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Chapter 12:
RESEARCH AND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
The resource management program at North Cascades fell within the influence of the Leopold and the National Academy of Sciences reports of 1963. Park administrators stressed the importance of scientifically informed management, and set out to base their management decisions on sound research. North Cascades got off on a strong foot in this regard. The formation of the first cooperative park studies unit at the University of Washington was directly related to the park's establishment; the new university-based research facility assisted managers early on in their efforts to understand the wealth and diversity of park resources. But by the early 1980s, science at North Cascades, as throughout the park system, had not developed enough to support all management decisions. [1]
The Park Service's own 1980 State of the Parks report concluded that the agency had not established a comprehensive and coordinated scientific management program. The report underscored the variety and magnitude of threats to park resources and the agency's inability to document the pace of change because it did not have an adequate knowledge of the resources under its care. Out of the report, and its follow-up report in 1981, came the most significant boost to science in park management since the Leopold and National Academy reports. The primary proposals included comprehensive inventorying of natural resources, the development of monitoring programs to detect even incremental change in park resources, the production of park resource management plans, and an increase in staffing and training in science and natural resource management. [2]
To a certain extent, these changes at the national level were felt in North Cascades. By the 1990s, the park complex's staff had grown considerably with the addition of a chief of resource management, wildlife biologists, an aquatic ecologist, and geologist, among other specialists. Over the years, the staff developed more extensive resource management plans and developed some of the first long-range inventory and monitoring programs. One recent study was monitoring the park's glaciers. Although the park contained one-third of all glaciers found outside of Alaska, little data existed about their histories and role in the park complex's hydrologic systems.
By the early 1990s, park resource managers conceded that there were still great gaps in their knowledge about the health of the park complex's natural systems, largely from a lack of funding and a commitment to research at the national level. This opinion was consistent with another agency report, National Parks for the Twenty-First Century: The Vail Agenda, which stated that the Park Service's overall approach to scientific management has been "sporadic and inconsistent, characterized by alternating cycles of commitment and decline." The protection of natural resources based on sound scientific research still had shortcomings from the standpoint of staffing and funding. The agency's acknowledgement of the situation and its promises to make substantive changes failed to allay the fears of scientists and environmentalists. They continued to exert pressure on the service to expand scientific research, viewing the agency's promises as largely rhetorical. [3] In effect, this kind of ebb-and-flow cycle of support for scientific-based resource management tended to focus attention on the most controversial topics, and projects worthy of long-term research often went unaddressed. At North Cascades, the most visible topics included issues surrounding fish stocking, resource consumption, Stehekin River erosion, and fire.
http://www.nps.gov/noca/adhi-12.htm