| North Cascades |
|
Chapter 14:
WILDERNESS DESIGNATION AND MANAGEMENT
The Park Service made little headway on wilderness designation for North Cascades until the early 1980s. In part, the number of park wilderness proposals before Congress swamped the process, while at the park level the status of mining claims and the issue of High Ross Dam stymied wilderness planning. In 1984, however, the situation began to change. Washington's congressional delegation successfully passed legislation establishing wilderness on the state's national forests, prompting interest in something similar for Washington's national parks. More importantly, once wilderness advocates learned that the High Ross controversy had been resolved that year, they renewed their interest in designating wilderness for North Cascades as well as Olympic and Mount Rainier. Groups like the North Cascades Conservation Council had been reluctant to pursue wilderness legislation for North Cascades until High Ross was settled, primarily because the project would have eliminated any chance to protect the Big Beaver Valley as wilderness.
Park managers recognized the shift in public attitudes and updated the park complex's wilderness plan to reflect recent changes in 1984. Since the 1970s, agency officials had continued to revise the complex's wilderness recommendations, adding lands formerly slated for developments and other uses but deemed inappropriate for current wilderness management practices. Over the years, for example, managers had eliminated plans for numerous backcountry hostels, an access road to Roland Point, a corridor for a tramway up Arctic Creek, and the management buffer along the wilderness boundary. Managers also added to the proposed wilderness by closing spur roads and acquiring mining claims. At the same time, they classified other lands in the Big Beaver Valley and Thunder Creek drainage, as well as patented mining claims, as potential wilderness additions. "Potential wilderness" referred to lands not owned by the federal government but which it planned to acquire, or lands owned by the government on which there was a nonwilderness use that the Park Service anticipated eliminating. Both the Big Beaver and Thunder Creek areas were ineligible for wilderness because they were still largely within the project area for Seattle City Light and needed to remain free for possible power development in the future. If the project's boundaries were revised, these potential additions would be administratively converted to wilderness. By 1988, the wilderness revisions included the corridor for the tramway up Ruby Mountain among other things, bringing the total acreage to approximately 634,600 acres of designated wilderness and some 5,200 acres of potential wilderness -- nearly 120,000 acres more than the original proposal. [1]
This latest proposal became part of the Washington Park Wilderness Bill introduced on March 15, 1988, by Washington Senator Daniel Evans. The legislation (supported by Senator Brock Adams) proposed designating more than 1.7 million acres wilderness within Olympic, Mount Rainier, and the North Cascades complex. Congressman Rod Chandler (along with Congressmen Al Swift and John Miller) introduced an identical companion bill in the House of Representatives. The bill was politically popular. Besides fulfilling the mandate of the 1964 Wilderness Act, the legislation represented the "first attempt to designate wilderness in national parks on a statewide basis," noted Evans. In doing so, "we can...ensure the permanent protection of one of the Nation's most treasured assets -- its national parks." The bill derived its importance from the long-term affects on the parks. "All of Washington's parks were established and are managed as wilderness parks," the senator observed. "We want the national parks in Washington to remain wilderness parks," and this bill "would prevent development from encroaching further into the wilderness areas of the parks," thereby ensuring that these parks would be managed for their "original purposes." [2]
The Washington Park Wilderness Act passed virtually unopposed and was signed into law on November 16, 1988. In general, the wilderness legislation for North Cascades was similar to earlier agency proposals with some notable exceptions. First, the wilderness would be named as a tribute to the agency's first director, Stephen Mather, for his contributions to the National Park Service. Superintendent John Reynolds came up with the idea after a conversation with former director Horace Albright. For all of Mather's work, he had not been formally recognized in the designation of any area in the park system, and the remote and isolated wilderness of the North Cascades, Reynolds believed, lent itself well to honoring Mather's legacy. [3] Second, park managers had drawn the boundaries to eliminate a host of potential threats to the park from small hydroelectric projects. The new boundaries embraced the headwaters of several proposed projects, terminating them while not infringing on the authority of the Federal Energy Regulatory Agency (FERC) over such projects in the park complex as prescribed in the North Cascades Act. [4]
Third, the legislation contained several amendments to clarify the park's authority under its enabling legislation. One revision limited FERC's authority over hydroelectric projects to existing and proposed elements of those projects within the complex's recreation areas. Two other revisions specified the use of natural and renewable natural resources within the recreation areas. One provision eliminated mining and mineral leasing in the recreation areas, except for the leasing of rock, sand, and gravel to Stehekin residents in Lake Chelan NRA as long as there was no adverse effects on the recreation area's administration. The other provision authorized the use or disposal of renewable natural resources in the recreation areas, primarily in the form of firewood in Stehekin and the removal of trees within power line rights-of-way in Ross Lake NRA. The legislation stated that such use was only authorized as long as it was compatible with the purposes of the recreation areas. Resource use was also subject to statutory authorities pertaining to the administration of the park system and other statutory authorities governing the conservation and management of natural resources under federal control. In short, agency officials, who maintained that an array of laws and policies applied to the management of the recreation areas, now had unequivocal proof.
These revisions to the North Cascades Act were considered among the most significant by park management. While they did not necessarily erase all of the park complex's problematic issues, they did clarify some long-disputed interpretations of, and vague provisions in, the park act. The legislation also cleaned up some outdated plans for tramways and other developments by drawing the wilderness boundaries to include the sites for these facilities. In this regard, the legislation forced the Park Service to limit future expansion and to abide by a wilderness mandate. The weight of the amendments was felt outside of the park complex, too. The provision covering minerals, for example, averted the need for a separate statute governing the use of mineral resources in the recreation areas; otherwise, a precedent could have been set affecting other recreation areas in the park system with similar language about mineral use in their legislation. [5]
Although the wilderness legislation accomplished a great deal from the perspective of the complex's administration, environmental groups thought that the wilderness legislation did not go far enough, and in some instances reinforced rather than revised management problems. The North Cascades Conservation Council, the main voice of opposition, objected to a number of provisions, many of which reflected their own vision of the true purpose of the North Cascades complex. The council did not like the use of Stephen Mather's name for the wilderness because people might mistakenly associate it with the Mather Memorial Parkway in Mount Rainier National Park. The council strongly believed that the wilderness boundaries should include Big Beaver Valley and Thunder Creek, as well as other areas slated for future expansion by City Light. The designation of Big Beaver and Thunder Creek as potential wilderness did not accord these areas the recognition and protection they deserved, especially in light of the international treaty resolving High Ross. The Park Service drew the wilderness boundaries at an elevation of 1,725 feet around the lake to allow for the raising of Ross Lake with High Ross, as identified in the treaty. The agency defended its decision by noting that once the treaty expired in 2066 these areas would be administratively added to wilderness. To the council, the agency's decision smacked of political expediency instead of displaying the backbone to protect properly the last vestiges of primitive America. The council viewed allowances for other proposed projects, such as the Copper Creek Dam, in a similar light. [6]
The council voiced other objections to the Park Service's wilderness boundaries. It believed that rather than having the wilderness boundaries two hundred feet from Highway 20 and other park roads, as established by the Park Service, the boundaries should be one hundred feet from the center line, leaving a buffer of fifty feet on either side. Council members also wanted to have the wilderness boundaries cross Park Creek, thereby closing the Stehekin Road at this point, leaving only trail access above there to Cottonwood. The conservation council reasoned that the upper Stehekin Valley could return to its wilderness state and at the same time save the government money because it would no longer have to rebuild this section of road which suffered numerous washouts. Moreover, the recommendation reflected N3C's continuing attempts to include the Cascade River Valley and the scenic section of Highway 20 in Granite Creek within the park. [7]
On other matters, the council found the Park Service's provisions for the international boundary objectionable, noting that the cleared swath along the border was a visual blight and incompatible with a wilderness experience. The wilderness legislation allowed clearing to continue when council members believed that Congress should have used this opportunity to revise clear-cutting practices in wilderness areas and national parks along the boundary. Finally, the agency's revisions to the North Cascades Act covering the use of natural resources in the recreation areas were anathema to the meaning of the park complex; rather than protecting natural resources, the agency was promoting their use. The revisions were administrative "house cleaning" and the agency's way of "shirking responsibility to protect land under its stewardship," the council concluded. [8]
For the most part, these complaints went unaddressed in the final legislation, primarily because the provisions were based on agency policy, because agency managers had the support of the state's congressional delegation, and because many of the proposals would require extensive public review. There were some exceptions. The final legislation omitted plans for a backcountry information center along the highway in Marblemount. Superintendent Reynolds lobbied for the relocation of the backcountry information center from the Marblemount Ranger Station, a mile off the highway, because it was "inconvenient to visitors." The main reason behind Reynolds' plan was the recent approval for the construction of the Newhalem Visitor Center. The long-awaited visitor center would be too far east of the junction of Highway 20 and the road to Cascade Pass to efficiently register backcountry users. [9] In the end, the backcountry information center remained at the ranger station.
Environmental groups were not the only ones to voice their concerns about the wilderness legislation. Some Stehekin residents interpreted the wilderness bill as still another means to shrink the valley community, restrict its way of life further, and possibly eliminate it altogether. The Stehekin Community Council complained that the wilderness boundaries were too close to the valley floor, even though the entire valley floor had been excluded from wilderness. Specifically, the community council worried that having designated wilderness so close to Stehekin would create unnecessary conflicts between the two areas -- one managed for pristine nature, the other as an active community in a recreation area. Stehekin, the council predicted, would be treated as an external "impact" on the wilderness area and be subjected to even "tighter governmental controls" by the Park Service in order to protect wilderness values. The community council lobbied for Lake Chelan NRA to be removed from the wilderness legislation, stating that the recreation area was not suitable for wilderness. The Park Service, however, disagreed. Superintendent Reynolds noted that Stehekin residents had nothing to be worried about; wilderness designation would not change existing backcountry uses or community use of natural resources. The boundaries recognized the range of the existing community and possible expansion. Moreover, wilderness designation would help protect the Stehekin way of life in the long term, providing it one more layer of administrative protection from outside influences. [10]
In addition, Stehekin would not serve as a wilderness transition zone and be subject to more regulations. Congress had addressed this issue in other wilderness legislation; the proximity of wilderness boundaries to a highway or community were not intended to get rid of either one. Reynolds cited Yosemite Valley as "an ideal parallel to the Stehekin Valley." The two areas had similar topography and similar wilderness boundaries drawn several hundred feet above the valley floors, which in essence teamed with visitors, park facilities, and concessions. When Yosemite's wilderness was established in 1984, there was "no intent by the NPS or Congress to use the location of the wilderness boundary as a way to eliminate the Yosemite Valley community," noted Reynolds, just as there was no intent to eliminate the Stehekin Valley community with the wilderness proposal for North Cascades. [11]
http://www.nps.gov/noca/adhi-14.htm