This article develops the position that conservation police have evolved from narrowly focused and specialized law enforcement agencies responsible for protecting the privileged recreational activities and property of the ruling class in England (Hanawalt, 1988). In the United States, efforts to control citizens' treatment and use of natural resources subsequently evolved to become the responsibility of more generalist police departments, whose tasks included protecting the property, recreational interests, and commonly shared ecosystems of the polity. Thus, the state, not the privileged upper classes, has assumed the mantle of conserving and protecting natural resources for the benefit of the whole society. This change has resulted from a continuing socio-political evolution that has brought increasing democratization and egalitarianism to American society. This trend has, in turn, demanded organizational adjustments within the departments of conservation and more recently the departments of natural resources of the various States. The absorption of departments of conservation into the more comprehensive departments of natural resources during the 1990's has expanded both the responsibilities and the authority of conservation police. This has occurred without the requisite increase in funding, meaning that conservation police are overburdened with assigned duties they cannot effectively perform and which often are not directly related to their traditional specialized mandate. 33 references