A widely held perception of acute environmental crisis in Khumbu, Nepal, led Western‐trained resource managers to join His Majesty's Government in the planning, establishment, and ongoing management of Sagarmatha National Park. An underlying sense of urgency led the park's planners to the hasty imposition of imported conservation ideology and techniques. Park planning and management was based on Western models and predicated on an apparently erroneous assessment of the nature, degree, and pace of environmental deterioration in the high Himalaya. National Park management initially failed to address actual environmental problems and undermined indigenous resource management practices.