As the centennial year arrived, Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks continued to operate under Congressional mandates dating from an entirely different era. All of the critical acts which defined the purpose of the parks dated from before World War II. The most critical were older yet, dating from 1890 and 1916. Because these early laws were general in their provisions, a great deal of latitude existed, allowing the management philosophy of the two parks to evolve and grow. Ultimately, however, several of the most basic concepts expressed in the early enabling legislation proved to be obsolete. Two problems stood out in particular. First, all the early legislation that created and modified the two parks assumed that the parks could be kept separate from the surrounding, unprotected landscape. Second, the legislators who framed the parks believed that they were large enough to provide adequate habitat for their natural inhabitants. Unfortunately, in the 1970s and 1980s, both of these assumptions proved to be false.

No issue better illustrated the loss of that mythical insular quality than the air pollution that began to invade the parks in significant amounts during the 1960s. Because the pollution came from outside the parks, and because it came not from a few major point sources but from the entire mechanized humanity of northern and central California, the problem denied any resolution through traditional management channels. Initially, the Park Service responded by largely ignoring the issue. When it became apparent in the 1970s that air pollution both damaged forests and threatened the biological integrity of the alpine wilderness zone, the seriousness of the situation finally demanded a response. Beyond scientific research and a public information campaign, however, the parks found themselves without useful tools to deal with the problem. Without doubt the future of Sequoia and Kings Canyon was tied irrevocably to the future of California's environment as a whole.

During this same time scientists began to explore in depth the issue of "island biology," that is how large a tract of land is necessary to preserve biological resources if those resources are no longer present on the surrounding lands. From these studies came new answers to questions such as why Sequoia and Kings Canyon lost their grizzly bears in the early twentieth century and their last condors in the 1980s, and why animals like wolverines and red fox became so rare. Many species, it appeared, simply needed more space to perpetuate an adequate breeding stock than was present in the two parks and the surrounding national forest wilderness zones. From these two points, the porosity of the parks' boundaries to outside processes and the fragility of undersized resource reserves, will come the major challenges of the parks' second century.

As Sequoia and Kings Canyon approach their second hundred years, it is apparent that second century will be fraught with more insidious and complex threats than the first. California's population has grown twentyfold since the parks' inception, while its wilderness reserves have grown more isolated, more pressed, and more susceptible to the rampaging, mechanized, profit culture teeming around them. Solutions for destruction and overdevelopment beyond parks' boundaries, for erosion of parks' resources by current "traditional" uses, and for the ominous inconsistency of trying to preserve unchanged one small portion of "spaceship earth" while fouling the remainder of its interdependent systems, remain unclear and probably unacceptable to most Californians. Perhaps the greatest concern of all is truly international—the prospect of significant global warming. Estimates of the effects of global warming on California predict major precipitation and temperature shifts, processes which would seriously undermine the entire natural life zone and plant community structure of the southern Sierra.

To this somber background of accelerating environmental threats there stands only one positive trend, one beam of hope for the parks in the coming century. From the beginning, Sequoia, General Grant, and later Kings Canyon national parks have been not only supported but actively loved by countless individual citizens. During the 1880s, these people took a course contrary to the entire public land policy of the United States, a policy that promoted all land for sale and for use. Against all reasonable odds they won and created Sequoia and General Grant national parks. In the 1920s and 1930s, committed people again diverged from the main stream of their time as they resisted popular attempts to "improve" the southern Sierra with reservoirs and power plants. Amazingly, they won again, even at a time when dams and diversion structures emasculated nearly every other river system in California. After 1965, when "progress" sought to enter the local mountains in the form of ski development in Mineral King, people who cared deeply about the southern Sierra fought anew, and once again all popular wisdom said their efforts could only be futile. In 1978, however, the people won yet another victory for the integrity of the mountains, canyons, and Big Trees.

In the history of Sequoia and Kings Canyon, there have been many remarkable people. Among these have been capable and powerful men, like George Stewart and Harold Ickes, visionaries like John Muir, those who sought knowledge like Lowell Sumner and Richard Hartesveldt, and those like Chester Warlow and Bud Gearhart who risked their careers for park values. Finally, there have been those whose lives were devoted to the parks, people like John White and Walter Fry. Yet by the end of the parks' first century, the public more than any aggregate of special interests, stood to enforce those values.

Ultimately, national parks are not as much natural regions as they are human creations. No landscape is immune to human impact; no natural place is too remote to be endangered. For a century committed people have fought repeatedly to preserve the priceless natural heritage contained within Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks. As the second century begins, even more commitment will be necessary to maintain the parks. To this challenge, however, committed people are sure to rise once again.