Epilogue
THE WITHDRAWAL of the military units from the
National Parks marked a major turning point in the development of the
National Park idea. Henceforth the direction of the Parks would be in
civilian hands and future development would be civilian development.
Admitting that, in principle, military control and administration of any
civil matters may be undesirable in a democratic society, it was
fortunate for the future of conservation in the United States that the
Army was given the duty of protecting the first Parks. The Yellowstone
Park, itself an experiment, was formed during a time of notorious
political corruption; it could well have become a political plaything
and in the process might have been destroyed. If it had been manipulated
by unscrupulous politicians, it is doubtful whether the constant threat
of dismemberment, spoliation, and destruction could have been thwarted.
Writing at the turn of the century, the country's foremost naturalist
and park propagandist, John Muir, noted this: "In pleasing contrast to
the noisy, ever-changing management or mismanagement, of blustering,
blundering, plundering, money-making vote-sellers who receive their
places from boss politicians as purchased goods, the soldiers do their
duty so quietly that the traveler is scarcely aware of their presence."
[1]
From the Act establishing the Yellowstone National
Park has grown a national park system comprising some 264 units
including parks, battlefields, cemeteries, seashores, parkways, and
historic sites. A national forest system protects more than 185 million
acres of timbered land and some 370 state forests exist under varying
degrees of protection. Municipalities and individuals have set aside
large areas for recreation and scientific purposes; thousands of
wildlife refuges dot the land. Credit for these protective systems
obviously belongs to many nonmilitary men and processes. However, the
United States Cavalry did protect the beginnings of the National Park
system at a time when no other protection was feasible. By 1916 military
control and administration of the nation's parks were anachronistic. The
embryonic park system had fulfilled, by that time, the expectations of
its founders, and the mere presence of protected bits of wilderness
justified the wisdom of establishing other parks. The idea of
conservation was becoming an established part of the nation's thinking
and National Parks were considered by an increasing number of people to
be worth preserving. Many individuals, politicians, and corporate
interests resisted the idea, but then they still do.
Then and now the major conflict concerning natural
resources was between those who would exploit and those who would
preserve for posterity. Present, too, were the conflicting views of the
Easternerswho viewed the Parks from afarand the
Westernerswho viewed the Parks as a violation of their economic
destiny. These conflicts were exhibited in the debates over bills
providing for a railroad through the northern portion of the
Yellowstone. In one instance, Representative Joseph K. Toole of Montana
urged passage of a railroad bill and maintained that "the privileges of
citizenship, the vast accumulation of property, and the demands of
commerce" should not yield to the "mere caprice of a few sportsmen bent
only on the protection of a few buffalo in the National Park." This
economic argument was seconded by Lewis E. Payson of Illinois, who found
that he could not understand the "sentiment" which favored the
"retention of a few buffaloes" over the proposed railroad, which would
"lead to the development of mining interests amounting to millions of
dollars, giving profitable employment to perhaps thousands of men."
The rebuttal to these utilitarian arguments, calling
forth the imagery of Thoreau and Bryant, was quick and harsh. New York's
Representative S. S. Cox stated that the railroad measure was inspired
by "corporate greed and natural selfishness against national pride and
natural beauty." He thought it was not a question for "Montana nor other
Territory or locality," but rather should be considered a "question for
the United States, and for all that gives elevation and grace to our
human nature." Supporting Cox, William McAdoo of New Jersey asked his
fellow Representatives to "prefer the beautiful and the sublime and the
interests of millions to heartless mammon and the greed of capital." In
this case the aesthetic arguments prevailed, but the same conflict
remains, even in the present age of intense environmental awareness. [2]
One of the main tenets of the Yellowstone organic
Act, a clause consequently applied to the other Park Acts, is embodied
in the article requiring the "preservation, from injury or spoliation,
of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities or wonders within
said park and their retention in their natural condition." Today, in the
name of progress, several National Parks and monuments are threatened by
proposals that completely ignore the very purpose of the Park system.
The planned Bridge Canyon Reservoir would back water through the Grand
Canyon National Monument with the water reaching Havasu Creek in the
Grand Canyon National Park. An opposite effect is being brought about by
the draining of portions of the Everglades National Park, resulting in
the slow destruction of its unique plant and animal life. Officials of
the State of Arizona have stated their desire to "enhance the beauty and
recreational value" of the Grand Canyon by constructing four reservoirs
within the canyon. The people of San Francisco, after having once
assaulted the Yosemite National Park, now desire to compound the crime
by enlarging the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir to include the entire Grand
Canyon of the Tuolumne, thus inundating a large area of the Yosemite.
Acadia National Park is threatened by the introduction of heavy oil
tankers into the Gulf of Maine and the Bay of Fundy. The "Save the
Redwoods League" was recently reactivated in order to preserve several
groves of the ancient giants threatened by man-made super highways and
lumbermen. The history of almost every National Park is filled with
attempts by acquisitive individuals to introduce railroads, dams, power
generating machinery, reservoirs, tramways, mineral and timber claims,
and sundry other schemes that, if allowed consideration, would violate
the still not too sacred boundaries of the National Parks.
In the past, threats to the integrity of National
Parks have come from interests outside the Parks; today, the Parks are
threatened from both without and within. In the second revision of his
chronicle of the Yellowstone National Park, made shortly before his
death in 1917, Hiram M. Chittenden stated: "If official ambition for
innovation and the mercenary ambition for private gain are held under
adequate restraint, there is no reason why it [Yellowstone] may not
continue to the latest generation a genuine example of original nature
... [3] Today, official ambition for
innovation appears to be threatening, if not the existence, the stated
purpose of our National Parks. At present, professional Park personnel
too often view the nation's Parks as belonging to them and not to the
public. This is due, in part, to the evolution of the responsibility of
the Park ranger from one of protecting parks for the public, to
one of protecting parks from the public. Given the destructive
propensities of the visiting tourist, this stance is understandable and
perhaps admirable, since employees of the National Park Service are
directed by law to provide protection for the Parks "so that they remain
unimpaired for future generations." The same law also stipulates that
the Parks be managed in such a manner as to provide for the public use
of those parks. Since even restricted use of the Parks by the public
impairs to some extent protection of their natural state, compromises
leaning in one direction or the other are necessary if the conflicting
demands of an idealistic law and a demanding public are to be satisfied.
[4]
Today the persistent and increasing press of
population demands more and more use of the Parks. Park superintendents,
as if to justify their efficiency and existence, gleefully report every
increase in Park visitation, without noting that increases in visitation
and utilization necessarily connote a decrease in protection and a
consequent impairment of the assumed enjoyment of future generations.
The dilemma is real, and at present, the fluctuating attempts to follow
a middle ground between the attitude of the user on the one hand and
that of the preserver on the other have been singularly unsuccessful,
and have produced a considerable amount of controversy,
misunderstanding, and distrust. [5]
Continuing studies and constant re-examination of
fundamental Park policies may produce acceptable answers. Some Parks
may, of necessity, become "pleasuring grounds" in their entirety; others
may be preserved in a pristine wilderness state. Congress attempted to
placate both the preservationist and the user when it created the
nation's newest Park in the State of Washington. The North Cascades
National Park, established October 2, 1968, is part of a larger complex
encompassing two national recreation areas, a new national forest
wilderness, and an enlarged forest wilderness area. The new Park is
bisected by a National Recreation corridor in which most human activity
will presumably occur, thus allowing more intensive protection of the
natural habitat within the Park. This experiment in use and
preservation, if successful, may serve as an example for administrators
of the older Parks. The mere presence of man denotes some use of a given
area; the differentiation between use and preservation is simply one of
degrees of use. A solitary hiker traversing a wilderness is using that
area, just as two million people motoring through Yellowstone are using
that area. The differences in impact, however, are considerable. The
combination of recreation and formal wilderness in the North Cascades
resulted from compromises formulated by representatives of the Bureau of
Outdoor Recreation, the Park Service, the Forest Service, and a number
of conservationists. [6]
Over sixty years ago, a President of the United
States remarked that almost no one was opposed to conservation. The same
holds true today. Yet the future of conservation may be in greater
danger today than it was then. For now, the interested public risks
being lulled into complacency by reassuring statements from the White
House, the Secretary of the Interior, and major industrial concerns. The
urbanization of the United Stares, the increasing population,
innovations in transportation, the never-ending worship of progress, and
the ever-present personal greed of individuals all point toward more and
larger threats to the existence of an inviolate National Park
system.
We have admittedly come a long way from the time when
wholesale destruction of the nation's resources seemed necessary to
achieve our industrial destiny. Then resources were endless and people
were few. Today, when the opposite holds true, we must be ready to take
advantage of new land management skills, of advanced technology and
research, so that what we have left will not go the way of what we once
had. If it is true that man must become civilized to appreciate or
desire an uncivilized state of being, it is possible that the material
society which grew from widespread exploitation of a continent may be
the society that is best prepared, both materially and mentally, to
appreciate and preserve those extant elements that escaped the
destruction of an earlier era. As man increasingly insulates himself and
his culture in concrete, steel, and glass, he may develop an increasing
awareness and appreciation for the natural world that he has either
taken for granted, ignored, or attempted to mold to fit his varying
impulses.
Unfortunately, the poet and philosopher, George
Santayana, was only partially correct when he stated, "Those who cannot
remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Today we seem determined
to repeat, if not all, at least some of the errors of the past. A review
of conservation literature indicates that the pleas, warnings, and
suggestions of today are composed of phrases spoken and words written in
ages past. More than one hundred years ago George Marsh pleaded for a
commensurate sense of responsibility as man's power to transform the
natural world increased. Marsh wrote, "Man has too long forgotten that
the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for prolifigate
waste." His admonitions were eloquently repeated more than fifty years
later by Forest Service employee Aldo Leopold, when he called for the
development of an ecological conscience and the establishment of an
ethic stressing man-land relations. Today, Raymond Dasmann, Fraser
Darling, Stewart Udall, and William O. Douglas are repeating essentially
the same pleas.
We need not, however, be ashamed of our conservation
record, for it stands in remarkable contrast to that of many
olderand some youngernations. We admittedly have not yet
reached the point where man is in accord with his natural surroundings,
but we did change our destructive direction sufficiently to allow the
preservation of some elements of our natural heritage. The fundamental
significance of the Yellowstone, Sequoia, Yosemite, and General Grant
National Parks lies in the fact that they represented a marked
innovation in the traditional policy of governments: the government
purposefully set aside portions of the public domain, and permanently
excluded settlers and exploiters. The great naturalist, John Muir,
recognized that the United States Cavalry aided the successful
realization of this innovation when he wrote: "Blessings on Uncle Sam's
soldiers. They have done the job well, and every pine tree is waving its
arms for joy." Although materialistic members of society still attempt
to vitiate the National Park system, bits of a once seemingly endless
wilderness have been preserved; trees and mountains have been saved from
the ax of the lumberman, the pick of the miner, and the greed of
avaricious men. Some pine trees are still waving their arms for joy.
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