Craters of the Moon Administrative History

Chapter 6:
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

OVERVIEW OF NPS TRENDS IN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Resource management in the National Park Service has followed several distinct trends. For the agency's first several decades, Directors Stephen T. Mather and Horace M. Albright promoted the park system for its scenic beauty. The thrusts of their policies were protection-oriented and reflected efforts to accommodate the public and develop a political constituency. During this period, manipulation of wildlife constituted the most common management policy. Although recommendations by Park Service wildlife biologist George M. Wright in the early 1930s began to alter the agency's practice of predator control, ecological management was still viewed as conflicting with development needs. The development of sound scientific resource management policies lay dormant following Wright's death in 1936 and the nation's entrance into World War II. During the postwar years, the boom in Park System visitation and the Mission 66 program, begun in the mid-1950s, brought the poor conditions of the parks into sharp focus. Predating the environmental polices of the National Environmental Policy Act, Mission 66 emphasized new facilities with little consideration for their effects on the environment. To some observers, the program appeared to benefit only the visitor through the expansion of roads and the construction of new facilities, and ignore resource management issues and scientific research. [1] To others, it reflected great strides in resource management, particularly where, for example, some visitor accommodations were phased out of environmentally sensitive areas, and the areas allowed to return to their natural states. [2]

In the 1960s, resource management policies began to exhibit a shift from the Mission 66 emphasis on visitor accommodations to environmental protection. Credited with having the greatest effect on park management was the 1963 publication by a team of scientists titled Wildlife Management in the National Parks. Commonly referred to as the Leopold Report, the study stressed that the agency should consider the composite whole of park ecosystems and their processes in management decisions, with a primary qualification being the preservation of original conditions. A highlight of the environmental movement was the 1964 passage of the Wilderness Act, bringing to a close ten years of lobbying by conservation groups, and initiating studies and designations for wilderness within the National Park System.

The environmental movement was further strengthened in the 1960s and 1970s by the support of the general public, which was becoming increasingly aware of and sensitive to environmental issues, including human impacts and the importance of ecosystems. As one historian of the movement has observed, the "major national parks came to be valued both as important parts of the global ecosystem and as unique, distinct areas where nature-altering human activities must not be allowed to take place." [3] In other words, environmental awareness was assuming a global perspective. Parks were not only scenic wonders but also environmental barometers, capable of interpreting the state of our environment through scientific research. The 1978 Redwood Act reaffirmed the NPS responsibility for preservation and committed it to this new understanding.

Trends in the 1980s continued to reflect this emphasis on natural processes, with a greater emphasis on a holistic management approach. Other emphases concentrated on ongoing resource threats, especially from external pressures, such as residential developments, and commercial and industrial ventures. The 1980 "State of the Parks" report recommended new policies for baseline resource inventories and monitoring in order to understand and mitigate resource deterioration. Today, Park Service resource management thrusts continue to focus on scientific research and emphasize the preservation of park processes, looking beyond the park's artificial political boundaries to the greater ecosystem that determines whether the park will be preserved. [4]

The monument's principal features as presented in a tourist map from the late 1930s,
one of the few maps identifying the "Devils Sewer" and "lava snake" just south of the campground.