Chapter 7:
Ecology Denied
A park is an artificial unit, not an independent
biological unit with natural boundaries (unless it happens to be an
island).
George M. Wright et al., 1933
The biotic associations in many of our parks are
artifacts, pure and simple. They represent a complex ecologic history
but they do not necessarily represent primitive America.
Leopold Committee, 1963
That total preservation was an afterthought of the
twentieth century was nowhere more apparent than in the national parks.
Although "complete conservation" assumed the protection of living
landscapes as well as scenic wonders, each attempt to round out the
parks as effective biological units proved far from successful.
Traditional opponents of scenic preservation, led by resource interests
and utilitarian-minded government agencies, still maintained that
protection should be on a minimum scale only. To be sure, the reluctance
of Congress to provide the parks an ecological as well as a scenic
framework no longer could be laid to ignorance of the principles of
plant and wildlife conservation. As early as 1933 the National Park
Service publicized the need for broader management considerations in its
precedent-breaking report, Fauna of the National Parks of the United
States. Its authors, George M. Wright, Ben H. Thompson, and Joseph
S. Dixon, were experts on wildlife management, natural history, and
economic mammalogy, respectively. [1]
"Unfortunately," they said, setting the theme of their study, "most of
our national parks are mountain-top parks," comprising but "a fringe
around a mountain peak," a "patch on one slope of a mountain extending
to its crest," or "but portions of one slope." Each reflected the
placement of "arbitrary boundaries laid out to protect some scenic
feature." Park boundaries, of course, were anything but arbitrary. It
was not by accident, but by design that Congress refused to accept or
retain parklands with known minerals, timber, and other natural
resources. Still, regardless of the reasoning behind the exclusion of
such areas, the disruption of living environments which resulted was no
less complete. For example, the men concluded emphatically: "It is
utterly impossible to protect animals in an area so small that they are
within it only a portion of the year." [2]
Yellowstone, despite its great size, already served
as a dramatic case in point. While the park appeared to be a wildlife
refuge by virtue of its spacious boundaries, these in fact failed to
compensate for the region's high altitude, on the average of 8,000 feet.
Winter cold and snow still drove most of the large mammals, including
the southern elk herd, to the shelter of valleys such as Jackson Hole.
Yet not until 1950, following another prolonged and emotion-charged
battle, was Grand Teton National Park enlarged along its eastern flank
to take in a substantial remnant of the valley and its wildlife
habitat.
Although far less spectacular than the Tetons
themselves, the addition was crucial to the maintenance of a living
landscape. Fauna of the National Parks addressed this growing
tendency to distinguish between animate and inanimate scenery. "The
realization is coming that perhaps our greatest natural heritage,"
rather "than just scenic features . . . is nature itself, with all its
complexity and its abundance of life." For the first time Americans
could admit that "awesome scenery might in fact be sterile without "the
intimate details of living things, the plants, the animals that live on
them, and the animals that live on those animals." The enduring obstacle
to sound ecological management in the national parks was the prior
emphasis on setting aside purely scenic wonders. "The preponderance of
unfavorable wildlife conditions," the authors continued, "is traceable
to the insufficiency of park area as self-contained biological units."
In "creating the nation parks a little square has been chalked across
the drift of the game, and the game doesn't stay within the square."
Indeed "not one park," the report concluded, "is large enough to provide
year-round sanctuary for adequate populations of all resident species."
[3]
To the example of Yellowstone could be added the
Florida Everglades. As we have seen, in 1934 Congress authorized the
southern extremity of the region as the first national park expressly
designated for wilderness and wildlife protection. But because the
reserve failed to include the entire ecosystem, it was vulnerable to
outside development from the start. Over the years an ever-greater
proportion of the natural flow of fresh water southward to the
Everglades was disrupted and diverted to factories, farms, and
subdivisions. Similarly, the failure of Congress to protect a complete
watershed within Redwood National Parkestablished in
1968soon loomed as the major threat to its integrity as well.
Often loggers clear-cut the adjacent forests right up to the park
boundaries, thus subjecting hundreds of great trees which supposedly had
been "saved" to the threat of being undermined by flash floods and
mudslides from the logging sites. No longer could Congress claim
ignorance about the ecological needs of the region; the redwoods, like
Jackson Hole and the Everglades, were simply the latest victims of
political and economic reality.
Each new controversy mirrored its predecessors.
Throughout the twentieth century, parks that came easily into the fold
were still, to the best of knowledge at the time, economically valueless
from the standpoint of their natural wealth, if not their potential for
outdoor recreation. The Big Bend country of southwest Texas, for
example, authorized as a national park in 1935, drew little objection.
After all, the region was predominantly rugged, arid, inaccessible, and
well removed from the centers of commercial activity in the state. [4]
The exceptions to the rule could still be expected to
arouse far greater opposition. The proposed Olympic national park in
Washington, with its prized stands of Douglas fir, red cedar, Western
hemlock, and Sitka spruce, was a noted example. Preservationists had
never been pleased with the reduction of the national monument by
President Woodrow Wilson in 1915; accordingly, during the 1930s they
mounted a campaign to restore the lost acreage to the monument and
designate the whole a national park.
The heated exchange touched off by the plan is still
recalled among the protagonists. From the outset preservationists
insisted that Olympic National Park protect the unique rain forests of
the Olympic peninsula, not merely, in the words of one supporter, "an
Alpine area [of] little or no commercial value." [5] The vociferous opposition of the lumber
industry and U.S. Forest Service made it inevitable that the bulk of the
reserve would be so structured; still, in 1938 preservationists won a
partial victory with the inclusion of several broad expanses of rain
forest in the new Olympic National Park. [6]
The presence of the tracts, of course, provided a
basis for opponents of the park to request reductions. During World War
II, for example, the secretary of the interior was asked to open the
reserve to logging to bolster the nation's war effort. When Germany and
Japan surrendered, the lumber companies merely switched back to decrying
the park as a hindrance to the region's economy. Throughout the 1950s
they stepped up their campaign against the reserve; occasional
challenges during the 1960s served further notice that preservation
remained vulnerable to attack whenever and wherever resources in
quantity could be found. [7]
The establishment of Kings Canyon National Park,
California, lying immediately north of Sequoia National Park, was
somewhat less controversial, but no less difficult to effect. As early
as 1891 John Muir called for protection of the gorge in Century
Magazine. The forty-nine-year delay in creating the reserve was a
direct reflection of strong opposition by water-power interests. Only
when it became evident that dams sufficient to meet the need for water
storage and electricity could be located elsewhere did the protests
against the park subside. Congress then agreed access into Kings Canyon
should be limited and the region managed to insure the protection of its
"wilderness character." [8] As a result,
preservationists hailed Kings Canyon National Park as another milestone
on the road to total preservation.
The status of Kings Canyon as part of the public
domain, nonetheless, aided its protection. The same was true of Olympic
National Park. To create each reserve the federal government merely
transferred title to the land from the U.S. Forest Service to the
National Park Service. [9] Areas such as
Jackson Hole, where substantial inholdings of private land made the
creation of parks considerably more complex, provided a more accurate
assessment of the degree of commitment to preservation on the part of
Congress. By 1940 still another decade of controversy lay ahead before
Jackson Hole would be linked with Grand Teton National Park. The mere
mention of the valley now aroused development-conscious groups
throughout the West to a fever pitch. Collectively they viewed John D.
Rockefeller, Jr.'s philanthropy as the epitome of outside interference
and the threat of government by legislative decree. The issue was not
merely his purchase of the land in secret, but that he fully intended to
take all of it out of production by donating it to the National Park
Service.
In 1943 the Jackson Hole controversy came to a head.
Acting with the assurance that Rockefeller intended to divest his
holdings in the valley within a year, on March 13 President Franklin D.
Roosevelt proclaimed the entire north end of Jackson Hole a national
monument. The bulk of the reserve had been carved from the Teton
National Forest, which, when combined with the property of the Snake
River Land Company, brought the addition to approximately 221,000 acres.
[10]
The storm of protest unleashed by Roosevelt's decree
echoed throughout the Rocky Mountain West. "It is unthinkable that this
hunters' paradise should be molested in any way," Congressman Frank A.
Barrett of Wyoming said, leading the attack for dissolution of Jackson
Hole National Monument. There followed the standard argument that the
only "real" scenery in the region was the mountains themselves. "The
addition of farm and ranch lands and sagebrush flats is not going to
enhance the beauty of the Tetons." That, of course, was not the point,
as Newton B. Drury, director of the Park Service, testified in rebuttal.
The national park idea now rest ed on the preservation of animate
scenery as well as natural wonders. "Visitors to national parks and
monuments take great pleasure and obtain valuable education in viewing
many species of strange animals living under natural conditions," Drury
explained. Given the proximity of Jackson Hole to Grand Teton National
Park, its proper role was not, as Representative Barrett argued, simply
to provide that sense of freedom sought by hunters "to pursue and kill
the big game that for so many years roamed our western plains." Rather
Congress must insure the protection and restoration of all parts "of the
wildlife picture" in the valley, including "the largest herd of elk in
America." [11]
And yet, as had happened so often in the past, the
identification of commercial uses for Jackson Hole, in this instance
hunting, ranching, and farming, swayed Congress to the side of
development. In December 1944 a bill introduced by Representative
Barrett for dissolution of Jackson Hole National Monument easily passed
both the House and Senate; only President Roosevelt's veto staved off
abolishment of the reserve. [12]
Such a narrow defeat, however, foreshadowed the
certainty of Barrett's attempt to revive the proposal. That the bill
also failed its second time around could be laid to the length and
intensity of the controversy. As both sides tired of the struggle, the
prospects for a compromise measurably improved. With the assurance that
an agreement would be reached, on December 16, 1949, John D.
Rockefeller, Jr., deeded his property in Jackson Hole (its total cost of
acquisition was roughly $1.5 million) over to the federal government. It
remained for Congress to work out the details of the compromise
legislation. With its approval by President Harry S Truman on September
14, 1950, Jackson Hole National Monument was abolished and rededicated
as a portion of Grand Teton National Park. [13]
Cosmetically the addition was a great success. What
may rightfully be called the "frame" of the Tetons, the sweeping vistas
across Jackson Hole, Jackson Lake, and the Snake River, no longer could
be marred by billboards, tourist traps, and other forms of visual
blight. Those preservationists who still considered the park inadequate
listed its failures in terms of total conservation. As one illustration,
Congress did not accept the recommendation that Jackson Hole and the
Tetons be made contiguous with Yellowstone, their geographic partner. In
between lay a wide corridor managed by the U.S. Forest Service, whose
philosophy of management usually clashed with the idea of preservation
for its own sake. In effect, two agencies were responsible for what was
in fact a single ecosystem. Even more revealing, however, was a
provision in the park act that provided for sport shooting. To quiet the
objections of sportsmen who opposed the addition of Jackson Hole to
Grand Teton National Park as an infringement on traditional recreation,
periodically a specified number might enter the preserve as "deputized
rangers," ostensibly to assist the Park Service in maintaining the elk
herd at optimum size. Of course the "deputies" were simply hunters under
a less offensive title. Even to claim they would fill the void left by
the extinction of natural predators, and cull only the weaker and
diseased elk from the herd, was naive at best. [14]
Thanks to the efforts of wildlife conservationists,
the southern elk herd no longer was threatened with extinction, but
Grand Teton National Park was still not a self-contained biological
unit. In this regard the situation in the Florida Everglades was also
very frustrating. As set forth with authorization of the park in 1934,
the Everglades could not in fact be dedicated as a national park until
the state had purchased the land and deeded it to the federal
government. Furthermore, congressional opponents of the enabling act,
who in 1934 heralded the project as a "snake swamp park," had won an
amendment to the legislation prohibiting any financial support from
Congress for management of the Everglades until 1939. [15]
There were also setbacks in acquiring the land. To
insure the biological integrity of the Everglades, the region had to be
purchased promptly and completely. The act of 1934 called for the
preservation "of approximately two thousand square miles . . . of Dade,
Monroe, and Collier Counties." But not until 1957, fully ten years after
dedication of the park, was the process of acquisition anywhere near
complete. Even then protection of the region was not assured. Fully 93
percent of the Everglades proper was outside the preserve and earmarked
for additional farms, water-storage basins, and flood-control projects.
Similarly, the Big Cypress Swamp, another critical aquifer to the
northwest, was beyond the park boundaries and thus still subject to
intensive development. [16]
Few parks, as a result, were more fitting testimony
to the cliche "too little, too late." Many had held from the start that
the project should be closer to 2 million acres instead of its current
1.4 million. The title "Everglades" National Park was somewhat
misleading. In reality the preserve included only a representative
portion of the sawgrass province, and that with the least potential for
development. Nearly as much of the park consisted of the mangrove
forests, sloughs, and tidelands along the coast. Still, even this far
south recharges of fresh water are essential for maintaining the
life-cycle of the region. Wood ibis, for example, breed successfully
only when high water facilitates the reproduction of large populations
of fish close to the nesting sites. In addition, the physical substrata
must be replenished periodically to hold back salt-laden intrusions from
the sea. [17]
It followed that the placement of new dikes and
drainage canals across the watershed north of the park jeopardized the
entire preserve. In 1961 that possibility became a reality as a
prolonged drought occurred throughout southern Florida. Peter Farb, a
naturalist and writer, described his return to the Everglades at the
height of the tragedy. "I found no Eden but rather a waterless hell
under a blazing sun. Everywhere I saw Everglades drying up, the last
drops of water evaporating from water holes, creeks and sloughs." [18]
Drought by itself was not unusual to the region; what
turned this particular dry spell into a crisis was the policy of
withholding water from the Everglades for agricultural uses, or shunting
it seaward to check the mere possibility of floods. In 1962 engineers
completed yet another major link in the system of levees south of Lake
Okeechobee. For the first time drainage into the park could be shut off
completely. Three years later, for example, engineers lowered Lake
Okeechobee in anticipation of a normal wet season by flushing more than
280,000 acre feet of water directly into the sea. Yet although the
Everglades was starved for water, supplying the region still would have
been impossible. A hydrologist, William J. Schneider, summed up the
problem: "under the existing canal system" the excess water could not be
moved from Lake Okeechobee to the national park "without also pouring it
across the farmlands in-between." [19]
Although the farms prospered at the expense of the
park, it was pointless to suggest they be destroyed to save it in
return. Instead the Park Service took advantage of near-record
precipitation in 1966 to work out an interim agreement with the Florida
Board of Conservation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for scheduled
releases of water into the park from bordering conservation districts.
The extent of damage to the region nevertheless continued to haunt
preservationists: Would the water be enough, they asked, and in time?
And what of the future? Only Congress might seal the agreement and
guarantee water to the park, the historian, Wallace Stegner, concluded
the following year. "Nobody else can. The most that anyone else can do
is slow down the inevitable." [20]
Guaranteed protection of the Everglades depended on
unified management of the entire ecosystem south of Lake Okeechobee.
Long before realization of the national park, however, any hope of
acquiring such a vast areaon the order of three to four times the
size of Yellowstonehad vanished. Congress might have condemned the
private land, of course; indeed, for a nation now reaching toward outer
space, the cost of such a park seemed infinitesimal by comparison. Yet
it required little understanding of American culture to perceive that
support for technological advancement was on a level all its own. Not
until 1961, with authorization of Cape Cod National Seashore,
Massachusetts, did the federal government relax its own requirement that
national parks outside the public domain be purchased by the states or
private philanthropists. Before Congress might agree to extend the power
of eminent domain to regions of the magnitude of the Everglades,
however, the traditions and values of the United States would have to
undergo a truly revolutionary reappraisal.
So far Isle Royale National Park, in Lake Superior,
had come closest to the ideal ecological preserve by virtue of its
island status, isolation, and nearly complete ownership by the federal
government. But Isle Royale was to remain the classic exception. For a
time during the 1960s, it seemed the retention of an entire, integral
ecosystem within a single national park in the West might be
accomplished in the California coast redwoods. The trees sweep down to
the sea in a narrow band from the Oregon border south to Monterey Bay.
Prior to white settlement, pure and mixed stands of coast redwood
covered approximately two million acres, roughly the equivalent of
Yellowstone National Park. In river valleys facing the coast, a
combination of rich alluvial soil, ocean rains, and blanketing fog often
propels many specimens to heights well above 300 feet (the present
record is 367 feet). With age many of the trees also broaden at the
base, commonly attaining diameters of between 10 and 15 feet. Inland the
giants give way to relatives of moderate size and species of lower
moisture-dependence. Yet even here, what a redwood lacks in girth and
height is more than compensated for by its color and grace. [21]
During the closing third of the nineteenth century, a
similar assessment had been enough to win national park status for its
distant counterpart, the Sierra redwood. Loggers knew beforehand, of
course, that Sierra redwood was so brittle the trees often shattered
when toppled to the ground. Coast redwood, in marked contrast, turned
out to be lightweight, pest resistant, and highly durable. In short, its
quality as lumber was superior. To forestall the inevitable assault
against the species, as early as 1852 a California assemblyman, H. A.
Crabb, called for the withdrawal of "all public lands upon which the
Redwood is growing." Not surprisingly, the plan went nowhere. In 1879
Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz resurrected a much reduced version
of Crabb's proposal, one calling for the protection of a mere 46,000
acres of the trees. But again the effort was to no avail. Not until
1901, with the establishment of Big Basin Redwoods State Park, near
Santa Cruz, were several major groves of the great trees spared from the
logger's axe. [22]
Meanwhile, aided by weak land laws and the almost
total absence of their enforcement, private claimants had defrauded the
federal government of nearly 100 percent of the entire redwood region.
Now properties once parkland for the taking would have to be repurchased
at considerable expense. The state took the first initiative with the
creation of Big Basin, in Santa Cruz County. In 1908 a California
Congressman, William Kent, and his wife donated another major grove to
the federal government. This was a 295-acre expanse beneath Mt.
Tamalpais, just north of San Francisco. The Kents' only pre-conditions
were that the land be managed as a park and named in honor of their
friend, John Muir. President Theodore Roosevelt gladly complied with
both terms and proclaimed the tract Muir Woods National Monument. [23]
Congress itself still had no intention of
repossessing large portions of the redwoods, either for parks or
national forests. As with Muir Woods, the initiative for protection of
the trees fell largely to private groups and individuals. The
Save-the-Redwoods League, organized in 1918, assumed leadership in the
private sector. At first league members were committed to "a National
Redwood Park." In the face of persistent congressional indifference to
the proposal, however, they agreed lands purchased by the group should
be donated to California for management as state parks on the order of
Big Basin. By 1964 state park holdings of virgin redwood totalled 50,000
acres, thanks to the efforts of the league, John D. Rockefeller, Jr.,
and numerous other philanthropists large and small. In fact, of the $16
million used to establish redwood parks, better than 50 percent had been
subscribed by members of the Save-the-Redwoods League. [24]
From north to south, the league gave priority to
rounding out five projectsJedediah Smith, Del Norte Coast, Prairie
Creek, Humboldt, and Big Basin state parks. At first the league
concentrated on purchasing the low-lying river flats and nearby
benchlands, which supported the largest of the trees. As more of the
giants were acquired, the focus of protection shifted to forests upslope
and upstream. The league admitted to prospective members that these
areas contained fewer of the "cathedral-like groves," those "stretching
back into the centuries and forging a noble link with the past." But no
longer was monumentalism the only perspective at stake. Logging damage
adjacent to the monumental groves underscored to the league the futility
of trying to save the redwoods without acquiring complete watersheds
wherever possible. For example, severe flooding along Bull Creek in
Humboldt State Park during the winter of 1955-56 toppled 300 of its
largest redwoods and undermined an additional 225. Although
preservationists conceded that record rainfall was a major contributing
factor, as much of the damage, they maintained, could be laid to the
effects of clear-cutting the forest adjacent to the park. With no trees
or groundcover to check the rush of water down the slopes, the torrent
swept on, gathering force from suspended mud and debris. When the crest
finally subsided, better than 15 percent of Humboldt Park's primeval,
bottom-land growth lay heaped and tangled along the banks of Bull Creek.
[25]
Awareness of the need to provide the redwoods an
ecological framework based on the security of major watersheds
reawakened serious discussion about a redwood national park. Left to
private philanthropy alone the costs of such a project were far too
great. Newton B. Drury, former Park Service director, and now secretary
of the Save-the-Redwoods League, took stock of the enormity of the task.
"It is recognized that even when all the spectacular cathedral-like
stands of Redwoods along the river bottoms and the flats have been
acquired, the lands surrounding them must be preserved for
administrative and protective reasons." Preservationists now faced the
challenge of "rounding out complete areas, involving basins and
watersheds in their entirety." [26] As
justification for this approach, the league recalled the flooding of
Bull Creek. "The big lesson from the tragedy," another environmentalist,
Russell D. Butcher, stated in pleading for Congress to intervene, is the
importance of protecting not only the particular scenic-scientific park
features, in this case the unsurpassed stands of coast redwoods, but of
bringing under some degree of control the surrounding,
ecologically-related landsthe upper slopes of the same watershed."
[27]
Mill Creek, within and adjacent to Jedediah Smith and
Del Norte Coast state parks, had a financial edge. A national park here
required $56 million as opposed to a minimum of nearly three times that
amount along Redwood Creek, adjoining Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park.
[28] In deference to these figures, the
Save-the-Redwoods League endorsed the Mill Creek watershed as the best
site for national park status. In 1964, however, the Sierra Club,
dismayed by the league's conservatism, quoted a study by the National
Park Service which concluded that Redwood Creek was indeed the superior
location. Despite the report, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Secretary of
the Interior Stewart L. Udall, and the National Park Service opted early
for Mill Creek as the alternative most likely to receive congressional
approval in time to forestall the threat of additional logging damage.
[29] Disheartened, the Sierra Club took its
case to the public in a series of controversial advertisements. "Mr.
President," an example published in 1967 began: "There is one great
forest of redwoods left on earth; but the one you are trying to save
isn't it. . . . Meanwhile they are cutting down both of them." [30]
The irony of the crisis was the degree to which the
preservationists' once popular imagery of the redwoods as "monuments"
could now be turned against the advancement of ecological conservation.
By far the most common rebuttal to either project took the form of
statements to the effect that the best individual trees already
had been set aside by the state; protection of the groves as a whole was
therefore pointless. In this vein Governor Ronald Reagan of California
himself reportedly remarked: "If you've seen one redwood tree, you've
seen them all." Such statements implied that Americans in truth looked
upon the redwoods much as the Grand Canyon, Old Faithful, or other
"wonders." Setting aside the phenomenon by itself, or merely a
representative sample of it, would be more than adequate. Lumber
companies and their workers similarly attacked the park proposal by
arguing that the area's cool, damp climate discouraged tourism in the
first place. As for protection of the redwoods and their watersheds,
that, too, was best left to industry officials. Surely, they concluded,
their long-term investments in mills and other capital improvements
testified to their commitment to practice sound environmental
conservation. [31]
The point of contention was the breadth of that
commitment. Where it failed to include the protection of old-growth
redwoods, for example, or the avoidance of widespread damage to
watersheds prior to the reestablishment of second-growth stands,
preservationists remained unconvinced. In either case, once more they
found the economic rationales against the national park impossible to
overcome effectively. As approved in October 1968, the reserve contained
neither the Mill Creek nor Redwood Creek watersheds in their entirety.
Instead, Congress used the three existing state parks in the region as a
core, then joined them together with narrow bands of land added to their
peripheries. Accordingly, conformity of the national park to area
watersheds was literally nonexistent. Of the 30,000 acres acquired to
link the California parks, moreover, only 10,000 were previously
unprotected virgin forest. [32]
The affected lumber companies received $92 million.
Congress further authorized the exchange of 14,000 acres of government
redwoodsthe only such parcel then in federal ownershipfor
other corporate holdings within the projected park. Finally, Congress
restricted cutting trees adjacent to the reserve only to the
possible imposition of a ban against logging within a narrow
buffer zone no more than 800 feet across. [33]
With this concession, preservationists might well
conclude that the real victors in the controversy were the lumber
companies. To allow logging so close to the national park defeated the
very purpose that had guided the campaign since the tragedy of Bull
Creek. It was argued, of course, that no national park in the twentieth
century realistically could include everything its supporters might
want. Still, the Sierra Club insisted, even higher estimates for the
park on Redwood Creekin the neighborhood of $200 millionwere
but a fraction of a single moon shot or segment of interstate highway.
To the Sierra Club the issue was not whether the United States could
afford the redwoods, but whether or not it wanted them preserved intact.
"History will think it most strange," a club advertisement bitterly
concluded, "that Americans could afford the Moon and $4 billion
airplanes, while a patch of primeval redwoodsnot too big for a man
to walk through in a daywas considered beyond its means." [34]
The failure of the park as established to guarantee
even the future of the world's tallest trees only reinforced the
skepticism of the Sierra Club and its supporters. In 1963 a team of
surveyors enlisted by the National Geographic Society discovered the
giants on private land beside Redwood Creek. The following year news of
their find inspired a lead article in National Geographic and
aroused considerable interest. [35] But
although discovery of the big trees influenced establishment of the
national park, they were included only by virtue of a narrow corridor of
land paralleling both sides of the streambed. Indeed, no portion of the
reserve more graphically displayed the degree of gerrymandering involved
in laying out the park to the specifications of the lumber industry. On
both sides of the "thumb" or "worm," as the strip came to be known, the
cutting of redwoods continued unabated. In 1975 park officials predicted
the worst. With the advent of the rainy season, it appeared the tall
trees would be toppled by runoff and mudslides from the nearby logging
sites. The grove was still standing two years later, but neither the
president, secretary of the interior, or the courts had yet intervened
to stop the loggers. To the contrary, a state official confessed to
reporters, odds the trees would survive were still "very low." [36]
With its prized possessions thus jeopardized, Redwood
National Park testified to the entrenchment of those shortcomings
identified in 1933 by George M. Wright, Ben H. Thompson, and Joseph S.
Dixon in their study, Fauna of the National Parks of the United
States. In the fate of the "worm" was recent proof of their
assessment that few national parks provided for the broader, more
intricate needs of biological conservation. Indeed, scientific reports
kept drawing the same conclusions. In 1963, for example, a team of
distinguished scientists chaired by A. Starker Leopold, a zoologist of
the University of California at Berkeley, released its own appraisal of
the ecology picture, Wildlife Management in the National Parks.
"The major policy change which we would recommend to the National Park
Service," the Leopold Committee advised, "is that it recognize the
enormous complexity of ecologic communities and the diversity of
management procedures required to preserve them." In 1967 yet another
statement of the problem appeared, Man and Nature in the National
Parks, by F. Fraser Darling and Noel D. Eichhorn. "We start from the
point of view that the national park idea is a major and unique
contribution to world culture by the United States." Still, they could
do little more than uncover new evidence to vindicate their
predecessors' findings. "We have the uncomfortable feeling," they wrote,
concurring with the Leopold Committee, "that such members of the
National Park Service as have a high ecological awareness are not taking
a significant part in the formulation of policy." The statement was
hardly cause for optimism; still, Darling and Eichhorn were confident
park management could be steered in the proper direction. [37]
The future of the national parks, however, was
actually in the hands of Congress more than the Park Service. For the
reserves to be managed as biological units, Congress first must provide
them with enough land. Its reluctance to do so said as much about
national priorities in the 1960s as when the park idea was realized.
From Jackson Hole to the Everglades to the redwoods, park boundaries
were silent but firm testimony to the limitations long imposed on
complete conservation in the United States. If studies by groups such as
the Leopold Committee merely seemed repetitious of earlier findings, the
fault lay elsewhere. Simply, Congress had not yet heeded past insight
and rounded out at least a few of the parks to conform to the realities
of the environment, not just the dictates of the economy.
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