I&M Administrative History: Searching for Clarity

The Channel Islands case was unusual, if not unique. Most NPS managers didn’t have access to the science they wanted or needed. Others didn’t want it at all—and even if they had it, they weren’t required to use it. Speaking at a gathering of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1985, Washington-office biologist John Dennis acknowledged a fundamental hurdle to the bureau’s pursuit of science-based management: the lack of a statutory science mandate.¹ At this point, NPS leaders had been told many times that it was impossible for the NPS to fulfill its conservation mission in the absence of decisionmaking informed by science. But the failure of the Organic Act to mention science as an assigned responsibility had left the door open for unceasing arguments about whether science was really necessary, and if so, whether NPS staff should be the ones to perform it. Dennis believed that answer was yes (and argued that the NPS science program needed to develop a structure for natural resources inventory and monitoring).

In parks that did have science programs, questions persisted about the proper relationship between science and management. Should scientific recommendations be taken as informative, guiding, or authoritative? How should scientific results be balanced with policy and other decisionmaking considerations? The NPS also wrestled with how to treat science produced by researchers inside and outside the bureau. Were findings and recommendations from NPS scientists more (or less) valuable than those from academe? What if outside scientists recommended actions in direct conflict with NPS policy?

Dennis stressed that although researchers and resource managers should work closely to ensure mutual understanding of needs and limitations, a relationship that was too close could allow researchers to lose their objectivity, “either because the manager exerts pressure for the research to prove a point or because the scientist becomes caught up in the management goal and fails to consider adequately all alternate explanations of his data.”² The following year, the entire six-day Conference on Science in the National Parks was “marked by a deep-seated, mutual concern about the proper relationship of science to the management decisionmaking process,” according to Raymond Herrmann, a hydrologist with the NPS’s new Water Resources Division. For his part, Herrmann saw research and resource management as “separate and distinct functions.” It was the job of researchers to “develop, evaluate, and provide information” and consultation. It was the job of managers to act on the information. “While it is theoretically possible for one person to do both jobs, this . . . should be avoided,” he wrote, in part because “research cannot remain unbiased if it is incorporated too closely into the management structure.”³

The angst on display at the 1986 conference came in the wake of the March publication of Alston Chase’s Playing God in Yellowstone, an anti-NPS polemic that had publicly raised significant questions about the bureau’s science, competence, and motives in park management. Chase’s main thesis was that “natural regulation,” a practice and policy that evolved out of the NPS’s interpretation of the Leopold Report, had been a multifaceted disaster for the resources Yellowstone’s managers were supposed to protect. Largely undefined but widely embraced in the NPS, “natural regulation” was a style of hands-off management in which park staff sought to “let nature take its course.” Chase characterized it as rooted far more strongly in philosophy than science.⁴ Humans, he argued, had been manipulating the park’s landscape for so long that it was hubristic to think choosing to step back now would result in a landscape governed by “natural” processes. Chase also contended that both “natural regulation” and an NPS organizational structure that separated natural from cultural resources assumed a false dichotomy between human action and “natural processes.”⁵

Though unevenly argued and packed with damning anecdotal “evidence” provided by anonymous sources, Chase’s book nonetheless raised valid points about the National Park Service’s historically uneasy relationship with science. Throughout Playing God in Yellowstone, Chase explored the question of whether scientists within the bureau’s employ could remain objective in the face of management pressures. For Chase, the answer was clear: he cast Yellowstone’s biologists as some of the park’s most sinister antagonists, so blindly allegiant to NPS dogma that they were unable to recognize the damage wrought by their complicity, like mad scientists in a B movie. His chapters describing the conflict between park managers and the Craighead brothers, previously serialized in Outside magazine, represented his primary case in point.

Grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) once roamed the entire US west of the Mississippi River, numbering in the hundreds of thousands. But their numbers were decimated following the North American arrival of European settlers and the repeating rifle. By the mid-twentieth century, only 600–700 grizzlies remained in the continental US. They were found only in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, including a population centered around Yellowstone National Park. From 1959 to 1971, a team of biologists led by John and Frank Craighead conducted an intensive study of the physical and social dynamics of that population. The Craigheads were pioneers in the field of radio telemetry, allowing them to track the movements and lifeways of individual bears over long periods of time. Over the course of their project, they collared, tagged, or tattooed 264 bears for long-term study, likely capturing and marking about 30% of Yellowstone’s grizzly bears. What they learned from being able to document the health and lifeways of individual animals led them to conclude that the bears’ survival would require preservation not just of the park, but of an area they called the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.⁶ Across the broad scope of their careers, it would be difficult to overestimate the Craigheads’ contributions to wildlife science, American conservation, and our knowledge of the Yellowstone grizzly.

When the Craigheads began their Yellowstone studies, park managers were eager to have researchers who would be able to evaluate the effects of park management practices and provide scientific information of direct use for decisionmaking. Under superintendent Lemuel Garrison, the Craigheads’ original research agreement required them to produce a grizzly-bear management plan for the park. But the long-term nature of the brothers’ work meant that during their period of study, the staff administering the project—and NPS policies—changed. In 1964, after Garrison’s departure, some park staff wanted the section calling for delivery of a management plan to be stricken from the agreement—because management plans, which had to be congruent with management policies, should be written by park staff, not outside scientists.⁷ In 1967, however, the Craigheads submitted their report, “Management of Bears in Yellowstone National Park,” to new superintendent Jack Anderson.

Superintendents often arrive with “marching orders” to implement new policies or management goals in a park. Anderson was assigned to implement the findings of the Leopold Report, which meant restoring the park’s “natural scene.” He and his scientific staff strongly believed that one of the most significant impediments to presenting the park in its natural state was grizzly bears’ longstanding habit of eating garbage at the park’s dumps, and they were eager to see them quickly closed. They also wanted the equipment the brothers used to mark and track the bears removed, arguing it detracted from the bears’ “natural” presentation.

But based on their own research, the Craigheads believed swift closure of the dumps would be catastrophic to the grizzly population and dangerous to park visitors. “Management of Bears in Yellowstone National Park” detailed their concerns and prescribed plans for gradually closing the dumps. NPS scientists resisted, variously arguing that continuing such “manipulative management” would sabotage Yellowstone’s claims to providing a “vignette of primitive America” and performing “ecological management;” that Yellowstone shouldn’t “have to sacrifice its reason for being—preservation of the primeval for enjoyment of people—just to save the grizzly bear;” and that “It seems to me to be unscientific to recommend augmentation of population numbers when the entire idea is to present a natural population.”⁸ The park service proceeded with plans to close the dumps in time for Yellowstone’s 1972 centennial. The Craigheads thought NPS staff was putting policy ahead of science in decisionmaking about the grizzly bear.

With both sides fervently convinced they were in the right, the managers and researchers were at loggerheads. The frustrated brothers released their report to the public and took their case to the press. After a number of visitor deaths and maulings which the Craigheads pointedly blamed on NPS policy, coupled with a decline in the grizzly population as more bears were killed in management actions, the dispute ultimately played out fully in the public eye, and in the courts. The Craigheads ended their association with Yellowstone in 1971, after refusing to sign a new research agreement that would have required them to submit their findings to park managers for review prior to publication.⁹ Two years later, the Department of the Interior created an interagency team of researchers to take up the work of documenting Yellowstone’s grizzly population, listed as Threatened in 1975 despite NPS opposition.¹⁰

By the time Alston Chase wrote Playing God in Yellowstone ten years later, the population was still imperiled, appearing to give credence to Chase’s arguments about NPS mismanagement.¹¹ In a 1987 epilogue in which he proposed solutions for bureaucratic reform, Chase condemned the organizational structure that placed science and scientists under the control of regional managers and superintendents, arguing that it gave park managers too much power over what kind of science was done, and which results were released or suppressed. In addition, he wrote, “the absence of sound research that could serve as the basis for planning encourages the politicization of decisionmaking.” On his list of 12 solutions for reforming the NPS? Long-term studies collecting data on park conditions.¹²

Playing God in Yellowstone was big news, reviewed and discussed in the nation’s major newspapers and called the most bitter biopolitical struggle ever witnessed at the park.¹³ In the midst of this very public debate over the respective roles of policy and science—and managers and scientists—in decisionmaking, Kate Kitchell, then a resources management specialist for Canyonlands National Park, wrote her master’s thesis, “A Needs Assessment-Based Review of the National Park Service Science Program in the Rocky Mountain Region.” Kitchell interviewed superintendents, biologists, and resource management specialists from half of the Rocky Mountain Region parks, along with 16 regional and national offices.¹⁴ Her work was a window into how NPS scientists and managers regarded each other and themselves in the mid-1980s.

Overall, superintendents did not think the NPS science program was strong or effective. When asked to identify its strengths, only one-third could name any. Most recognized the need for research but wished they had access to more of it, especially at smaller parks. One-third of the surveyed superintendents said they had no baseline data about their park, or still needed a Resources Basic Inventory. Several also mentioned the need for long-term resource monitoring.¹⁵

Yet the superintendents supported the program’s current organizational configuration. They were unanimous in their belief that research should be uniformly mission-oriented and responsive to management needs; only one respondent indicated that consideration should be given to concerns not of immediate import to resource managers. But elsewhere in the survey, half also said they needed help predicting future problems and research needs. This apparent contradiction may have been the result of recognizing a need but not wanting to give up the kind of power that would allow the need to be met. The managers interviewed strongly believed that scientists should be under their supervision, and that superintendents should control the release of research results. There was also concern that placing scientists under the supervision of anyone but park superintendents would be detrimental to the science program, itself: without being directly responsible to superintendents, the reasoning went, scientists would simply pursue whatever projects were of greatest interest to them personally, regardless of whether they were of any use to park managers. This would lead park managers to waver in their commitment to the importance of research.¹⁶

Many superintendents also wanted scientists to assist with duties unrelated to research, such as writing and reviewing resource management plans and reports; reviewing research proposed by other scientists; and reviewing other scientists’ research from within a management context. And although superintendents wanted scientists to pursue management activities unrelated to research, they did not want scientists to pursue research activities unrelated to management. None of the managers interviewed believed it was important for scientists to present their work at professional meetings or compete for scientific honors or awards.

This last point was met with strong disagreement by many of the scientists, in no small part because their ability to meet the performance standards of their research-grade positions required precisely the kind of broader peer recognition that came with publication of research results (whose distribution superintendents wanted to control), participation in scientific meetings, and professional acclamations of their work. Scientists also disagreed with the superintendents’ contention that the best place for science programs was under superintendent supervision. The current situation, they argued, only perpetuated the longtime NPS pattern of engaging in research geared toward “crisis management and research priorities that reflected the superintendents’ personal preferences.”¹⁷

No one, it seemed, trusted anyone else to put a park’s needs first.

Finally, Kitchell asked how scientists and superintendents might be able to bridge their divide. One suggestion involved ensuring research was tied to the priorities outlined in a park’s resource management plan. Another idea was to build mutual accountability into each group’s performance evaluations for. For scientists, this would mean adding a standard for “responsiveness to management needs,” developed in conjunction with the supervising superintendent. Superintendents would have their position descriptions re-written to include accountability for supporting research and scientists in their parks. Successful communication with scientists would be considered during superintendents’ selection and promotion processes.¹⁸

In the meantime, though, lacking a scientific mandate or any clear national direction, and with their professions pulling them in different directions, the relationship between science and management wasn’t working, even though just about everyone involved wanted it to. Alaska Regional Historian William Brown described the scientists and managers in Kitchell’s surveys as “people who know that they must work together, but haven’t yet found the combination.”¹⁹

So what was the combination?

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Research and writing by Alice Wondrak Biel, Writer-Editor, National Park Service Inventory & Monitoring Division

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¹ John G. Dennis, “Building a Science Program for the National Park System,” George Wright Forum 4, no. 3 (1985): 12–20.

² Dennis, "Building a Science Program."

³ Raymond Herrmann, “The Future of Science in the National Parks Positive Directions, New Opportunities,” George Wright Forum 5, no. 3 (1987): 6–8.

⁴ Historian Richard Sellars agreed, writing, “In adopting a natural regulation policy, the Park Service disregarded the urgent call from both the Leopold and National Academy reports for scientifically grounded decisionmaking.” Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 248.

⁵ Alston Chase, Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America’s First National Park (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1987).

⁶ Biel, Do (Not) Feed the Bears, 90; Louisa Willcox, “A Grizzly Tribute to John and Frank Craighead,” Grizzly Times, December 15, 2016, https://www.grizzlytimes.org/single-post/2016/12/15/a-grizzly-tribute-to-john-and-frank-craighead; Frank C. Craighead, Track of the Grizzly (San Francisco, California: Sierra Club Books, 1979), 167.

⁷ Biel, Do (Not) Feed the Bears, 91.

⁸ Biel, Do (Not) Feed the Bears, 92.

⁹ Biel, Do (Not) Feed the Bears, 102.

¹⁰ The Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team was not without its own drama, as recounted by Todd Wilkinson, “Grizzly War,” High Country News, November 9, 1998, https://www.hcn.org/issues/142/4584.

¹¹ Despite Frank Craighead’s 1974 prediction that Yellowstone’s grizzly population would be extinct by 1990, the Yellowstone grizzly was proposed for delisting in 2017. Biel, Do (Not) Feed the Bears, 108.

¹² Chase, Playing God in Yellowstone, 387–391.

¹³ Michael Dobbs, “Humans Lock Horns at Yellowstone National Park,” Washington Post, July 4, 1987, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/07/04/humans-lock-horns-at-yellowstone-park/efea9a2c-67cc-4eb6-a7a6-b17ad114e114/.

¹⁴ Katherine P. Kitchell, William E. Brown, and Robert Stottlemyer, “A Needs Assessment-Based Review of the National Park Service Science Program in the Rocky Mountain Region,” George Wright Forum 5, no. 1 (1986): 21–22.

¹⁵ Rosemary Nichols, “Science in the Parks,” Park Science: A Resource Management Bulletin 6, no. 4 (Summer 1986): 6–7.

¹⁶ Nichols, “Science in the Parks,” 6–7; Katherine P. Kitchell and Rosemary Nichols, “Scientists, Superintendents Differ on Researchers’ Role in RM Region,” Park Science: A Resource Management Bulletin 7, no. 2 (Winter 1987): 4.

¹⁷ Kitchell and Nichols, “Scientists, Superintendents Differ on Researchers’ Role in RM Region,” 4.

¹⁸ Kitchell and Nichols, “Scientists, Superintendents Differ on Researchers’ Role in RM Region,” 4.

¹⁹ Kitchell, Brown, and Stottlemyer, “A Needs Assessment-Based Review,” 24.

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