The National Park Service Trivia Quiz

Answer: 1872

Yellowstone was created in 1872. Being the first of its kind, there was no National Park Service in existence at the time of its creation. As such, it was administered directly by the Department of the Interior.

Answer: 1916

The National Park Service Organic Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Wilson after intensive lobbying on the part of Stephen Mather, a wealthy industrialist. Mather went on to become the first director of the USNPS, serving until 1929.

Answer: an arrowhead

The logo is shaped like a stone arrowhead. The background color is brown, and it includes "National Park Service" in white letters on the top right, a mountain and stream in the middle, and green grass with a green redwood tree and white buffalo on the bottom.

Answer: national wildlife refuges

National wildlife refuges are managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which is also contained within the Department of the Interior.

Answer: 84,000,000

There are also about four million acres of lakes and oceans. On these 84 million acres there are about 43,000 miles of shoreline, 17,000 miles of trails, and 85,000 miles of rivers and streams.

Answer: appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate

The only two elected positions in the federal executive branch are the President and Vice President. There is no board of trustees for the National Park Service. The Secretary of the Interior (also appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate) typically has a significant amount of input in who becomes the Director of the NPS, given that the NPS falls under DoI.

Answer: Antiquities Act

Passed in 1906, the Antiquities Act allows the President to create national park units via executive order. The National Park Service organic Act created the National Park Service in 1916. The Endangered Species Act and Wilderness Act were both passed in 1964, and while neither allows for the creation of a national park under their authority, both are very relevant to the management of park units across the country.

Local opposition to federal protection of public lands has resulted in revisions of the Antiquities Act to require that its application in Wyoming and Alaska be subject to congressional approval.

Answer: 43 million acres

43 million acres of National Park Service lands (about 56% of NPS land) are managed as wilderness areas under the auspices of the Wilderness Act of 1964. Wilderness designation is a higher level of protection that bans the use of mechanized or motorized travel and seeks to preserve an area in as untouched a state as possible.

Official wilderness designation carries with it management requirements that are sometimes deemed too burdensome or costly to justify. As a result, there is a significant amount of NPS land that is "suitable for wilderness designation" but not technically managed as such.

It is important to note that simply being in a national park does not mean you are in the wilderness. Lots of parks have roads that run through them, and there are numerous developed facilities within parks to facilitate access.

Answer: Alaska

All of these states have national parks, however, Alaska has vast swaths of national park land that dwarf that of any other state. The size and remoteness of most of the Alaska parks makes them unique in the National Park System.

Answer: hunting

The authorizing legislation for a very select few national parks makes allowances for limited subsistence hunting in order to protect the tradional patterns of life in areas adjacent to these parks. Examples include Kobuk Valley National Park and Wragell - St. Elias National Park in Alaska. Even in these parks, hunting by the general public is strictly prohibited.

This is the main difference between a national park and a national preserve. In national preserves, hunting is generally allowed under the prevailing state regulations for the area.