Chapter 5
The War and Postwar Years, 19401963
Sometimes I find, Horace, and I am
sure you will agree with this, that you can get too scientific on these
things and cause a lot of harm.CONRAD L. WIRTH to HORACE M.
ALBRIGHT, 1956
If the Service is to protect and
preserve, it must know what it is protecting, and what it must protect
against. It is the function of research to get at the truth, to develop
the fund of knowledge necessary for intelligent and effective
management.NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, 1961
After removal of the wildlife biologists to the Fish and Wildlife
Service in 1940, nearly a quarter of a century would pass before any
meaningful attempt to revitalize the National Park Service's biological
science programs. By the early 1960s, the Service would come under
public criticism for its weak, floundering scientific efforts, described
in one report as "fragmented," without direction, and lacking
"continuity, coordination, and depth." [1]
Moreover, the Park Service would find its management increasingly
challenged by conservation groups, its leadership in national recreation
programs seriously weakened, and its control over the parks' backcountry
threatened by restrictions in the proposed wilderness legislation, which
was gaining support in Congress. These challenges would be mounted in
the midst of "Mission 66," the Park Service's billion-dollar program to
improve park facilities, increase staffing, and plan for future
expansion of the systema highly touted effort to enhance
recreational tourism in the parks, and so named because it was to
conclude in 1966, the Service's fiftieth-anniversary year.
From 1940 through 1963, national park management was dominated by two
directors: Newton Drury, who succeeded Arno Cammerer in August 1940 and
resigned in March 1951; and Conrad Wirth, who served from December 1951
to January 1964. (Between Drury and Wirth fell the brief, eight-month
directorship of Arthur Demaray, whose preretirement appointment was in
recognition of his lengthy and competent service as associate director.)
The Drury-Wirth era was marked by the strikingly different personalities
and philosophies of these two leaders: Drury, the conservative who
criticized Park Service expansion and development in the 1930s, then
provided more than a decade of cautious leadership; and Wirth, the
highly effective entrepreneurial promoter and developer of the national
park system.
Newton Drury was the first director not to have had prior experience
in national park management. His principal conservation work had been as
executive director of the Save the Redwoods League from late 1919 until
he resigned in 1940 to become Park Service director. [2] As the Redwoods League had focused on
California issues, Drury's contacts were mainly in that state; he lacked
experience in dealing with Congress and the Washington bureaucracy. His
personal conservatism was reflected in his loyalty to the Republican
Party (which appears not to have been an obstacle to his appointment in
the Roosevelt administration) and in his leadership of the Service.
Drury believed that the national parks should be limited primarily to
the nation's premier scenic landscapes. He took a slow, deliberate
approach to improving administrative and tourism facilities in the
parks. And he was not enthusiastic about involvement with reservoir
recreation management or with the national recreation assistance
programs begun during the New Deal. [3]
Clearly, Drury did not fit the mold of the previous directors, who
enthusiastically boosted park development and expansion of Service
programs.
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