Conservation and Recreation in Protected Areas

‘Yun Ma’s fascinating book examines how China and the United States manage national parks and other protected areas. The study of China is especially important because the various classes of protected areas there are relatively new and little understood. Her account of traveling to southwestern China to visit Pudacuo National Park, the country’s first, demonstrates how even local officials often know far less about such protected areas than we would expect.’

John C. Nagle, University of Notre Dame, USA

‘This important comparative study of how US and Chinese legal institutions address national park recreation controversies offers valuable insights into the role law, politics, and economics play in shaping each nation’s nature conservation policies, while providing a realistic assessment of the many challenges park managers face in both countries.’

Robert B. Keiter, University of Utah, USA and author of To Conserve Unimpaired: The Evolution of the National Park Idea

‘The "Protected Area" is a very important field of environmental law in China, but one somehow lacking due consideration. This book presents one of the earliest comprehensive studies on protected areas from a legal perspective. By comparing the situation in China with that in the US, the author provides many constructive suggestions for improving Chinese law.’

Tianbao Qin, Wuhan University, China

‘This book is a remarkable achievement in enhancing our understanding of how the law can be instrumental in conserving natural beauty. Yun Ma’s in-depth study of two large jurisdictions, China and the US, convincingly demonstrates that this can be achieved by an aggregation of various branches of law, not just environmental law but also administrative law, criminal law, property law and international law.’

Nico Schrijver, Leiden University, The Netherlands