Abstract: Governance of natural protected area is one of the key points in ecological civilization building, and government-dominant governance is the main mode of managing natural protected area. National Wild and Scenic Rivers System (NWSRS) of the United States of America is the earliest river protected system in the world, and its governance mode is the representative of the river protection. On the basis of the framework of the protected area management system, using in-depth interview and comparison, we explored the governance mode of NWSRS. The results show: the governance mode of NWSRS has obvious centralization characteristics in three aspects of legal system, institutional governance and property rights, and also has decentralization characteristics in terms of resource ownership, governance subject and financial support. Its governance is a non-fully federal government governance mode. Those, established and managed by river, respecting rights and moderately decentralizing, maintaining large patterns and changing details, are the innovation of a fully centralized governance mode represented by National Parks System. China's governance on protected areas adopts a "sub-sector governance" mode, which is quite different from the "multi-sector governance" mode of non-fully federal government governance mode. Drawing lessons from WSRS's incomplete centralized governance mode, we can provide references for Chinese Natural Protected Land System in terms of selecting governance types, respecting rights, changing responsibilities and so on.