George Melendez Wright: The Fight for Wildlife and Wilderness in the National Parks

George Meléndez Wright was the first Hispanic person to occupy a professional position in the National Park Service (NPS) and organized the first science-based wildlife survey of the western parks, which forever changed how the NPS would manage wildlife and natural resources. He died in a 1936 car accident while working to establish parks and wildlife refuges on the US-Mexico border. Jerry Emory, a conservationist and writer connected to Wright's family, has written a book that offers a biography of Wright and a historical account of a crucial period in the evolution of US parks and the wilderness movement.

Format: Hardback
Length: 248 pages
Publication date: 26 April 2023
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

George Meléndez Wright, a visionary biologist whose groundbreaking ideas regarding wildlife and science revolutionized national parks, is the subject of the first biography in this book. Wright, who was twenty-three years old when he arrived in Yosemite National Park in 1927 to work as a ranger naturalist, had already visited every national park in the western United States, including McKinley (now Denali) in Alaska. Two years later, he organized the first science-based wildlife survey of the western parks, forever changing how the National Park Service (NPS) would manage wildlife and natural resources.

At a time when national parks routinely fed bears garbage as part of "shows" and killed "bad" predators like wolves, mountain lions, and coyotes, Wright's new ideas for conservation set the stage for the modern scientific management of parks and other public lands.

Tragically, Wright died in a 1936 car accident while working to establish parks and wildlife refuges on the US-Mexico border. To this day, he remains a celebrated figure among conservationists, wildlife experts, and park managers.

In this book, Jerry Emory, a conservationist and writer connected to Wright's family, draws on hundreds of letters, field notes, archival research, interviews, and more to offer both a biography of Wright and a historical account of a crucial period in the evolution of US parks and the wilderness movement. With a foreword by former NPS director Jonathan B. Jarvis, George Meléndez Wright is a celebration of Wright's unique upbringing, dynamism, and enduring vision that places him at last in the pantheon of the great American conservationists.

Weight: 602g
Dimension: 160 x 237 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780226824949