A National Park Service historian who played a key role in prompting Congress to boost funding for natural resource management and scientific research in the national parks will speak at the University of Colorado at Boulder on March 12.
Richard Sellars of Santa Fe, N.M., will speak on "Past Perfect?: Historic Preservation in the National Park System" at 4 p.m. in the Wolf Law Building, room 207. The inaugural event in the Randy Jones Memorial Lecture Series is free and open to the public. The lecture is sponsored by the CU-Boulder Center of the American West.
Sellars is the author of "Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History," published by Yale University Press in 1997, which was the chief catalyst for a nearly $500 million, multiyear budget initiative to revitalize natural resource management and science in the national parks. He currently is preparing a companion study on the history of managing historic and prehistoric sites in the national park system.
The Randy Jones Memorial Lecture Series was created by CU-Boulder's Center of the American West, in collaboration with Rocky Mountain National Park, as a tribute to former National Park Service Deputy Director Randy Jones. Jones served as superintendent of Rocky Mountain National Park from 1995 to 2002.
"Dedicated to the well-being of the national parks, Randy Jones set the standard for public service," said history Professor Patty Limerick, chair of the center's board. "We want the lecture series named in his honor to widen and deepen the ways in which the Center of the American West can be useful to public officials, giving them a sounding board and a sense of their larger place in history. Dick Sellars' long record of thinking affectionately and critically about the parks and their management makes him the perfect speaker to launch this series."
Sellars also will speak at Rocky Mountain National Park on March 13 at 2 p.m. in the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center.
For more information call the CU-Boulder Center of the American West at (303) 492-4879 or visit .