The GWS is a nonprofit association of researchers, managers, administrators, educators, and other professionals who work on behalf of the scientific and heritage values of protected areas. When many people think of parks, they think of them exclusively in terms of being vacation destinations and recreation areas. Yet every park also carries with it scientific or heritage values (or both). Large natural protected areas are often, for example, sites of important environmental research, natural resource management activities, inventory and monitoring projects, and so forth. Protected cultural areas, such as historic sites and cultural landscapes, embody important and irreplaceable material (and non-material) facets of history, archeology, traditional use, and many other forms of cultural heritage. These are the functions the George Wright Society supports by encouraging better research, resource management, and public education in protected areas.
Over the last century, research and management in parks, protected areas and culture sites have evolved into a unique profession. In no other is there such a diverse community of individuals, from such a wide spectrum of disciplines, working toward common goals. This reflects the rich variety of values expressed by cultural and natural parks, public forests and rangelands, historic and other cultural sites, wildlife refuges, marine reserves, and other protected areas. For protected areas to be effective, historians must confer with natural resource managers, foresters with coastal biologists, archeologists with interpreters, area managers and supervisors with data specialists--and all of these with the public.
The George Wright Society was founded in 1980 to foster this sort of communication and bolster a sense of shared purpose in what can easily seem a fragmented profession. Why is this important? Because the challenges facing protected areas today are so complex that they overwhelm any single discipline. Unless we can communicate with each other and with the rest of the world, protected areas will not be successful.
OUR GOAL:
The Society strives to be the premier organization connecting people, places, knowledge, and ideas to foster excellence in natural and cultural resource management, research, protection, and interpretation in parks and equivalent reserves.
The GWS pursues its objectives by:
The GWS’s work plan for 2008–2012 is outlined in a brief Strategic Statement.
The backbone of the GWS is its members, which currently number about 750 people and institutions. We invite you to join in! Anyone who supports our goals may become a member. Dues are modest, and by joining you’ll be part of a community of professionals and concerned citizens who care deeply about parks.
About your privacy. At various places on this site, we ask for personal information from you for membership, publication sales, or conference registration purposes. As a matter of policy, the George Wright Society does not make commercial use of the personal information you give us. On occasion we share (at no charge) our membership and conference mailing lists (e-mail and mailing addresses only--never phone/fax numbers) with other kindred nonprofit organizations for one-time mailings. We also use information you provide as the basis for referrals from our membership database, although you can withhold your name from such referrals if you wish. Otherwise, the information you provide is kept private.
Your comments and inquiries are always welcome, whether or not you are a GWS member. We do our best to answer promptly. Contact us at:
The George Wright Society
P.O. Box 65
Hancock, Michigan 49930-0065 USA
Telephone: 906-487-9722 | Fax: 906-487-9405