George Wright Society

The GWS is named in the honor of George Meléndez Wright. Wright was born in San Francisco, California to a Salvadoran mother and a U.S. American father, both of whom died when he was still young. He was raised by a great aunt, Cordelia Ward Wright, who encouraged his fascination with the natural world and his interest in science. Throughout his childhood, Wright cultivated a practice of observing and recording the habits of wildlife, particularly birds.

At the age of 16, Wright started his studies in forestry and vertebrate zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. During his time at the university, Wright spent his summer vacations exploring California, the West, and beyond for recreation as well as research. While still a student at Berkeley, Wright accompanied one of his mentors, Joseph Scattergood Dixon, the Economic Mammologist for Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, on a collecting trip up to Alaska, sponsored by a wealthy East Coast naturalist, in search of the eggs of the elusive surfbird. The trip was a success, with Wright becoming the first person to successfully locate a surfbird's nest.

In 1927, Wright entered into the National Park Service and joined the staff of Yosemite National Park as Assistant Park Naturalist, working under Carl Parcher Russell. Through this work as well as his time spent in national parks throughout the west, Wright became very concerned about what he would come to call “the problems caused by conflict between man and animal through joint occupancy of the park areas.” In 1929, with the help of Joseph Dixon, Wright convinced then National Park Service Director Horace Albright to approve a survey of the wildlife and wildlife issues in the national parks in the western U.S. The survey was a ground-breaking project which took root during the early years of the Great Depression; Wright himself funded the survey and the salaries for his two colleagues, Dixon and Benjamin Hunter Thompson.

The results were published in 1932 as Fauna of the National Parks of the United States, a Preliminary Survey of Faunal Relations in National Parks. Their follow-up publication, rounding out the two part "Fauna" series, Wildlife Management in the National Parks was published in 1934 and was soon adopted as official National Park Service policy. For the first time, the survey and reports established science as the basis for wildlife conservation in American national parks.

In 1933, Wright became the first chief of the newly-formed Wildlife Division of the Park Service. Under his leadership, and with the aid of Civilian Conservation Corp funding, each of the national parks began to survey and evaluate the status of wildlife on an ongoing basis in order to identify urgent problems especially in regards to restoration, conflict management, and rare or endangered species. In February of 1936, Wright died in an automobile accident at the age of 31 near Deming, New Mexico, while serving on a commission establishing new parks along the Mexican border. Had he lived, Wright likely would have become one of America’s most influential conservationists

The GWS was founded in 1980 by Robert M. Linn and Theodore Sudia, both of whom served in the position of chief scientist of the U.S. National Park Service. The society was created in response to a need voiced during the first and second national conferences on science in the U.S. national parks (1976 and 1979, respectively): namely, for an independent nonprofit professional association to exchange and synthesize information useful to natural and cultural resource management. [1]

Membership in the GWS is open to anyone who shares its objectives. Most members come from the U.S. and Canada, with other individuals scattered across countries outside of North America. As of 2011, the GWS has 980 members. Although named in honor of a scientist, from the beginning the GWS has been interdisciplinary: members come from a wide variety of fields, such as archaeology, biology, history, social science, air and water quality, environmental ethics, etc. The interdisciplinary nature of the GWS distinguishes it from professional societies focused on particular subjects.

The GWS is concerned with parks, protected areas, and cultural sites anywhere in the world. These three overlapping terms cover a broad array of places, both “cultural” and “natural,” managed by different entities under a variety of designations:

• parks at all levels: national/federal, state/provincial, county, and city
• historic, archaeological, and other cultural sites; cultural landscapes; protected landscapes/seascapes
• research areas and designated wilderness within national and state forests; other protected natural areas
• national and state/provincial wildlife refuges, and other similar protected public lands
• natural and cultural areas and sites administered by tribal nations and/or indigenous people; community-conserved areas; sacred natural sites
• marine protected areas; estuarine, freshwater, and other aquatic sanctuaries
• private land-trust reserves

The GWS also encompasses disciplines and activities that link with or otherwise support the work of parks, such as GIS and museum work.

The two main activities of the GWS are both related to the sharing of interdisciplinary information. It organizes the U.S.’s largest professional conference in the field, the George Wright Society Conference on Parks, Protected Areas, and Cultural Sites, held every two years; typically, over 1,000 people attend. Recent conferences have included sessions on inventory and monitoring,[2] remote sensing,[3] wilderness,[4] climate change,[5] and cultural heritage interpretation.[6] Between 1981 and 2018, the society published The George Wright Forum: the society's journal on parks, protected areas, and cultural sites. Issues focused on such topics as environmental history and U.S. national parks,[7] civic engagement,[8] integrating science and management,[9] and the 100th anniversary of Parks Canada.[10] In January of 2020, the GWS teamed up with The UC Berkeley Institute for Parks, People, and Biodiversity to found the Parks Stewardship Forum. The Parks Stewardship Forum, "explores innovative thinking and offers enduring perspectives on critical issues across the whole spectrum of place-based heritage management and stewardship. It is the only professional conservation journal with an interdisciplinary focus, publishing insights from all fields related to parks, protected areas, cultural sites, and other forms of place-based conservation."[11]

The GWS promotes greater diversity in the parks professions through three programs: the George Melendez Wright Student Travel Scholarship aimed at minority students, and a Native Participant Travel Grant Program, aimed at Native people from North America, both of which are given to enable attendance at the GWS's conference; and Park Break, a week-long, in-park seminar where graduate students learn about research and resource management issues in the host park.

Through the GWS Awards Program, the society recognizes achievements in Natural Resources, Cultural Resources, Social Science, and Communications, as well as lifetime accomplishments in any of the park-related professions.

The GWS offers a daily news digest, Parkwire, that provides links to research and resource management news from parks, protected areas, and cultural sites around the world.

• George Wright Society website
• U.S. Public Broadcasting System page on George Melendez Wright