience within their education. These experiences come in the way of internships, summer jobs, practicums and the shadowing of professional mentors. These programs offer credit 3 to students, which can be used directly for graduation. Universities are wonderful places for inspiration and time in parks often has a considerable influence on how students refine their education at the University. National Parks benefit from this process by engaging with creative and well-educated young minds who make immediate impacts to the park mission and, in turn, are frequently recruited to join the workforce after graduation.

In addition to internships, university programs also often partner with park managers to participate in conferences that merge academic and applied management strengths, and career fairs to facilitate interaction between managers and students. These interactions often lead to summer employment that occurs independent of the academic program. It is not uncommon for a graduating college student to have nearly a year of professional experience accumulated by the time they finish college. This experience inspires confidence that when a student is hired into a position, they can immediately contribute to many topics.

The internships are supported by the educational curriculums. These education programs are often accredited by a governing body that is a blend of academics, scientists, and practitioners.Accreditation ensures a set of proficiencies including real world experience（Fig. 2）.

1.3 Management Training and Hosting

There were 238 563 designated protected areas recorded in the World Database on Protected Areas half way through 2018[2]. Those areas represent nearly 15% of the earth’s terrestrial land base and 7.3% of the world’s oceans. The management of these protected areas occurs within a vast array of fast changing social and ecological contexts. The financial resources needed to support this scope conservation areas are often lacking.At the same time, innovations in technology,management frameworks, case studies, critiques of previous management approaches and new ideas continue to emerge. This degree of change and complexity requires a never-ending process of learning, sharing, and training.

When university partners are in close touch with the issues managers face, they are better able to address their training needs and can be an ideal hub of training activity. Universities are well built to develop curricula, disseminate knowledge, do research that is necessary to fill knowledge gaps,and evaluate student’s competency with subject matter.

Continuing education programs can be delivered at the University, onsite within the park, or through distance education techniques.While engaging in training programs, University professors gain a more nuanced understanding of the issue’s managers are facing. Thus, it better and enables them to teach future students and to develop research that has a high potential of solving on the ground problems. Clemson University is currently launching a training academy that provides a range of programs targeted toward national, state, and municipal park managers. That program is designed to combine the scientific and technical strengths of the University with the leadership and experiential knowledge of the management and policy community to directly address the leadership challenges of park conservation. The programs will include online graduate degrees, intensive innovation and leadership seminars, park-situated problems solving experiences and broadly distributed webinars. Teachers will include teams of professors and high-level managers.

4 冰川国家公园内道路与小径监测传感器Road and Trail Use Monitoring Sensors in Glacier National Park

5 生态系统合作研究单元系统The Cooperative Ecosystem Study Unit System

1.4 Universities as a Resource for Technical Infrastructure

In the United States, universities often have a more advanced technical infrastructure than individual parks. Thus, capacity for GIS, data management, visualization and information archives are not only greater at Universities, information management is central to the University mission.Additionally, universities are often uniquely and objectively centered within the debates about the proper management and vision for protected areas and can provide an integrating function as it relates to data and the users of that data. For example, the Open Parks Network at Clemson University provides a digital archiving service for national parks throughout the country①. Through a partnership with the National Park Service, The Clemson library works with parks to digitize many of their photographic or document artifacts and provides a forum for making those documents available to the world (Fig. 3).

Universities can also provide a clearing house of information on a wide range of information②.The Wilderness Connect site, hosted by the University of Montana, serves as a central location and web presence fort the National Wilderness Preservation System. That partnership includes the University and four federal agencies that manage Wilderness. The site provides information to support research, training and education. It also has locations and pertinent information for every area in the National Wilderness Preservation System.

2 National Parks as Outdoor Laboratories

From a university perspective, our national parks provide the opportunity to monitor and better understand both social and ecological change. They serve as outdoor laboratories for research that lead to a better understanding of the resources within the park, and how those resources are interacting with one another and broader society. While there are many ways research occurs,three aspects that the author has been heavily involved with will be discussed here: monitoring,evaluation research, and structures designed to facilitate research cooperation.

2.1 Monitoring

National parks are managed to meet goals established in a variety of different kinds of management plans. Some goals are aspirational and seek to improve conditions within the park,while others are remedial in seek to restore conditions that have been degraded. In all cases, it is important to understand the existing conditions,forces that lead to change in those conditions, and how resource change is occurring either for the better or worse. Understanding that change and providing necessary feedback into decision-making requires dedicated monitoring. Monitoring is a management function that often falls prey to a lack of financial resources or limited capacity within the park staff to build and effective, efficient, and innovative monitoring system. Universities, with access to more sophisticated emerging technology and energetic students looking for opportunities for internships, can be an excellent partner in the development of monitoring programs.

Through these partnerships, students and faculty members can work with park staff to build monitoring systems, and collect data on indicators of change. Monitoring partnership range from wildlife genetics and population changes, to water quality, economic expenditures, visitor experiences,and human population change in regions that affect park visitation. For instance, Glacier National Park in Montana has worked with the University of Montana to develop a system of trail and vehicle counters to understand the relationship between traffic on the road and number of people hiking on backcountry trails. That data feeds into an understanding of an indicator that relates crowding to quality visitor experiences. The system was designed when the park decided to do a road improvement that they hypothesized would impact other parts of the visitor’s experience. By observing the numbers of people on the trials, decisions can be made regarding visitor access after evaluating the impacts and pressure on different parts of the park.

There is also a lot of ecological monitoring occurring that is led by national park staff, such as at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park where in 2018, they discovered a their 1 000th resident species. In another example, social demographic monitoring at the national level observed that over 320 million people per year visit the national park system. Physical resource monitoring helps to observe atmospheric change, such as impacts from climate change (Fig. 4).

2.2 Evaluation Research

Land management can be controversial, and the university can serve as an objective third party,playing a role that is perceived to be less biased in the process of identifying and evaluating problems.Universities seek optimum solutions, which can generate trust when conflicts occur between the community members and the National Park Service Management teams. For example, winter use management inside Yellowstone National Park,raise questions among the management team and many concerned citizens that high numbers of visitors using snowmobiles were negatively affecting the conservation of bison and their habitat.However, other parts of the local community disagreed on the issue and rejected the proposed management actions. As it turned out, visitors who opposed any regulations didn’t trust the science that the park managers produced because they thought that they had a political agenda that was not favorable to snowmobiles. University research teams made further investigation to evaluate the problem[3]. In the end, the in-depth evaluation made by the university became a reliable source of evidence to help both parties find agreement.

2.3 Structures for Facilitating Cooperative Research

Facilitating meaningful interaction between national parks and university networks requires considerable organization. While many benefits come from local relationships between parks and professors, fair access to the system at the national level requires numerous structures be developed.To assist with these challenges within the United States, we have developed the Cooperative Ecosystem Study Unit (CESU) network. This network serves several key functions. First, it provides a platform for the communication of research needs and contact with experts that are interested in meeting those needs. Due to the regional nature of many issues and problems, the CESU network is distributed across 17 regions of the United States. Currently there are “more than 435 nonfederal partners and 15 federal agencies across seventeen CESUs representing biogeographic regions encompassing all 50 states and U.S. territories”[4]. CESU partnerships include institutional support from partners that lead to reduced costs and easy access to professionals. Universities also often provide highly sophisticated resources for the repository of study results. Personal relationships built through these partnerships provide a foundation for all elements of the academic mission which includes opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, consultation of their expertise, and opportunities to provide research,education, and training that makes a tangible difference in the management of our national parks (Fig. 5).

6 保护区管理国际研讨会。来自全球各地的保护工作者们在黄石国家公园讨论全球性问题The International Seminar on Protected Area Management.A global group of conservation managers discussing global issues in Yellowstone National Park

3 National Parks as Windows to the World

As was mentioned earlier, the National Parks of the United States are one part of a large global endeavor to conserve nature and heritage for future generations. As one of the earliest park systems established in the world, US National Parks provide many opportunities to show how management has succeeded or failed over time. Thus, we have many opportunities for dialogue with our global counterparts that are meeting the same challenges but through the lens of differing governance and cultural structures. Embracing that dialogue allows us to learn together for conservation and occasionally, demonstrate the unique role parks can play in advancing global diplomacy (Fig. 6).

3.1 Diplomacy and Learning Together for Conservation

The State of Montana and the Canadian province of Alberta established the Waterton-Glacier Peace Park, the world’s first Peace Park,in 1932. It was designated to celebrate the longest unguarded international border in the world, the boundary between the United States and Canada.Every year, the Canadians and the people from the United States line up on that boundary and shake hands as they reach across the boundary.It makes a symbolic statement that we had much more in common than in difference. The peace park concept has now expanded across the world and there are hundreds of parks that strive to make a similar symbolic statement. We are learning that when people come to a park, they nurture, enhance or rekindle the relationship with nature. While enjoying nature, it is quite common for people to build relationships among one another. Against the awesome power of a natural landscape, our human disagreements can become diminished and our common interests can reemerge.

3.2 Large Scale Thinking

As we grow in our understanding and knowledge about the role of natural systems in the sustainability of our planet, we have realized that we need to think in terms of large spatial and temporal scales. Temporally, we have worked long enough now to see how our decisions can enhance or constrain our potential in the future.For example, in late 1930s, the United States exterminated all wolves from the lower 48 states to protect livestock. A couple of generations later,we decided that we should have intact ecosystems and needed to put the wolves back. Yellowstone National Park became one sites where that was possible. If the previous generations had not protected Yellowstone Park for the later generation,they would not have had a chance to change their mind and restore the ecosystem.

While we have a considerable amount of land now in protected status globally, it is also clear that for many species of wildlife, much larger spatial landscapes will need to be protected to ensure their survival. Large mega parks such as the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Park (KAZA) in southern Africa are being designed to protect the migrations of nomadic species such as elephant. The success of these large-scale endeavors will require the benefit of everything this is been described in this paper. Partnerships will be required that integrate applied management issues with the best possible scientific knowledge. Monitoring programs will need to be established under conditions with highly limited financial support. Context specific innovation will be needed to address the multiple conflicts that sure to emerge among interests. And finally, diplomacy across international boundaries will be imperative to the success and survival the many cultures and species.

4 Conclusion

While we in the United States have demonstrated considerable success in park management, there are many challenges yet ahead. The essence of our challenges tends to center around a few basic questions.Can people get along with one another? Can people and nature get along? And can differing cultures get along and work toward common goals? People need to understand how to work together across languages and cultures. The kinds of partnerships described in this paper demonstrate that within the United States we have made considerable progress in bringing the strengths and cultures of our managers and universities together into productive partnerships. Those partnerships have led to considerable progress on issues that would otherwise persist.

As China develops its National Park system, it will be faced with the decision of how it will leverage the capacity of its management organizations with the potential of its Universities.By building strong relationships with Universities,management agencies will be investing in the people who will be managing the organization in the future. There will also be inspiring people from multiple fields about potential of doing at least some of their work in a national park.Universities also provide dedicated research to assist in understanding the challenges associated with sustainably managing these precious places.Research, not only helps individual sites, but demonstrates the importance of thinking critically and deeply about the values inherent within protected area systems. Through the publication of research results, the Chinese National Park System will join an international conversation amongst scholars about the importance of protected areas in national parks. Universities are also a resource for high and technical support. University computing systems, experts, and technical infrastructure can be highly beneficial to managers who choose to partner with them. That technical capacity can assist with innovation in monitoring, repository of big data, spatial and temporal data analysis, and distribution of information to a broad national audience. Together, these resources provide a platform for ongoing training and continuing education of your workforce.

Just as the Chinese management Authority is consulting and seeking synergy with National Park systems in other parts of the world, those synergies can extend to working with U.S. Universities. These are two excellent opportunities for demonstrating how it collective agenda of research and management can contribute to our understanding of nature by seeing protected areas as windows to the world.

Notes:

①https://openparksnetwork.org/about/.

②https://wilderness.net/.

③ Fig. 1.©Everykidnapart.gov; Fig. 2,4,6©Wayne A.Freimund; Fig. 3©open parks network, Clemson University;Fig. 5©Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit National Network. www.CESU.psu.edu.