| North Cascades |
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Chapter 6:
RESEARCH AND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
The establishment of North Cascades coincided with fundamental changes in resource management and research in the national park system. With the appearance of the Leopold Report in 1963, the Park Service shifted its emphasis from preserving and protecting objects of special interest to the general public to restoring park ecosystems and allowing natural processes to take their course. A catalyst for change, the report helped implant a new management philosophy that would stress ecologically-oriented management in place of manipulating the environment to meet the needs and desires of visitors. Returning parks to their natural conditions meant eliminating past practices that favored one particular wildlife species over another, and removing exotic -- or introduced species -- and reintroducing native ones. This new perspective applied to all resources within national parks. With ecological research, the report concluded, the Park Service should maintain -- or recreate when necessary -- "the biotic associations within each park" as nearly as possible as "when first visited by the white man." Placing natural values over human values -- or at least working to minimize human impacts -- formed the core of the agency's resource management approach. [1]
The Leopold Report offered some specific recommendations for carrying out this new management approach, namely that parks should hire a large staff of ecologists to conduct wide-ranging research projects, set aside research reserves within the different environments of the parks which might exclude visitors, and respect the findings of scientists and incorporate them into the parks' management programs. Finally, in order to implement the Leopold Report, the Park Service established guidelines for managing resources in natural parks and required that each natural area park prepare a resource management plan, all of which were to incorporate the report's basic tenets. [2]
The Leopold Report formed the foundation upon which North Cascades managers would build the park's early resource management program. While this was similar to other areas in the national park system, North Cascades differed from other parks because its establishment came after the Park Service had implemented its new direction in resource management. As in other programs, park managers looked forward to a clean start. Without the difficulties of revising tradition-bound uses and practices that often harmed the natural environment, they would push forward with a program that placed the integrity of biological resources and ecological relationships first.
As Superintendent Roger Contor believed, the agency had the opportunity to promote a new tradition of park management and shape a new set of visitor expectations based on ecologically-minded policies, and thus he made resource management, with the agency's new focus, the cornerstone of his administration. Although Contor's tenure was rather brief, his emphasis on maintaining or restoring the new parkland's natural environment and basing all management decisions on sound scientific evidence provided a solid foothold for the park's first decade of management. Beginning with the early stages of the park complex's management, Contor and his staff developed an ambitious resource management program, based largely on a research plan that covered all of the area's resources and life zones, initiated cooperative interagency research projects with the U.S. Forest Service and various state agencies, among other government entities, and sought the assistance of university researchers in studying the North Cascades.
The importance of research to the new park area's future management was twofold. First, Contor, with a background in wildlife biology, felt strongly about research as a guide to management. This belief dovetailed with the current trends in the agency and Contor's own support of the Leopold committee's recommendations. As superintendent of Craters of the Moon National Monument in the mid-1960s, for example, Contor oversaw the completion of the monument's first resource management plan, the first in Western Region, employing the ecological principles outlined by the Leopold committee.
Second, and of more significance, without an adequate research program the Park Service could not hope to protect this new parkland. When the agency took over management of the northern Cascades, park officials discovered that they knew very little about this impressive country. This became especially apparent as they set out to draft the complex's master plan. Despite sixty years of management by the Forest Service, there seemed to be few scientific studies about the region that would help agency officials describe the basic facts, problems, and recommended management approaches for the park's resources. The most extensive information covered the range's geology, dating from the turn of the century. The range's other natural features were covered superficially in the more recent special studies generated by the North Cascades Study Team during the early 1960s. Otherwise, "the North Cascades were uniquely unknown," Contor observed. In short, the old park management saying applied: it was impossible to protect or restore the area's natural conditions if managers did not even know what these were. [3]
To resolve this problem, Contor reached out to the scientific community. In May 1969, he and his staff organized the North Cascades National Park Scientific Symposium at the park's headquarters. The symposium, made possible in large part by the work of the park's interpretive specialist, Harry Wills, brought together a group of noted ecologists from the Northwest. Its main purpose was to serve as "a notice to the scientific community that the National Park Service is interested in basing management and planning on sound research." In doing so, park officials hoped to prime the financial pump for research -- that is, make the case for funding research in the park -- and achieve the lofty goal of setting "an example to the nation of a proper approach to land management." The meeting proved helpful in establishing research priorities and management objectives for the master plan. The top priority of a long list of priorities was an ecological inventory of the entire park complex, followed by a thorough list of management problems related to human impacts on the natural environment, as well as studies ranging from research on the area's flora and fauna, to benchmark studies to evaluate future changes in the park's ecosystem, and to a complete human history of the complex. [4]
In early 1970, Contor could announce some accomplishments, many of which originated from the symposium. The highest management problem identified in the meeting was damage to the park's fragile subalpine vegetation at low-elevation passes such as Cascade Pass. Not surprisingly, several studies were completed or were underway that would have a direct benefit on the protection and repair of these sensitive areas. Since the park had no budget for research, most of these studies were university related or associated with the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Forest Range and Experiment Station; North Cascades would also benefit from the establishment of the first cooperative park studies unit at the University of Washington in 1970. Contor further noted that progress was being made on the autoecology of the horse -- a study that would help assess the effects of horses on the park environment as a way to limit their presence in and damage to the high country. In addition, researchers were conducting forest insect and disease surveys; this work, however, was being conducted by the Forest Service as a carry over from when they managed the area. [5]
Without a research budget, the park could not expect to attract university scientists to carry out projects. But this initial work helped form the resource management statement in the park's first master plan released later that year. While the park complex brought together a variety of uses associated with a national park and two recreation areas, the plan emphasized an overall philosophy of protection and restoration of the complex's most dominant feature -- its backcountry -- and those sensitive areas highly susceptible to damage.
This backcountry and its fragile alpine ecosystems must be managed carefully to prevent damage by visitors and livestock. Corrective measures will involve revegetation of the denuded areas; improvement of the surface, grade, and drainage of trails; elimination of fires and overnight camping in the more fragile locations; control of horse traffic so that grazing and hitching of horses is not continued in the damaged areas; and the general dispersion of alpine activities, either up toward the snow and rock environment of the mountain-climber, or down into the more resistant fir and hemlock forests below the passes. [6]
This philosophy of protection and restoration also extended to the park complex's array of fish and wildlife, of which relatively little was known. Because the complex contained two recreation areas, one thing was for certain: some of these animals, namely deer, would be hunted and fish caught -- and park managers would regulate this activity through a cooperative agreement with the Washington State Department of Game as stipulated in the legislation for North Cascades.
It was Contor's hope that a comprehensive research program would develop to support the needs of resource management, but in these early years of park management, funding for special projects took time; they required project statements, priority lists, approval from the regional office in Seattle and final approval from the Washington office. Moreover, there was also the need for producing a resource management plan to forecast the future goals and objectives of the fledgling program. Contor had thought, it seemed, that while this process was underway, independent researchers affiliated with universities and other agencies might fill the void, and thus he emphasized the opportunities the new parkland held for research, especially in the form of research natural areas. We want to make an "all-out effort to learn as much as possible" about the North Cascades "to preserve the most important elements for future scientific study." Speaking at a Northwest scientific symposium on natural areas in the spring of 1970, Contor noted that some progress was being made in funding a survey of possible research natural areas in the park and he encouraged others to assist in the process by submitting proposals to his office. Similar to the Leopold committee's recommendation for setting aside research areas in national parks, the research natural areas would "preserve typical or unusual biological or geologic features, associations, or other phenomena. It is our ultimate objective to preserve examples of all significant ecosystems." [7] By the late 1970s, Contor's promotion met with some success, for at least five research natural areas had either been proposed or approved. (These were Boston Glacier, Stetattle Creek, Pyramid Lake, Ridley Lake, and Silver Lake.) [8]
The ability of research to aid in park management did not necessarily focus on the natural environment itself. Contor believed that understanding the park complex's human past occupied an important role in understanding the environment of this new park area as a whole. To this end, historian Erwin Thompson produced the first survey of the park complex's history, charting the basic themes of Indian and white history in the North Cascades. The study complemented other studies that documented the complex's mining sites and homesteads, and gave managers greater insight into how humans had interacted with the park's natural systems.[9]
Ironically, some of the most extensive research conducted in the park during its early phase of management had little to do with the Park Service's management but rather with Seattle City Light's plans to raise Ross Lake. City Light's controversial project, which raised objections from environmentalists on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border, led to a series of biological surveys of the project area to assess the impact of the higher lake level. Scientists from Canada and the United States, some working for City Light, others for private groups or state agencies, conducted fairly extensive studies of Ross Lake and the Skagit Valley's wildlife, fisheries, and forest communities. By the mid-1970s, as part of the Federal Power Commission's requirements for its amended license, City Light undertook thorough aquatic and fisheries studies of its entire Skagit River project -- including Ross, Diablo, and Gorge lakes and the Skagit River below Newhalem. This long-term investigation produced a considerable amount of research throughout the remainder of the decade, as the complicated process of assessing environmental impacts and solving international conflicts produced by City Light's plans wore on. For the most part, as with other facets of the High Ross affair in the 1970s, the Park Service remained largely neutral on the research front, except for a study by Dr. Grant Sharpe to assess the project's damage to the Big Beaver Valley at the request of the Park Service in the early stages of the controversy. Otherwise, the park's research biologist, Robert Wasem, kept abreast of the ongoing investigations and reports, all of which might eventually assist park officials in their management efforts.[10]
Despite the attention the High Ross affair drew, park managers put together a rather impressive research program; its success varied with funding, need, and the ability of a relatively small staff -- usually limited to one permanent biologist and seasonals -- to carry out projects for a such a wild and large area. The assignment of Wasem to the park's staff in 1970 marked a high point in the park's nascent research and resource management program. (At this time in the park's history there was no formal division of resource management.) Wasem came to the park from Glacier and for at least half a year was employed by the agency's Washington office of Natural Science Studies before he, and all field biologists, were transferred to park staffs. By the end of 1972, Wasem had begun preparing the park's resource management plan with a committee headed by the regional scientist. He had also prepared a list of the approved natural resource studies. The resource management plan was more a research plan and largely ineffective because it was not formally tied to the park's budget, and because priorities in the young park changed quickly causing many of the proposals to be out of date. On the other hand, the research list was significant for several reasons. First, the twenty-four projects attested to the new park's need for research into nearly every aspect of its natural environment. Without these, as one North Cascades official noted, decisions affecting park resources would only be informed by "educated guesses." Second, many of the proposals went unfunded during the park's first decade of management. Although independent researchers connected with universities often carried out studies, their results were seldom known and their use to management were rarely of any value to park management. The list of unfunded research projects included proposals for ecological and zoological inventories, a study of plant succession, water pollution studies, exotic plant surveys, a study of the history of human uses of natural resources, an investigation of the park's climate and glacial activity, a review of the area's geologic research, a forest resource survey of the lower Stehekin Valley to manage the firewood cutting program, and ecosystem surveys to assess the impact of the park's proposed visitor-use developments (Roland Point and backcountry hostels, for example). Still other studies were needed to assess the consumption and possible regulation of resources such as river gravel, sand, and soil in the Stehekin River Valley.[11]
Finally, those projects that were undertaken reflected the most pressing management priorities. And thus they received funding and were carried out by the park biologist as well as by independent researchers under contract. These projects included, as one might imagine, studies of human impacts on, and the restoration of, the park complex's subalpine zone, a botanical inventory, forest fire ecology, studies of the North Cascades complex's aquatic ecology -- an umbrella project for the complex's many high mountain lakes, and streams -- and the related study of assessing the effects of sport fish introduction upon naturally fishless high mountain lakes.
Repairing the sensitive subalpine environment formed a central component of the park complex's backcountry management program. Park managers depended on the volunteer work of Joe and Margaret Miller whose revegetation studies of Cascade Pass and their forest fire ecology study in the 1970s proved invaluable to the rehabilitation of this and other low-elevation passes in the park's wilderness. (Because of this, other studies, and the agency's interest in restoring natural processes, park managers developed a fire management plan to allow, within certain guidelines, naturally caused fires to burn in order to perpetuate natural ecosystems.)[12] In addition, agency officials contracted with George Douglas, a botanist at the University of Alberta, to conduct a study on revegetation of sub-alpine denuded areas. His work assisted park managers in their restoration efforts. Without the volunteer efforts of the Millers and the work of contract botanists like Douglas, the park's subalpine-zone passes would not have received the attention and rehabilitation they deserved, nor would the complex's backcountry management have fared as well as it did.
Throughout the 1970s, North Cascades Biologist Wasem conducted at least seven research projects, the majority of which concentrated on the park's lakes, reservoirs, and rivers with particular emphasis on their ecology and native or nonnative fish populations. By the middle of the decade, Wasem could count on the assistance of several seasonal biological technicians in carrying out these and other projects. However, biological research by its very nature took place over a rather long period of time, made even longer by the short-working seasons in the high country of the North Cascades. Yet Wasem's work was to serve a management purpose: to determine, according to agency policies, the natural condition of the complex's lakes and rivers. Ultimately, his research intersected with the first high profile resource management controversy of the new parkland's first ten years: the question of fish stocking in the high lakes of North Cascades.
http://www.nps.gov/noca/adhi-6.htm