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Purpose – The purpose is to show that the influx of new seasonal and year-round residents to the small towns located in and around protected areas has numerous implications for governance associated with land management and regional planning including reconciling the competing values of wilderness (amenity vs. livelihood, motorized vs. non-motorized recreation, active vs. passive land management).

Methodology/approach – We use case studies from the Adirondack Park in Northern New York State and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in the western United States to demonstrate the land management and governance challenges facing local communities in and around internationally renowned, protected areas.

Findings – We highlight how these transforming communities meet diverse needs and competing interests and how partnering with a non-governmental organization benefits local governance issues.

Originality/value of chapter – The paper presents research from the United States, which theoretically and empirically contributes to the scientific discourse on exurbanization, protected areas, and governance.

Natural resource management decisions are complicated by multiple property rights, management objectives, and stakeholders with varying degrees of influence over the decision making process. Underlying institutional factors will give certain stakeholders a greater level of influence over the policy outcome. How a stakeholder uses their influence can greatly effect the decision making process. We utilized the Legal Institutional Analysis Model to account for stakeholdersʼ political power in the decision making process. We then extended the use of this model by integrating concepts from decision analysis and public choice economics into a single, comprehensive approach called Disparate Stakeholder Management. We demonstrate this new approach in this report through a case study concerning elk and bison management in the Southern Greater Yellowstone Area.

Human presence tends to decrease biodiversity and often results in the local extinction or even global extinction of megafauna. The focus here is on how humans have affected wolf populations in what are now known as the contiguous 48 United States. While the arrival of indigenous peoples to the region produced the extinction of some species and a reduction in wolf populations, the cultural values and economic system, i.e., capitalism, utilized by the European invaders led to anthropogenic decimation of wildlife species on an unprecedented scale and the near local extinction of wolves. Although capitalism almost led to the local extinction of wolves in the contiguous 48 US states, it also produced an educated, affluent urban class concerned with protecting endangered species. Unlike farmers and ranchers, this urbanized class does not view wildlife as a potential economic threat. The vast majority of contemporary Americans, i.e., 96%, do not engage in sport hunting, so most do not view apex predators as unwanted competitors for game species. Moreover, many individuals who belong to the urban affluent class, even those who do not engage in wildlife viewing or other forms of outdoor recreation, value biodiversity. Since the late twentieth century, this has resulted in the preservation of existing wolf populations and reintroducing wolves to some of their historical ranges. These trends are likely to continue in the coming decades. However, capitalism should not be viewed as a system that initially decimated wolf populations and eventually created an economic class that saved them. It is argued that, due to its growth imperative, if left unchecked, capitalism will ultimately destroy wolves and many other species that have been granted temporary reprieves from extinction.

This interpretive biography of Norman K. Denzin traces some of the important turns and moments of his intellectual development and prodigious publication. One focus includes his editorial role for the first 52 volumes of Studies in Symbolic Interaction (1978–2020), and how his vision for an inclusive community of qualitative researchers and interpretive scholars emerged and changed.

This chapter is a tribute to GOAT (Greatest of All Time) scholar/teacher/mentor, Norman K. Denzin. Honoring Denzin's use of song lyrics (2018a, 2015, 2011, 2008), I use a fishing theme. Why fishing? When asked to write a Festschrift, I immediately remembered Denzin's essay, Searching for Yellowstone (2003a). Though Denzin mentions fishing in an earlier work (1999a, p. 153), I identified with his story of his grandfather's love of fishing (p. 307). Later, I came to understand, through his stories and life experiences how something that was once unpleasant – fishing – became a sport that he loves. Denzin often employs song lyrics to show how theory and the site of memory influence poststructural, qualitative inquiry. His exceptional use of critical cultural and social theories, and exemplary performative autoethnographic teaching, writing and mentorship has influenced students and scholars since 1966 – the year I was born. Reflecting on Norman K. Denzin's body of work – emphasizing teaching and mentorship from 1998 to present – through fishing, seems fitting.

This paper aims to explore the important role boundaries play in back-office framing of environmental engagement. This is of particular interest because it is not clear how organizations in an industry without standardized environmental reporting navigate their boundaries behind the scenes and why they engage with the environment the way they do. This element of their environmental identity offers important insights into the emergence of sustainability reporting.

Guided by Miles and Ringham (2019) the authors conduct an ethnography of the Montana ski industry. The ethnography includes extensive on-site observations at nine Montana ski areas and interviews with 16 ski area executives, two regulators and a land development executive.

The authors find three key boundaries – accountability structure, degree of regulatory burden and impact measurement approach – that shape the back-office economic and environmental framing of ski executives (Goffman, 1959, 1974). From these back-office frames the authors identify four front-office cultural performances – community ecosystem, quantitative ownership, approval seeking and advocacy platform – that represent the environmental engagement strategies at these resorts.

Understanding the relationships between boundaries and environmental engagement is an important step in developing appropriate industry-wide environmental accountability and sustainability expectations. The study’s findings extend to other industries that are both highly dependent on the environment and are in the early stages of developing environmental reporting standards.

Ski resorts operate in an industry that is impacted by changes in the natural environment. The authors chronicle the process by which boundaries lead to framing which leads to environmental engagement in this weather-dependent industry. The authors explain the process of environmental identity building, the result of which both precedes environmental reporting and puts such reporting into context. In this sense, the authors show how boundaries are set and maintained in the ski resort industry, and how fundamental these boundaries are to the development of individual companies' environmental engagement strategies.

THE CAMERA EYE (1) ¹

Within the past 20 years hiking and backpacking have enjoyed rapid growth among Americans as favorite outdoor activities. From 1965 to 1977 the number of hikers almost tripled, from 9.9 million to 28.1 million, while national forest visitor days among hikers and mountaineers increased from 4 million in 1966 to 11 million in 1979. Accompanying this growth in interest has been a boom in books about the sport. These include both “how‐to‐do‐it” volumes and guides to specific geographical areas. Each year brings another spate of books, yet to this compiler's knowledge no bibliography of hiking guides to the Rocky Mountains, one of North America's premier outdoor regions, has yet been attempted. This bibliography is an effort to correct that situation.