Chapter Eight:
Controlling Development: How Much Is Too Much? (1947-1972)
(continued)
Reappraisal: The Leopold Report
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The shift toward extreme measures for ecological
reasons was part of a much larger shift both in the Sierran parks and
throughout the park system. The death of George Wright and onset of
World War II had all but eliminated biological research in the parks
nationwide, and postwar funding left the program in shambles. Occasional
efforts like the "Yosemite Report" were noteworthy exceptions to a
pattern of general disinterest in science.
The late 1950s, however, saw the beginning of a
recovery in resource management and research programs, spurred by
critical appraisals from outside. The Sierra Club and National Parks
Association both decried the lack of research, and of the funding and
organization to begin it. In 1959, Dr. Stanley Cain of the University of
Michigan (and one of Richard Hartesveldt's mentors) reported to the
Sixth Biennial Wilderness Conference that, the National Park Service
does not have a program of basic ecological research. . . . (what is
being done) fails to approach at all closely to the fundamental need of
the Service itself . . . (and) the service is missing a bet by not
having an adequate natural history (ecological) research program." [63]
As a result of this prodding by Cain, as well as by
other ecologists and by the always powerful preservationist groups, both
the National Park Service and its parent Department of Interior again
began to look seriously at the needs for ecological research and for
more scientific and ecologically sensitive park management. Several
important studies and analyses of park resources appeared in the next
few years, including one funded by The Conservation Foundation which
employed internationally renowned scholars, E. Fraser Darling and Noel
Eichhorn, to survey the status of ecological management park by park.
[64] However, the study to have perhaps the
most profound effect since Secretary Lane's letter of 1918, was the
so-called Leopold Report. [65]
Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall was especially
sensitive to the criticism of Cain and other observers. Both Secretary
Udall and President Kennedy cared about matters of conservation, and the
news from the parks troubled Udall. In response to the need for a
general appraisal of park ecosystem management, and in particular, to
desperate problems of overgrazing by elk in Yellowstone, Udall appointed
a blue-ribbon advisory board. The members, a veritable who's who of fish
and wildlife management, included Stanley Cain; Dr. Clarence Cottam,
director of the Welder Wildlife Foundation and former assistant director
of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Dr. Ira Gabrielson, president of
the Wildlife Management Institute and former director of the Fish and
Wildlife Service; Thomas Kimball, executive director of the National
Wildlife Federation and former director of the Colorado Game and Fish
Department; and Dr. A. Starker Leopold, professor of zoology and
assistant to the chancellor at University of California, Berkeley, and a
former president of The Wildlife Society. [66] Dr. Leopold, who chaired the Advisory Board
on Wildlife Management in National Parks, came from what might be called
America's first family of conservation. His father, Aldo Leopold, author
of Sand County Almanac, was the man who so deeply influenced
George Wright and the early ecologists of the Park Service. Two brothers
and a sister also achieved fame for their research and writings in
ecology and conservation in North America. [67] The composition of the board was widely
lauded by the Sierra Club and other preservation organizations and few
critics could challenge the members' impressive credentials.
On March 4, 1963, the advisory board transmitted its
report to Udall and subsequently the Sierra Club and several other
groups published it in full in their respective journals. Board members
characterized the report as conceptual rather than statistical, and
intended it to "enhance the aesthetic, historical, and scientific values
of the parks to the American public, vis-a-vis the mass recreational
values." [68] Thus Leopold and other members
went well beyond the tasks prescribed by Udall and launched an attempt
to alter the basic management philosophy of the National Park Service
toward biological preservation, even at the cost of the objects of the
scenery upon which preservation values of the past had been placed. In a
now familiar statement, the board suggested that the primary goal of the
parks was maintenance of the biotic associations within each unit, or
restoration of them, to the "condition that prevailed when the area was
first visited by the white man." [69] (This
would later call into question the impact of Native Americans,
particularly in an area like Sequoia and Kings Canyon, where aboriginal
burning was widely reported.) However, in 1963 the report essentially
called for maintaining, or restoring, natural park environments to the
greatest extent possible.
Board members offered specific recommendations about
specific problems in various parks in order to demonstrate their
principal pointthe necessity of a return to "naturalness." In the
matter of habitat protection, they recommended a research-based policy
which would protect climax communities but allow successional ones to
change naturally. In terms of faunal management, the board recommended
elimination of introduced species (exotics), reintroduction of locally
extinct native species, and maintenance of natural ecological
relationships including protection of native insects, despite their
damage to some attractive species, and of predators such as coyote,
wolf, and mountain lion. It recommended prescribed burning to return
forests overgrown by understory vegetation to the open character
displayed when first viewed by whites. In this instance they referred
specifically to the sequoia groves of Sequoia and Kings Canyon where
Cain's former student Hartesveldt busily continued his research. In
addition, the advisory board recommended sweeping changes in the
research and resource management situations throughout the Park Service.
Specifically it called for (1) a large, full-time, permanent staff of
ecologists to conduct a broad spectrum of research (2) establishment of
research reserves within various park environments from which visitors
might be excluded and (3) flexible management of the parks responsive to
the findings of these scientists. Finally, in a strong statement
applauded by those who would see the parks turned from recreation
grounds to biological reserves, Leopold and his committee wrote, "If too
many tourists crowd the roadways then we should ration the tourists
rather than expand the roadways." [70]
The impact of the "Leopold Report" was immediate and
profound. Preservation organizations heralded it as a new dawn of
intelligent and responsible parks management. Secretary Udall accepted
the report and issued an order that its recommendations be followed. The
slow recovery of biological research in the parks received a huge boost
as each unit scrambled to review its ecological situation, establish
research programs, and in many cases hire new scientists to implement
them. The report has subsequently been called the "bible" of modern
parks management. The board's recommendations institutionalized a
philosophy in the Park Service and provided a framework for the
organized expansion of science as a management tool. Before the Leopold
Report, ecological data formed a relatively minor part of decision
information. After acceptance of the Leopold Report, the goal of park
management shifted from strict protection of objects found desirable by
the public to an aggressive attempt to reestablish past ecosystems and
unhindered natural processes. Gone was the philosophy of environmental
manipulation toward human ideals of beauty, comfort, or anthropocentric
value. In place came a structured attempt to recreate past scenes and
situations regardless of implications for visitor appreciation. Although
this did not happen overnight, the speed with which the Park Service
shifted shocked many visitors, older park employees, and not a few
superintendents. [71]
In Sequoia and Kings Canyon a resurgence of research
and ecology-oriented management was already underway, albeit grudgingly.
The reports and studies of human impact on Giant Forest and other
sequoia groves, such as those of Hartesveldt and the Yosemite Committee,
were only part of a gradual reawakening of interest in scientific data
for parks administration. In 1954, Lowell Sumner had returned to assume
a recreated position as park biologist. Once in place, he instituted
several programs such as reduction of the population of mule deer,
increased research on beavers and other exotics, investigations of
bighorn sheep and other species with ranges that were threatened, and
review of the always controversial issue of bear management. Just two
months before release of the Leopold Report, Superintendent John Davis
received permission and funding for a wildlife ranger position to assist
the park biologist. [72]
The Leopold Report gave both real and psychological
support to this growing agenda by providing funds and organizational
backing as well as spotlighting the role of scientific research in park
resource management. New positions were created and academically trained
scientists quickly filled them, bringing a newer and louder voice of
idealism based on ecological tenets. By the time of the 1971 master
plan, Sequoia and Kings Canyon had a chief scientist, a research
botanist, several wildlife ranger positions, plus assorted permanent and
temporary research positions within a division of natural sciences. In
addition, the parks had an ambitious research plan extending to all its
resources and life zones, cooperative interagency projects with the
Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and various state groups, and
liaisons with university researchers for exchange of information. The
parks had truly become part of the rapidly expanding research frontiers
of the natural sciences. [73]
The direct impact of the Leopold Report on resource
management practice within Sequoia and Kings Canyon varied depending on
the program. Dr. Leopold and his colleagues confirmed many existing
policies, while recommending that others be initiated. And in some
cases, their recommendations overturned more than a century of resource
management practice dating to prepark days in the American West. With
amazing alacrity, however, it charted the very basis of park resource
management to the singular goals of reestablishing the ecological scene
that existed when, "the the forty-niners poured over the Sierra Nevada
into California...," complete with original flora, fauna, and ecological
dynamism. [74]
One example of a program in place in Sequoia and
Kings Canyon which coordinated well with the advisory board's
recommendations was the deer management program. The problem of
overgrazing by deer, first addressed during the 1930s, had been
exacerbated during ensuing decades by visitors who encouraged
unnaturally high populations by constantly feeding the nearly tame deer
that entered the campgrounds. During the low visitation seasons
thereafter, those hungry deer obliterated the native vegetation, in some
cases eliminating brush entirely from large sections of the two parks.
[75] In 1943 Field Naturalist Joseph Dixon
found the Giant Forest browse badly overused and implemented a plan to
trap and remove deer to other ranges. However, that plan was
ineffectual, taking only an average of 25 to 30 deer a year from a herd
that probably exceeded 6,000 for the parks with possibly 1,000 in the
Giant Forest area. Between 1947 and 1952, some 52 deer were killed by
park officials upon orders of Acting Director Hilary Tolson, but even
this drastic step was far too circumscribed to have any effect. [76]
Park Biologist Sumner took up the challenge upon his
return to Sequoia and Kings Canyon, implementing a much more ambitious
program of "direct reduction." Over the decade from 1955 to 1965 park
rangers shot almost 900 deer, primarily pregnant does. [77] As expected, the program received some
criticism from the public for two reasons. First, hunters in the
surrounding communities were annoyed that the parks' administration
often discarded the venison. The other criticism came from park visitors
who on rare occasions stumbled across a park ranger in the act of
killing a deer. The emotional letters that resulted from these incidents
served to remind the Park Service of the resistance of the public to
programs which ignored their fervently held and well-entrenched beliefs
in park management for human ideals. [78]
With the release of the Leopold Report, Sumner and
Dr. Bruce Kilgore, the parks' "research scientist," had been handed
independent and prominent support for this aggressive program. This was
precisely the management technique suggested by the advisory board for
the Yellowstone elk and for other cases of ungulate overpopulation.
Ironically, as money and personnel became more easily available, the
program waned due to a combination of its own success and conditions
outside the parks. From 1965 to 1970, the Park Service decreased annual
deer kills by 80 percent to an average of fifteen animals a year. The
program was discontinued thereafter, owing to a marked drop in the
statewide population of mule deer. The deer management program, brutal
though it may have seemed, accomplished its purpose. It reduced the herd
to a level which allowed substantial recovery of the browse vegetation
in the two parks. However, it relied on excessive and unpopular
manipulation. The advisory board had planned on this as an acceptable
technique, but park officials nevertheless continued to search for a way
to emphasize natural controls rather than human ones. To that end,
consistent as it was with the ultimate goal of management according to
the Leopold Report, the Park Service beefed up programs of research and
resource management aimed at fostering populations of mountain lion and
other predators. The deer reduction program had been a scientifically
established administrative plan which predated and fully implemented the
Leopold proposals. Despite that, the zeal of park resource managers led
them to look for better and more natural ways to approach that pioneer
ecosystem. [79]
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For thirty years NPS biologist Lowell
Sumner sought ways to minimize human impacts on the natural resources of
the two parks. (National Park Service photo)
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Numerous other research programs for wildlife
management began as a result of the increased attention and funding
brought about by the Leopold Report. Although most of the problems had
been recognized and given cursory research attention in the past, they
could now be tackled in a serious and systematic way. For example, the
diminishing population of bighorn sheep had been recognized and charted
since 1948. A large part of the problem arose from the fact that the
native ungulate only spent summers in park territory, wintering on
Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands. Increased research
and a vigorous effort to promote cooperative interagency management led
to agreements by 1970 to conduct research and by 1973 to manage the
habitat for protection of the species regardless of agency jurisdiction.
[80]
In the case of bear management, the Park Service
continued to face its most complicated animal management problem. After
the closing of the bear pit, bears deprived of their easy nightly
handouts had foraged through campgrounds and concession areas in often
fruitful nocturnal forays. In 1947, the Park Service had initiated
evening garbage pickup which seemed to suppress the scavenging for a
while. However, the problem continued to result in human contact with
bears leading to property damage and an occasional injury. Through the
1950s, park rangers experimented with bearproof garbage facilities,
education of the public, and destruction of offensive bears. The last
measure became so institutionalized and simple a solution that during a
three-year period from 1959 to 1961, sixty-one bears were killed. A
drought occurred during those same years and contributed to a sudden and
sharp decrease in the bear population.
After the Leopold Report, park biologists prepared a
bear management plan. It authorized destruction of up to ten bears a
year, thus placing a limit on the zeal of rangers to protect visitor
property at the expense of wildlife. In addition, the plan proposed use
of bearproof garbage cans and an expanded program to educate park
visitors, and it mandated systematic and ongoing bear research. Although
bear problems persist, the Park Service continues, with few
modifications, to follow those management techniques. [81]
Yet another wildlife management program in the years
after the Leopold Report focused on elimination of exotic species, many
of which had been introduced deliberately by the Park Service during the
early years. However, park scientists found these tasks easier to plan
than to implement. Efforts to halt fish stocking, particularly of
nonnative varieties of rainbow trout, were met with loud and immediate
choruses of anger from sport fishermen and the efforts were abandoned
temporarily. Studies of ways to remove alien bird species such as the
brown-headed cowbird indicated that the task was probably beyond
anyone's control by that time. In the case of the beaver, a major
attempt to eradicate the species was attempted. Beaver had been
introduced to the lower Kern River from 1949 to 1952, and subsequently
had spread northward into the parks. A 1966 study estimated the
population in the Kern drainage to be between 100 and 200 animals. Park
biologists and rangers attempted to eradicate the beaver in 1969 and
1970, trapping some fifty of the rodents. However, the effort was not
sustained and the population quickly reestablished itself. Although none
of these efforts in wildlife management was particularly successful,
they further demonstrated the commitment of the Park Service to the
philosophy and policies of the Leopold Report. [82]
Of all the programs in resource management fostered
by the advisory board's recommendations, none represented a more
dramatic policy reversal or a more fundamental commitment to ecological
dynamism than that of Park Service fire management. In deriving his
conclusions on the harmful effects of humans and their structures on
sequoia root systems, Richard Hartesveldt also found sequoia groves to
be choked with dead and decaying fuel, the product of generations of
vegetation rigorously preserved from natural fire. White fir and other
understory trees crowded the sequoias and strangled their offspring.
Past solutions to the mysterious lack of sequoia regeneration, such as
the Ash Mountain Nursery and its associated planting program, would
never overcome the problem. What Hartesveldt found, and communicated to
the advisory board, was that fire suppression had flatly halted sequoia
regrowth. In this case, supposed protection of the parks' primary
resource, in a classic case of object preservation, actually had
hindered protection of the species. [83]
The advisory board spent no small percentage of its
short report commenting on the sequoia situation and, in fact, used it
as a prime example of how overprotection of individuals had created a
grossly unnatural scene, one that carried its own seeds of destruction.
By the time of the Leopold Report, Hartesveldt had continued and
expanded his research, compiling mounting evidence of the relationship
between fire suppression and a lack of regeneration. As a byproduct, he
showed the catastrophic results that would eventually occur because of
the huge, unnatural fuel level below the Big Trees. By the end of 1963,
his research had led to a plan to set fire deliberately to a small patch
of sequoia-mixed conifer forest to test his hypotheses. [84]
The area chosen by Hartesveldt and his colleague
Thomas Harvey was the Redwood Mountain Grove, part of the area brought
into the park system in 1940. After carefully measuring the existing
vegetation by biomass, species populations, fuel load, and other
criteria, and carefully preparing to control the fire's extent, the team
set the first fire in a sequoia grove in nearly seventy-five years. The
results were startling. The fire reduced fuel concentrations by more
than 50 percent, and months later dazzled the scientists with a
veritable thicket of new, tiny sequoia seedlings. Most, of course, soon
fell to various rigors of the environment, but the relatively hot fire
established beyond doubt its role in sequoia regeneration and in keeping
the sequoia forest open and "natural". [85]
With this success to bolster their research
conclusions, park scientists recommended an ambitious program of
returning fire to the parks, natural if possible, prescribed if
necessary. Beginning in 1968, park rangers allowed fires in the
high-altitude lodgepole pine and subalpine forest communities, generally
above 8,000 feet, to burn themselves out naturally under close
supervision. Because individual trees in these communities are widely
spaced, uncontrollable and destructive conflagrations were highly
unlikely. Also in 1968, rangers successfully experimented with an
800-acre prescribed burn in a red fir community. Once again they
achieved spectacular results in reduction of fuel and invigoration of
the community. A year later, officials fired more than 6,300 acres of
fuel breaks in oak woodland, chaparral, ponderosa pine, and mixed
conifer forests. In each case regeneration and reduced danger from
subsequent larger fires were equally positive. In 1970, rangers brought
fire to Cedar Grove to reduce downed limbs and duff in campgrounds and
other developed areas. Finally, in 1972, they set up the first fully
scheduled, long-term prescribed burn program in Redwood Mountain, still
an experiment, but now in full-scale management proportions. Thus in a
single decade, that most ardently held and rigorously enforced of all
government forest-management beliefs was reversed on the basis of
scientific data and the overwhelming impact of a single panel report.
[86]
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