Craters of the Moon Administrative History

Chapter 6:
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Resource Management At Craters Of The Moon:
NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: CONTROL OF EXOTIC SPECIES

While management of the monument's flora concentrates mostly on mitigating impacts from livestock grazing, control of exotic vegetation has remained an ongoing management issue to address. Numerous non-native plants and plant pests are present at the monument, yet none has warranted the intensive control measures undertaken over thirty years ago with the attempts to exterminate dwarf mistletoe on the monument's limber pines. [139] The Mistletoe Eradication Program at Craters was the first of its kind in Western Region, and both during and after its operation raised substantial criticism from inside and outside the Park Service. Between 1961 and 1967, the program operated in some of the monument's most heavily visited sites and destroyed thousands of trees. It forms one of the monument's most controversial activities, exhibiting the Park Service's changing principles in resource management, those based on manipulation and those on ecology.

The program's antecedents date to at least the early 1940s. In his September 1940 inspection, Forester Edward L. Joy investigated the possibility of control measures for white pine blister rust control on the monument's limber pine and ribes plants. Joy recommended that no control programs were necessary because of a variety of factors such as location, climate, and forest health. Periodic inspections would be enough to prevent any rust advance. In passing, Joy noted the abundance of the mistletoe parasite, pointing out that there were no negative effects associated with it. "A small amount of branch and tree kill by this agent was observed but the usual result appears to be stunting and deformation." What is also insightful is that the forester placed a high degree of value on the limber pine forest. Scenically,

the pine is of great importance as a monotony-breaking cover on the lava and cinder formations....In this capacity its irregular occurrence at from only one or two to possibly 200 trees of all sizes per acre only adds to the interest of the area. The extreme treeless cinder mounds with the appearance of huge [sic], groves of gnarled limber pines adjacent on the lower slopes, and river of barren lava rock below the pines are unique phenomena occurring throughout the area. [140]

A decade later conditions remained mostly the same. On April 5, 1951, pathologist John C. Gynn reported that his sampling of the monument's limber pine and ribes bushes was free of white pine blister rust infection. Concern over blister rust--this time expressed by Superintendent Aubrey Houston--proved to be unwarranted, yet again, mistletoe abundance was noted as the only significant problem. No control was considered in the 1952 master plan draft, because even though the parasite was present, it was widely scattered. [141]

Another decade passed before the Park Service determined that the parasite deserved control measures. On June 7, 1961, in response to Superintendent Floyd Henderson's request, Regional Forester John Mahoney, accompanied by two forest pathologists from the United States Forest Service at Ogden, Utah, inspected the monument's dwarf mistletoe infection in order "to recommend a program for controlling this parasite." They all agreed that control measures were necessary and viable. The "presence of limber pine in this habitat is most unique. Ordinarily it is found as scattered individuals at timber line or on rocky exposed ridges and knolls surrounded by other coniferous species. Here it grows on cinder cones and barren lava flows and at elevations below other coniferous trees."

Moreover, the parasite was located mostly in dense pockets, and healthy stands of trees could be saved through selective removal and pruning of infected pines. Following the inspection, the team outlined a "modest" control program covering a period of fifteen years for selected sites along the loop drive and Broken Top spur road. [142]

On September 11, Assistant Director Hillory Tolson approved the eradication program. By mid-October Henderson had completed his preliminary survey and cost estimates, and had established thirty-four control stands of varying size, totaling 510 acres and containing an estimated seventy-four hundred infected trees. Ninety percent of the mature trees would be killed. Where natural recovery seemed unlikely, Henderson believed that artificial seeding and planting would be required. [143]

On July 12, 1962, Superintendent Henderson's successor, Merle Stitt, received funding and authorization to carry out mistletoe removal. Regional Director Lawrence C. Merriam advised Superintendent Stitt that the project "should be carried out as experimental in nature," and to this end he recommended that two plots be set aside, one heavily infested and the other free of infestation, to act as standards. In addition, the Park Service was to evaluate the program every three years for a period of twenty-five to thirty years to determine if the program was successful. [144]

Tree removal, however, turned out to be anything but experimental and cautious. During 1962 and 1963, workers eliminated an excess of six thousand trees mostly by poisoning, girdling and felling, in addition to excessively pruning numerous others. For all intents and purposes revegetation failed. By 1964 only fifty-two of the estimated two thousand limber pine seedlings had grown in a Forest Service nursery, thus leaving regeneration to natural processes. [145]

Monument workers prune misletoe from limber pine, ca. 1962.
(Photo courtesy Glenn Hinsdale)

Forestry Versus Ecology

Where earlier superintendents had been content, it seems, to condone such a severe program, Superintendent Daniel Davis was not. Davis assumed office during the height of the eradication program, on April 14, 1963. He brought with him a background in both blister rust and mistletoe control projects from other parks; that experience helped cement his cynicism regarding eradication's success. When he arrived, he thought "what a disaster." Slash piles both burning and ready to burn confronted the visitor. [146] Between January 22 and March 23, 1964, Davis engaged in a point-by-point argument with Region Four staff over the mistletoe project, stressing the need for an ecological approach to management rather than manipulative policy.

Believing eradication to be overmanipulation of the resource, he recommended that "a moratorium on aggressive control work should be called until sufficient [ecological] research has been done to justify these drastic measures...." Davis calculated that given the logic of the program, the number of trees already cut, and the number infected the outcome could result in deforestation of the monument. The current forestry practices, Davis contended, simplified the matter by destroying the infected trees. From "an ecological standpoint it is very complex and few if any of the answers are known" regarding the long-term environmental effects of the tree removal program. An ecological approach would fulfill this need. The pines, it was thought, ranged from three hundred to fifteen hundred years in age, and they appeared to have lived with the mistletoe without serious damage for many decades at least, evidence which seemed to counter the justification for the eradication program. To Davis, the situation had reached a crisis point and demanded a new perspective. After all, he asked, "which generation should have preference--this one or one 500 years from now?" [147]

While lobbying to stop the program, Davis continued to oversee eradication of trees. He preferred poisoning (begun in 1963) to felling, which left the "appearance of Attila's wintering grounds." Visitors viewed the unsightly logging operation and the downed trees and slash piles. Burning killed sensitive vegetation on the cinder cones, and logging vehicles left permanent troughs on the slopes. As the lesser of two evils, poisoning left the land looking more natural; the dead trees whitened and appeared as if killed by lava flows. Snags cast a better image than stumps. [148]

As part of the Mistletoe Control Project, slash piles were burned, often in full view of visitors.
(CRMO Museum Collection)

In response to Davis' request for a moratorium and ecological research, Western Region defended its actions and went toe-to-toe with the superintendent over points of scientific knowledge and interpretation, and in doing so denied his request. Assistant Regional Director of Operations Keith Neilson told Davis that the regional office had carefully analyzed the situation. In general, policy came down to a question of activity versus inactivity. Without control measures, it was believed that possibly all rather than some of the trees would be lost. Elimination of infected mature trees would allow younger limber pines to thrive. In the language of the Leopold Report, the limber pine was part of the monument's "natural scene," and it was "the policy and responsibility of the Service to protect and insure the perpetuation of this important flora in at least the limited areas designated for control." [149] Therefore, biological manipulation would provide for the long-term as called for by Davis.

Assistant Director Neilson pointed out some discrepancies in Davis' data as a means to counter the superintendent's allegations. Neilson noted that the control area made up only one percent of the monument's acreage, thus lessening the impact of complete forest loss. He also inferred that Davis was rather naive to think that control measures were unnecessary. Even if the trees had lived with the parasite for one or two hundred years, the latest forest research recommended "some type of management or control." While the regional office agreed that Davis' call for ecological research was a sound suggestion, they foresaw no other approach to the issue. Regional specialists were at a loss to understand the superintendent's meaning of "ecological balance." Dwarfmistletoe might be part of the ecological process, contributing, for example, to the natural succession of a forest to sagebrush-grass ecosystem, but the parasite represented "an even more drastic alteration of the ecology than the control" program itself, something the agency could not condone. [150]

These points are significant not only because they support the denial of Davis' request for a moratorium, but also because they reveal how administrators lacked an understanding of the monument's resources, and how rifts in communication between the regional office and a distant park site influenced decisions. The regional office did arrange for Regional Forester Mahoney to go over the program in person with Davis during a site visit, yet Mahoney, for reasons both personal and professional, avoided encountering Davis on his scheduled inspection. [151]

Davis was ordered to complete the major phase of the program that year, and rather than contest the directive, he capitulated. However, he rejected the notion that he and his staff were less than professional in their concern. "[O]ur thinking is based on what we believe to be solid scientific foundation and not merely the maudlin bleating of a purist based on imaginary principles." Davis stressed that it was important for the regional office to understand that while the control area represented 1 percent of the monument's vegetation, it did represent about 95 percent "of the total vegetated area the visitor sees and uses." He also pointed out that region's plan to replace limber pine with Douglas fir in places where Douglas fir did not grow naturally would alter the monument's flora, perhaps even more than tree removal. These and other aspects of the plan, he maintained, demonstrated the program's lack of forethought and shortsightedness. His pessimism was born out of such distinctions. [152]

Although Davis was not successful in ending the mistletoe program, it was phased out several years after his departure in 1964. No new tree destruction occurred after 1963, for example, only follow-up maintenance and pruning. [153] Regional office officials, Acting Assistant Regional Director John G. Lewis and Forester John Mahoney, pronounced the program a success after separate inspections in 1965 and 1966, citing new tree growth as evidence. Although Mahoney recommended deferring more maintenance work until 1968, Superintendent Roger Contor resisted attempts to begin eradication practices again. Agreeing with Davis, and most superintendents since, Contor thought that the program was "totally stupid." And when drafting the 1966 resource management plan, the superintendent and his staff insisted "on wording that makes solid research a prerequisite to plant pest control." Monument personnel preferred language that said "diseases or plant pests which threaten major portions of the vegetative cover shall be controlled by methods which do not greatly effect [sic] other elements of the original scene." "We do frankly fear the all-too-common control of this-or-that forest pest which leaves a greater disturbance to the landscape than the pest itself." [154] In this case, the eradication program was the most glaring example, and its continuation was postponed indefinitely, pending an extended period of observation and research. [155]

In December 1967, Superintendent Paul Fritz reported that the Park Service was coming under increasing public scrutiny and criticism for its handling of the mistletoe program, and stated that the program's future would be decided by a current study. Biologist Karl Urban's report on the mistletoe problem at the monument, finished in 1968, demonstrated that eradication had failed to curtail the parasite, and that the trees had been infected more than two hundred years prior to the program. [156] These findings thus confirmed what Davis and others had maintained, that the limber pine were able to live with the mistletoe, and a long-range approach sensitive to ecological processes was the better way to manage the mistletoe infection. Following the report's publication, the program was scuttled.

In the end, Davis' worst fears of total deforestation never came to be. Limber pine have reseeded from the remaining trees, and small trees cover former stands. Nevertheless, ramifications of the project have cropped up as recent resource management concerns. Limber pine snags, the standing dead from the eradication program, present safety hazards, and thus constitute an important focus in the monument's hazard tree program initiated in 1987. The proposal to reintroduce porcupine is also tied directly to the health of the limber pine forest, which is a key habitat for the animal. And there is the potential for two exotic birds, the starling and the sparrow, both of which are currently uncommon, to be attracted to the cavities of the abundant snags for nesting, thus competing with native birds for shelter. [157] Understanding the full ramifications of the mistletoe program, however, may be difficult. It seems clear from Urban's research that an ecological approach would have left well enough alone with similar results. But because alteration occurred, that conclusion is difficult to prove. In the larger picture, mistletoe eradication represented one of the few cases of resource manipulation at the monument, coming at a time when the Park Service was only beginning to incorporate ecological principles into its management actions, and had yet to fully embrace them.