Craters of the Moon Administrative History

Chapter 6:
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Resource Management At Craters Of The Moon:
NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: ICE AND WATERHOLES

The random appearance of water, snow, and ice in lava depressions throughout the monument provides a unique contrast to the otherwise dry and hot environment most visitors encounter in the summer season. Winter snow deposits collect in lava crevices, such as spatter cones, and the formations' insulating qualities cause the snow to last all year in places. Ice forms in caves. Some of this frozen water, it is thought, creates surface and subsurface pools. And all forms of water are valuable not only for human appreciation but also for wildlife. Most of the monument's wildlife cluster around these sporadic sources.

To date, management of these water resources has not followed any strict policy guidelines other than NPS protection mandates. The critical management concern has arisen over their disappearance. Up until 1927, the waterholes supplied visitors and managers, but after 1927, water vanished from this supply; most of the well known holes went dry (Registration, Doves, Big Sink and Yellow Jacket). As late as the mid-1960s, others such as Round Knoll appeared to be at a low ebb. [230]

In his 1966 resource management plan, Superintendent Roger Contor suggested a more active management position regarding the waterholes. It was necessary to prevent human and livestock consumption and impact from contaminating the waterholes and contributing to their further decline. Protection of the resource and human health was imperative. The plan recommended that a specific regulation prohibiting use was a possible means of management, yet it was never pursued because federal regulations satisfied this need. Furthermore, like caves the remote location of many of the waterholes served to protect them. [231]

Research has been the preferred mode of management. As Roger Contor noted, the greatest threat to the waterholes was the unknown. Yet while monument managers awaited sufficient studies, management decisions have been in response to resource disturbance, based on observations rather than solid research. The most significant among these dates to Superintendent Hentges' late-1970s decision to rehabilitate the spatter cone chain due, in part, to the disappearance of snow in the vents. The accumulation of rock and other debris thrown by visitors had raised the base level of the features, and snow, exposed to higher temperatures and sunlight, melted sooner and rarely lasted as long as in the past. [232]

Except for historical documentation from the 1920s and 1930s furnished by early custodians concerned over the decreasing level of the water pools, no other hard evidence exists regarding water quality and the source of water for springs and waterholes, or for the Snake River Plain Aquifer, running beneath the monument. To rectify this, the monument began studies in 1992 to assess the chemical and physical properties of the surface water, ice caves, and groundwater in the monument. [233]