CRATER LAKE Report: Battle Against Bark Beetles

Figure 18—Lodgepole pine limbed for the sun-curing treatment. Limbs are piled to be burned when conditions are safe, ca. 1929, Crater Lake National Park.

This brings us to the pivotal years of the war that had been waged since 1925. Keen, in December 1930, made a detailed report of the 1930 control operations. Before June 11 the work was confined to recleaning units treated in 1929. The work continued until July 8 on the middle fork-east fork plateau in heavy infestations. A total of 9,832 trees were treated, but 1,897 trees could not be treated before the beetles emerged (see footnote 1). F.C. Craighead, Chief of Forest Insect Investigations, Bureau of Entomology, came from Washington, DC, on July 21 to visit the outbreak with Keen. They found an additional 115 whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis Engelm.) and lodgepole pine at high elevations that still contained brood, so these trees were also treated to bring the total for the season to 9,947 trees (see footnote 1). Keen pointed out that lodgepole pine between 75 and 150 years old are very susceptible to the beetle. The estimates for the coming year were that there would be a total of 10,000 trees to treat. "The completion of this work should leave the lodgepole stands in very good shape except for an endemic infestation which should be watched for a few years and controlled if it develops active characteristics" (see footnote 1). An optimistic view in light of 10,000 trees needing treatment in 1931.

In October 1930, Keen wrote a letter to Craighead in Washington, DC, in which he outlined his control recommendations for 1931 before he completed his formal report. Keen for the first time advocated "...treating all of the epidemic infestation in the south half of the Park which I now feel is the wisest policy since the general situation has improved so materially in the past few seasons." [21] A strange statement in view of the continued rise in number of trees needing treatment since 1927. Keen also hoped the Park Service could allot $10,000 for the suppression work in 1931; a tidy sum in 1930 dollars (see footnote 1).

On October 21, Craighead replied, "Your plan for control work on the Crater [Crater Lake National Park], proposed in your letter of October 12, appears entirely satisfactory to me" (see footnote 21). Craighead went on to recommend "...that every effort be concentrated on the heavier groups of infestation and the outlying, more or less endemic type be left until last or allowed to go until another year" (see footnote 21). He felt there was enough experience to show that scattered infestation would not be an immediate threat. Patterson also replied to a letter from Keen, that is missing from the files, about some control unit designations. In the letter [22] was this sad paragraph,

Godfrey's death was certainly a blow to all who knew him. Coming so unexpectedly as it did, I was particularly shocked. He was a dandy fellow and a prince to work with. His habit of hiking off alone on any and all wild goose chases finally got him. He did the same thing when we were in the Park together in 1929. Always out alone with a mightly poor constitution to carry him thru. Both he, Patton, and several others caved-in the day we moved into the Park from the west entrance. Without a knowledge of snow and the individuals possibilities in bucking it, it is a real danger. Solinsky and I made the same kind of trip that Bill attempted, leaving Ft. Klamath at 7:30PM we arrived at Anna Spring at 1:30AM. I never attempted it again.

The following newspaper account of William Godfrey's misadventure and death was found in the Crater Lake headquarters files. [23]

BILL GODFREY

The death of William C. Godfrey, chief ranger of the Crater Lake Park service, in a blizzard near Anna Springs last night, has cast a cloud of gloom over the entire community.

"Bill" was a veteran of the park service, having held a responsible position at Yosemite before coming here. Before that time he had been a member of the U.S. Forest Service.

He was a man of fine character, well read, high minded and determined. When he set out to do a thing, he took a genuine pride in doing it. It was this quality so characteristic of the service to which he belonged which was responsible for his death.

Bill felt that he should be at Anna Spring camp. He tried to get through from Medford, but had to turn back. So he tried it from the south entrance, via Fort Klamath and, in spite of the unfavorable weather, he was determined not to turn back again.

* * *

It is easy to say Bill was foolhardy, that he overestimated his own strength and underestimated the strength of the elements. But such a judgment fails to take into account the code of the service to which he belonged, and the dominant elements of his character.

It is essentially the same code, and the same character, that led our forefathers on the successful conquest across the wilderness and our doughboys across the Hindenburg line. Bill Godfrey's tragedy is merely another example of the fact that there are heroes of peace as well as of war. The rewards for the latter far exceed the rewards of the former, but the qualities of courage and self sacrifice, behind them, are fundamentally the same.

The article goes on to say that Godfrey was 41 years old and had been chief ranger of Crater Lake National Park since April 1929. Previously he was assigned to Yosemite National Park for 2 years and before that 6 years in the Forest Service, including service with the Fremont National Forest in Lakeview, Oregon.

For some reason, known only to himself, Godfrey tried on foot to buck his way through deep snow to Anna Springs with only light clothing and no gloves and against the advice of people with whom he had talked just hours before by telephone at Fort Klamath. He collapsed just 2 miles short of Anna Springs and was found dying from exposure at 9 p.m. by a rescuer, Rudy Luecke. He lived for only several minutes after being found and tried vainly to say something to his rescuer. Significantly, the search party were all using skis so Godfrey's chances in the deep snow on foot were hopeless.

Bill Godfrey was particularly well liked by the entomologists and some time during his earlier work with the Forest Service in California he drew an appropriate cartoon of a bark cutting apparatus used for studying bark beetles. I found the cartoon during a search of the files at the Pacific Southwest Forest Research Station in Berkeley in August 1987 (cartoon on page 20).

Figure 8—Cartoon drawing by Chief Ranger Godfrey when he worked for the Forest Service in California in 1924. It pokes fun at entomologist Morrow's bark cutting machine and the effect it has on the beetles in the bark.

The year 1931 might best be described as the year the ax fell on Keen's neck. Keen's 1931 report of control activities is missing from the files, but according to Frank Solinsky, in charge of Park Service operations, work started on April 30. The Forest Service treated 1,020 trees east of the park. Snow and rain storms in the park lasted from June 13 to June 30, delaying the treatment by the solar-heat method considerably, but helping to ease the drought conditions of 1929 and early 1930. With bad weather and all, Solinsky reported 14,747 trees cut in the park that season. Solinsky continues, "In the last three years we have spent over $33,000 and cut 48,238 trees." [24] Solinsky was pessimistic about ever winning the battle unless a complete cleanup of the control units was done. Further, he recommended stopping the control efforts unless this approach was followed. Solinsky also mentions that W. Buckhorn of the Bureau of Entomology spent the whole season in the park helping on the control work (see footnote 24).

Walter J. Buckhorn started working for the Division of Forest Insect Investigations, Bureau of Entomology, in 1925. His earliest assignment was assisting F.P. Keen in spotting and mapping beetle-killed pine on the southern Oregon-northern California project. In 1930, he was given the task of surveying the infested areas of the park under Keen. He went on to a distinguished career as an entomologist in the Bureau of Entomology Portland laboratory. He was awarded the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Superior Service Award in 1956 for vision and leadership in pioneering and developing forest insect aerial surveys in Oregon and Washington. Buckhorn was a versatile and competent entomologist who came up through the ranks. He was a good-humored field companion who eased the rougher spots according to Keen. He was bitten by the flying bug; he resigned from the Bureau for a short time in the mid 1920s to attend an airplane mechanics school and attempted to start his own flying service. His continued interest in flying after he returned to Government service resulted in his development of the aerial survey techniques that led to his Department award. He retired from the Forest Service in 1962 after 37 years of Government service. He died in Portland, Oregon, on November 9, 1968. [25]

There is some correspondence missing from my files, but the treating crews were obviously finding more infested trees than they had been told were there. Park Superintendent E.C. Solinsky, in a May 1931 preliminary report, said a very serious infestation containing about 3,000 trees had been found in the southwest corner of the park. [26] In a June 8,1931, memo from Keen to Craighead, Keen tried to mollify Craighead's apprehension, alluded to in a letter of June 2, that the battle of the beetles in Crater Lake National Park was not going well at all. Keen writes several pages of rationale for the poor outcome of control work to date, especially a flare-up of new infestation in an unsuspected area. Keen assumes the full share of blame for not having located these new areas and wonders how big an area should be surveyed to prevent future surprise outbreaks. He finally suggests that all the park and all the adjacent National Forest lands be type mapped and surveyed for new beetle outbreaks, which he said could be accomplished most economically by taking aerial photographs of the area. [27] This aerial photography, if it had been approved would have been a massive pioneering type project and was an indication of Keen's innovative and technological bent.

Craighead's rather testy reply [28] arrived a few days later. He stated that he did not agree with Keen's optimistic outlook of certain infested areas given in an earlier letter to Solinsky. He generally disagreed with many of Keen's assessments of the situation and called for a meeting in the fall of representatives of the Park Service, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Entomology to devise some clear strategies and decide whether further protection is to be continued or the project abandoned. He pointed out to Keen that the Forest Service was only conducting control work in their stands to carry out their obligations to the Park Service. He agreed with Keen that a thorough survey of the park and surrounding forests should be made and doing some of this from the air was appropriate, but he nixed the idea of using aerial photo graphs to produce a type map. He closed the letter with this admonition,

We have failed so miserably on this project that it has reacted very unfavorably on our work in the region. The only alternative I have left is to now insist that you give the preparation of the survey and plan for next year's control full priority over everything else in your district. I am squarely placing the entire responsibility on you.

Craighead's strong words were in response to 6 years of optimistic reports from his field entomologists that the battle was nearly won. The trouble was that no one told the beetles. Craighead's letter also mentions mapping the outbreak from the air. Keen had come from the use of horse and buggy in 1914 to the air age in his fight against forest insects. Keen had actually been working on aerial survey techniques in California for several years, and an aerial survey had been flown over Yellowstone National Park that year according to a July 21, 1931, [29] letter from Craighead to A.E. Demaray of the National Park Service.

Keen's reply [30] to Craighead on July 17 makes a strong pitch for making a type map of the park and aerial mapping the park infestation even though Craighead did not feel such maps would be accurate enough. Keen promised to do his best even though he was shorthanded. He blamed his inability to forecast the course of the outbreak to the lack of a forest type map of the Park.

On September 2, 1931, Craighead wrote two letters to Keen. In one, [31] he shows pleasure that Keen's August report (not in my files) describes the beetle situation in the park as improving. He asks, "Do you think it would be possible, if the last remaining epidemic center of infestation can be cleaned up next year, to then put the responsibility of annual survey on the Park Service, as we are doing in other areas prior to appearance of epidemics?" The second letter also sounds like a sigh of relief and commends Frank Solinsky for his good work.

The reason for this good cheer comes out in Keen's reply [32] to Craighead on September 9, 1931. A major mistake had been made by the new Bureau man, Buckhorn. Keen states,

Your two letters of September 2 in regard to the Crater Lake project are received. When Buckhorn called me by long distance this spring and told me that they had found 10,000 more trees on the Crater and that Solinsky was wiring for more money, I assumed of course that another 'blow-up' had occurred. I must confess I was considerably taken back on visiting the area and seeing what an insignificant amount of infestation had caused all the stir. Buckhorn too feels considerably chagrined at all the excitement which his informal verbal report to Solinsky that "they had found lots of bug trees" caused. The new center is not over 500 acres in extent and contains about 1500 trees of the 1930 attack. There are without question 10,000 trees in the southwest corner of the Park, but there is lots of difference between having that number concentrated in one place or scattered over 25,000 acres.

Keen continues,

Supt. [E.C.] Solinsky and Frank Solinsky both believe that even one bug tree left in the Park is a potential menace and will undo all of the accomplishments of the control work. It is their idea that enough money should be secured this coming year to treat all the remaining infestation in the Park down to the last tree, or just as nearly as that is humanly possible. The theory of treating epidemic infestation and leaving endemic doesn't appeal to them, and although we have never gotten all the epidemic infestation as yet, it is hard to convince them that such a treatment would be satisfactory.

Keen agreed with Craighead's suggestion to turn surveys over to the Park, as follows (see footnote 32):

Your suggestion about putting the responsibility of the annual surveys on the Park Service under our general supervision has my hearty endorsement. In fact it is the plan we have been working under on the Crater in theory at least. Godfrey was supposed to assist me last season, but didn't have much time to give to it. This season Supt. Solinsky and I agreed that the survey should be a cooperative affair and he gave a lot of help on it. This next month when Buckhorn goes back to check up on the fall attacks, the new Chief Ranger, Frank Solinsky and two other spotters furnished by the Park Service will be assigned to assist him. It will then be largely a Park survey made under our general supervision. They all have a very high regard for Buckhorn on the Crater and he and Frank Solinsky, who has been placed in charge of the control work for the Park, work together very smoothly.

What was happening was that heavy centers of infestation were found on Forest Service and private lands around the park. Some of these areas (Sun Mountain, for example) were only 3 or 4 miles from the park boundaries—within flying distance for the beetles. So the entire beetle control question was much bigger than the park, and people were beginning to question if complete control of the outbreak in the park was feasible.

Letters continued to come from Craighead to Keen in September and October 1931 in the interest of nailing down this outbreak that was so embarrassingly difficult to control. In a letter of September 21, Craig head tells Keen, [33]

My advice on the Crater would be that 100% treatment be given on all areas where the infestation is grouped and thus aim to thoroughly clean such areas but do nothing on those areas where infestation is scattered and obviously endemic, i.e., where no grouping occurs and where infested trees are not thrifty or do not contain vigorous broods. If such a plan is adopted and all areas are surveyed for the next few years, at least by topographic methods, it should be possible to keep down all epidemic infestation. This however may mean some little work each year for some years to come but I am afraid that is what we are coming to in all lodge pole forests where protection is necessary without utilization.

Craighead recognized, based on a concurrent similar outbreak in Yellowstone National Park, that the battle was a holding action at best. In October, Craighead acknowledged receipt of a report from Keen and Beal on a survey of the park and surrounding area. The report is missing from my files; evidently the number of infested trees was substantial, and there was concern for a newly infested area on Forest Service and private land in the Sun Mountain area. [34]

A report by Keen dated January 25, 1932, summarized control accomplishments in 1931 and made recommendations for 1932 work. [35] The report made some amazing statements considering all that had transpired. For instance Keen stated in his summary:

Figure 21—Several hundred large ponderosa pine infested with western pine beetle near the south entrance were also treated in 1929, Crater Lake National Park.

Ever since control work started on Crater Lake National Park, the treated areas have been menaced with neighboring infestation and the threat of beetle migration from heavily infested centers. In the early years the heavy centers were north of the Lake, but gradually these have been working around to the south and playing out. Control work during the last few years has had less migration of beetles to contend with. At no time, except possibly at the very beginning of this epidemic would it have been possible to wipe out all possible sources of infestation except at a tremendous and doubtfully justifiable expense.

The policy, which has been followed of repeatedly cleaning out the infestation in the recreational areas south of the Lake, and in the last few years of extending this work to take in all neighboring epidemic centers, is in my estimation the only feasible policy which would have been adopted. Far from considering the Crater work a failure, I believe it is the most successful which has ever been undertaken in the control of this beetle under the circumstances of poor isolations which this work has had to face.

Repeatedly and consistently the control work has brought about reductions averaging 75 percent, in spite of the threat of nearby infestation. A record which convinces me that local control is successful, provided sudden and concentrated migrations do not occur. Only in 1926 are we sure that such a migration occurred on the Crater when the beetles swept into the Munson plateau after it had been thoroughly treated. Of course, as soon as it becomes financially feasible to wipe out all sources of migration it should be done, and at the present time this comes nearer to being possible than in any previous year.

It is estimated that there are 50,000 infested trees within the National Park boundaries and an additional 115,000 infested trees within a ten-mile zone surrounding the Park. But most of this infestation is either endemic or weakly epidemic in old beetle swept areas, so that only the real epidemic centers would appear to be possible sources of migration and need to be considered in any control plans.

Keen still did not recognize that the beetle outbreak was about as irresistible as the ocean tides. As long as extensive, over-mature stands of lodgepole pine were present, the beetle was sure to follow. The fact that the park and surrounding Forest Service lands contained thousands of acres of such susceptible forests made the control policy pursued for 6 years of questionable effectiveness.

In 1931, the Park Service treated 15,767 trees at a cost of $11,027. The recommendation for 1932 was to treat about 23,370 trees in the park and an additional 21,400 trees on surrounding National Forest lands (see footnote 35). This was gaining ground in retrograde and reminds one of military predictions made by generals during the Vietnam and other wars.

Keen's rationale for the increased numbers of trees treated each year follows (see footnote 35):

This project is a splendid example of what can be accomplished in beetle control under what might be called the "local unit" clean-up plan as contrasted with the "extensive area" or "isolated unit" plan of control. No one questions but what the treatment of all the infestation which might reinfest an area to be protected is the safest course to pursue but at the same time the most costly, as the work in the Yellowstone Park region so very well illustrates, The question then arises as to whether anything less than a complete clean-up of all the infestation in the surrounding country will bring about satisfactory results.

The work on Crater Lake National Park was started in 1925 to determine this point—the feasibility of "local unit" control. Some very satisfactory results were secured but there was evidence of some reinfestation filtering back into the controlled areas each year and in 1926 a concentrated migration from north of the lake into the cleaned Munson plateau unit which completely wiped out the results of the work in that area. Thus control work under this plan prevented the building up of an epidemic in treated units but did not prevent heavy migrations. The net result has been that the protected areas south of the lake have been largely saved from the fate of the unprotected stands even though losing considerable timber through repeated light infestations and control work.

Since 1929 the threat of heavy migrations has been much less as the beetle epidemic waned on the unprotected areas. Then the plan was adopted of going out and mopping up all epidemic centers within the Park and on nearby National Forest lands that threatened the protected areas. With the extension of this program the control results on the protected areas improved; showed little more infestation than might be accounted for from local sources; but in no year have all the outlying epidemic areas been reached. This change in program increased the number of trees treated annually from about 3700 trees before 1929 to an average of 16,800 trees annually Since then. This does not mean that the epidemic has been increasing in spite of the control work, but simply that the area has been expanded each year to take in more of the threatening outlying areas.

Keen's statements were blatant rationalizing and partially true, but the fact was that, sooner or later, the beetles attacked every mature stand of lodgepole pine in the park, whether controlled in the "local unit" plan or not.

I remember my own experiences battling mountain pine beetle in Yosemite National Park during a concurrent lodgepole pine needleminer (Coleotechnites milleri) out break in 1953 to 1958. In 1953, I surveyed a small area of mountain pine beetle outbreak in Conness Basin that contained about 2,050 infested lodgepole pine on 500 acres. [36] For the next 4 years the Park Service, with my misguided technical assistance, attempted to control the outbreak on an ever increasing area until thousands of acres and more than 10 times the number of trees were involved. Because most of the trees were over mature and all were weakened by lodgepole needle miner defoliation, it was a losing battle for the managers and the beetles eventually won.