Chapter 6
Science and the Struggle for Bureaucratic
Power: The Leopold Era, 19631981 (continued)
Environmental Legislation and
Change
In seeking stronger influence in national park management, the
scientists were bolstered by the environmental movement and the
resulting legislation. Particularly important were the Wilderness Act,
the Endangered Species Act, and legislation on specific kinds of issues
(such as amendments to the Federal Air Pollution Act and the Water
Pollution Control Act).
The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 had special potential
to inject the scientific perspective into park management. This act
specifically called for "use of the natural and social sciences" in
plans and decisions substantially affecting the environment. Through
"environmental impact statements" it also required interdisciplinary
analysis of alternatives during planning. To comply with the act,
greater scientific knowledge would have to be used in managing public
lands, including those under the care of the Service. Nevertheless, as
recalled by veteran Park Service manager and analyst John W.
Henneberger, the Service in the early 1970s thought it should be
exempted from this legislation, believing the parks were already managed
properly. [81] To comply with the act, the
Park Service created only a few science positions, most of which were
stationed in the huge new Denver Service Center, to deal with that
office's many complex planning and developmental projects.
Within the parks themselves, new environmental legislation brought
unanticipated changes for natural resource management. William
Supernaugh recalled that although wildlife rangers had performed both
resource management and law enforcement, their resource work became more
complex as they sought to help the superintendents comply with new laws
and regulations. At the same time, professional law enforcement itself
was becoming much more demanding. The complexity of both types of work
led to a division of labor, which tended to separate resource management
from law enforcement.
The duties of natural resource managers now included a variety of
increasingly specialized concerns, such as management of caves,
threatened species, nonnative species, fires, and wildlife, in addition
to monitoring of air quality, biocide use, and coal, oil, and mineral
mining activity (where legal in parks because of prior rights). Their
responsibilities also included preparation of resource management plans.
Evolving slowly over time, these plans fostered a broader ecological
understanding of the parks because they required analyses of historic
changes, existing natural conditions, and descriptions of current and
anticipated natural resource management needs, including research, for
each park. [82] With such duties the
resource managers became, as Park Service scientist Bruce M. Kilgore
stated in 1978, the "key people in bridging the communications gap
between science and management." Kilgore foresaw a continuing
professionalization of the resource management staff, in which
individuals would have advanced college degrees and "extensive and
effective experience" as managers of flora and fauna in the parks. [83]
Historically there was, as Supernaugh put it, a "direct line"
between wildlife rangers of the 1960s and latter-day natural resource
managers. As resource management became more professionalized and more
ecologically oriented, rangers with the education and interest in
biological management often chose that field over law enforcement, and
took on the increased legislative mandates and ecological problems faced
by the parks. (In some parks, mainly those that had no strong wildlife
ranger contingent, the park naturalists assumed these responsibilities.)
In the 1970s the Service dropped the "wildlife ranger" designation in
favor of the more inclusive title of "natural resource management
specialist." Some parks created separate divisions for resource
management and law enforcement, although, as with other organizational
arrangements, there would never be complete consistency throughout the
Service. In the Washington office, the formal separation of
law-enforcement rangers and resource managers occurred in 1973, when
natural resource management got its own division and was placed under a
different assistant director. [84]
In addition, scientific resource management in the Service was
enhanced by the creation of a number of special research offices. In
1970, during hearings on the proposed North Cascades National Park, U.S.
Senator Henry Jackson of Washington prompted the Park Service to
cooperate with the University of Washington in conducting a program of
scientific studies on the "ecological, environmental, and sociological
aspects of park and wild land management." The agreement reached that
year established the first Cooperative Park Studies Unita
university-based scientific research office that became the prototype
for similar arrangements across the country.
As the program evolved, Park Service scientists at the studies units
would bring the Service's research contracts to the host university,
benefiting both professors and graduate students. Many Service
scientists became adjunct professors, teaching part time and serving on
graduate committees. Advantages to the Service included increased use of
university professors and graduate students and increased access to
technology (especially computers). The agreements also provided for
reduced overhead charges by the university, thereby lowering research
costs to the Service. The program got a fast start; by 1973 there were
agreements with eighteen universities (some units were established
without a Service representative on campus). By 1980 units existed at
thirty-five schools, a figure that dropped to twenty-three in 1983, then
rose to thirty-one in 1988. Included were such universities as Oregon
State, Texas A&M, Idaho, and Hawaii. [85]
These research offices addressed the needs of individual parks, as
well as groups of parks that shared similar concerns. For instance, in
one of the more successful efforts to deal with broad natural resource
questions, the cooperative park studies unit at the University of
Massachusetts focused on shoreline stabilization at several parks along
the East Coast, among them Cape Hatteras, Fire Island, and Cape Cod
national seashores. In cooperation with other universities the unit
studied barrier island dynamics, involving continual sand deposition
from the forces of wind and water, which often affected park
recreational development and nearby urban areas. The research findings,
emphasizing the natural processes of constantly shifting island profiles
and mass, became the basis of official policy. [86]
Adding to the responsibilities of the study units, legislation of the
1970s on special environmental problems such as air and water pollution
increased the need for scientific information in park management. The
Service moved very slowly to address air and water concerns, and did not
establish an air quality office until the late 1970s. Yet this office
soon became one of the largest and best-funded research operations in
the Park Service. Similarly, a water resources division emerged in the
1980s, developing substantial expertise in research, resource
management, and water rights issues. [87]
Furthermore, in accord with the National Academy's recommendation
that "research laboratories or centers" be created in parks "when
justified by the nature of the park and the importance of the research,"
the Park Service established several science "centers," usually
associated with individual parks. Building on the model of the Jackson
Hole Biological Research Station (opened in the early 1950s in Grand
Teton National Park to study and monitor the area's elk population),
research centers were created in, for instance, Everglades and Great
Smoky Mountains national parks. [88]
However, these two new centers came about more from fortuitous
circumstances than from any systemwide review and planning by Park
Service decisionmakers about which parks or groups of parks needed
science centers.
In Everglades, creation of the South Florida Research Center in the
mid-1970s resulted mainly from the personal interest and political power
of Assistant Secretary of the Interior Nathaniel P. Reed. By the late
1960s the proposed Miami Jetport had threatened the park, catching the
Service unprepared and thus compelling it to rush to gather data in
hydrology, geology, ornithology, and other fields that would strengthen
the park's defense. To many, this effort made clear the need for a
strong science program at Everglades. Reed, a south Florida native
vitally interested in the welfare of the Everglades, proposed a
scientific research center in the park and successfully engineered its
establishment and funding. As initially intended, the center was also to
serve nearby Biscayne National Monument and Big Cypress National
Preserve. [89]
In establishing the center, Reed faced adroit, stubborn resistance
from Park Service leaders, who did not relish the competition and
interference of a potentially powerful research voice in the park.
Moreover, once the center was set up, the Service did not appreciably
increase its operating funds, leaving the center weakened by inflation
and causing it to terminate support for Biscayne and Big Cypress. To the
dismay of scientists, successive Everglades superintendents gradually
diverted the center's research funds to resource management. Much of the
burden of the latter program therefore fell on the center, likely
freeing up the park's own resource management funds for other,
often-unrelated ranger operations. Special shortterm "project" funds
were used to augment research; but in the opinion of the center's second
director, Michael Soukup, and the assistant research director, Robert F.
Doren, "such erratic funding" did not lead to a "strong stable
[research] program." They asserted that the Park Service failed to
develop the "organizational, financial, and personnel requirements for a
science program to match resource needs" of the Evergladesa park
with profoundly complex ecological problems and under tremendous
pressure from outside its boundaries. [90]
The Uplands Field Research Laboratory established in 1975 at Great
Smoky Mountains National Park also came about in a fortuitous way. In
the early 1970s a Cornell University graduate student in biology, Susan
P. Bratton, was hired by the regional office to work in Great Smoky
Mountains. There she noted the park's serious lack of scientific
information. The park also lacked resource management capability. Yet it
faced such problems as management of the mountaintop balds, exotic
plants and animals (especially the voracious European wild boar), and
Cade's Covethe park's large historic district, where cattle grazed
in areas inhabited by rare plants. Bratton believed that, despite
regional office interest, the park managers did not truly want a
biologist. She recalled that when she arrived in the park, "old guard"
management held her suspect and did little to advance science. [91]
This perspective changed with the appointment of a new
superintendent, Boyd Evison, who wanted to bolster scientific input. The
coincidence of his and Bratton's interest in improving natural resource
management (and the continuing support of the regional office) led to
establishment of the Uplands Field Research Laboratory in 1975. This
center soon grew into a small multidisciplinary operation, with aquatic,
bear, and wild boar specialists, among others, and including both
researchers and resource managers. Nonetheless, had there not been a
superintendent sympathetic to science, who would take advantage of the
regional office interest and of Bratton's work, the uplands laboratory
might never have become a reality. Bratton herself believed that neither
the laboratory nor the South Florida Research Center came about as a
result of any "systemwide thought process." In her opinion, there was
"absolutely no overall policy for this kind of thing"personalities
influenced Park Service research, and the centers were a result of
"personalities and chance." [92]
The short and troubled existence of the National Park Service
Science Center, near Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, provides perhaps the
most glaring example of opportunism and the lack of an overall policy or
long-range commitment to science centers. Inspiration for the center
(formally established in late 1973) came largely from U.S. Senator John
Stennis of Mississippi. Stennis wanted to fill space vacated at the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration facility near Bay Saint
Louis to help boost the local economy while the Apollo space program
wound downreasons obviously unrelated to any concern for national
park science. The facility included laboratories equipped with
sophisticated computers and additional up-to-date research capability,
such as remote sensing. As intended, other bureaus used the technology;
for instance, the U.S. Geological Survey placed scientists there,
helping to form a cluster of scientific expertise at the facility. The
Park Service decided that its own operation at the science center would
provide assistance for planning, inventorying resources, and conducting
ecological research throughout the national park system. [93]
From the first, the center did not fare well. Although it had some
permanent funding (or "base funding"appropriations mainly obtained
by Senator Stennis), the center operated to a considerable degree on
shortterm project money. Thus, every year it depended on regional
offices and parks for sufficient projects to keep operating. This
tenuous funding situation helped lead to failure, as parks and regions
proved uninterested in using the center's expertise. More focused on
accommodating Stennis than on developing an effective science center,
Park Service leadership had agreed to establish the office but did not
ensure adequate funding. [94]
In 1974, and again in 1975, the Washington office authorized task
force studies of the center's operations. The 1975 study pointedly
criticized the attitudes of the center's scientists and the
effectiveness of their work. Recommending that such problems be
corrected, it nevertheless concluded with the statement that "gut
reaction has been to abolish the facility." Angrily reacting to such
criticism, the center staff, in its 1976 annual report, accused the
Service of failing to provide an "approved role, mission and
organizational identity," which caused the office to experience a
"series of disappointments in trying to implement studies and services."
Intended to assist parks systemwide but left without systemwide support,
the center had indeed become isolated. Its 1976 report claimed that the
center had found it "impossible 'to do business' in some sections of the
Service." Based on the task force recommendation, the center was
disbanded early in 1977, just over three years after it was established.
This contrived, half-hearted effort had come to an end. [95]
In addition to the centers, the National Park Service was slowly
building scientific research offices in individual parks. These were
similar to the centers at Everglades and Great Smoky Mountains, except
that they were more integrated into traditional park organizations and
did not usually have identities as discrete as those of the centers. In
1967 Acting Chief Scientist Robert Linn had noted that the Service was
moving Glen Cole to Yellowstone to become supervisory research
biologist, overseeing biological work in that park as well as in Glacier
and Grand Teton. Linn expected to hire a biologist for Grand Teton
(Cole's old position) and one for Glacier. He believed that together
these would "make a pretty good research nucleus" for that part of the
system. He also planned to hire scientists for Hawaii Volcanoes and
Grand Canyon national parks, and one to be shared by Saguaro and Organ
Pipe Cactus national monuments. [96]
Almost immediately, Yellowstone's small science office would be
subjected to strong criticism over its recommendations for grizzly bear
and elk management criticism that would persist over many years.
After some delay, the park's science program would grow and
diversify.
Especially concerned with fire management, Sequoia National Park
built up a small research staff in the late 1960s and the 1970s for
diverse studies on matters such as grazing impacts, threats to park
wilderness, and air quality. Yosemite and a number of other parks would
follow suit, including Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, which developed
a science program during the 1980s. By the early 1990s, Indiana Dunes
had four research scientist positions plus additional support personnel.
Backed by park legislation specifically addressing scientific research,
Channel Islands National Park set up an unusually strong natural
resource management and science program during the 1980s and early
1990s. [97] Necessitated by special
circumstances, science and resource management programs at Redwood
National Park operated on an even larger scale. In 1978, after the
hard-fought campaign to secure its expansion, Redwood was faced with a
massive thirty-thousand-acre rehabilitation project resulting from
commercial clear-cutting of trees outside the original park boundary,
but on lands included in the expansion. The legislation enlarging the
park authorized $33 million for restoration of the cutover lands, which
included work on landscapes, vegetation, and streams and required a
staff of forest ecologists and other scientists, as well as natural
resource managers. [98]
In contrast to the varied, uneven success of scientific research
offices, the Denver Service Center, created in 1971 as a Servicewide
planning, design, and construction office, gained a commanding position
in National Park Service affairs. Even though the service center
depended largely on project funds, it became a fully accepted and
integral part of the bureau's organization. Soon after its
establishment, the service center began to hire scientists, especially
to address requirements of environmental legislation.
It did so grudgingly, however. In 1968, three years before the
service center's creation, Chief Scientist Robert Linn had noted that
the two centers then in existence (the large "eastern" and "western"
centers, predecessors to the Denver office) employed two ecologists. The
situation improved very little by the time the Denver office began
operations. A September 1972 memorandum from Johannes E. N. Jensen,
assistant director, service center operations, to Director Hartzog
reported that there were currently three full-time positions "authorized
for EIS [environmental impact statement] activities," to be supplemented
with three permanent, but less-than-full-time, scientists. [99]
In an office of several hundred employees devoted to planning,
designing, and constructing national park facilities, allocations of
staff and funds to address ecological concerns were meager. Jensen
stated that the six scientists would have to prepare an estimated 120
impact statements for various service center projects during the coming
fiscal year, and "provide some input" for about 75 additional
statements. Even by an "optimistic estimate," these statements would
require 1,575 workdays, whereas the six employees could provide only
about 1,200 daysa difference that might be made up somewhat by
borrowing "other personnel on a part time basis." The assistant director
admitted that the service center would be "hard pushed to adequately
handle the EIS program." [100]
Biologist William P. Gregg, who assumed the responsibility of
building the center's science staff to address the mandates of the
National Environmental Policy Act, recalled that the Park Service wanted
to do little more than meet minimal regulatory requirements of the law
in order to avoid litigation over noncompliance. Gregg believed,
however, that the act became the "major factor" in hiring scientists in
the Denver office in the 1970s. He stated that "more were hired under
that aegis"including himself than for any other reason. [101]
Early in his efforts to build a program, Gregg arranged a meeting
with the Bureau of Reclamation's legislative compliance chief to discuss
how to deal with the law's regulations. Aware that the Park Service
might be sued if it did not comply with the required impact statement
processes, he sought advice from the bureau because, with its water
reclamation projects under attack by environmental groups, it was
already facing litigation and should be well versed in the
pitfalls of the compliance process. With little faith in the Service's
willingness to comply with the law, the center's lead scientist sought
advice on how to avoid litigation from the very bureau whose development
in the West had been a significant factor in inspiring the environmental
movement and its legislation. [102]
Another problem stemmed from the fact that the scientists' work
schedules were tied to the deadlines of the service center's design and
construction operations. When the Park Service first began to address
its impact statement responsibilities, the center already had a backlog
of completed plans and other documents for which statements were
required. Responding to a law that mandated analysis of alternatives
during the decisionmaking process, much of the work that the scientists
first undertook came after the fact, justifying decisions already made.
The scientists also began to assist with preparation of impact
statements on newly initiated projects. But the center's rapid
production pace caused the scientists to continue in a rubber-stamp
situation. They only had time to gain some familiarity with the park
resources, synthesize what was known from existing scientific
literature, and apply this knowledge to the plans pouring out of the
Denver office. [103]
Still, without the influence of the National Environmental Policy
Act there would have been far less scientific input. As recalled by R.
Gerald Wright, a biologist hired in Denver in the early 1970s, the act
"gave science a power it never had before." The scientists gradually
moved the service center toward some comprehension of the parks' natural
resources and how they might be affected by the projects being
implemented. But because they were virtually forced on the service
center, the scientists found their work resented by those unaccustomed
to interference. Wright remembered that the old-time planners were
particularly hostile. Indicative of the assertion that Park Service
leaders initially thought the bureau should not be subject to the new
environmental law, the planners tended to question the scientists'
motives and to view science as, in Wright's words, a "constraint on
their freedom" to plan as they saw fit. [104] Such unfettered decisionmaking was,
indeed, what the act's environmental impact statement process sought to
curb.
Wright believed that a mid-1970s reorganization of the service center
further impeded the scientists' efforts. The reorganization broke up the
science office that William Gregg had assembled, and placed its members
within the center's regional, multidisciplinary "teams," which were
usually headed by landscape architects, engineers, or planners. This
"regionalization," Wright concluded, caused science to lose its "group
identity" and, more important, its "independence to challenge the team
leaders" whenever service center proposals might be unduly harmful to
the parks' natural resources. The traditional elite professions within
the Park Service thus gained greater control and curtailed the emerging
influence of science in the center. Wright found the situation in many
ways comparable to the chief scientist's loss of his programs when
Director Hartzog had transferred most of the scientists to the regions
and the superintendents only a few years before. [105] At its Denver Service Centerthe
office having far and away the greatest assemblage of landscape
architects, engineers, and other professionals capable of undertaking
projects that could alter natural conditions in the parksthe Park
Service operated with very limited ecological insight.
Throughout the 1970s the Service's scientific natural resource
management efforts had increased, but the progress was erratic,
influenced by "personalities and chance" and by a steady resistance to
change. Gradually, with scientists hired into the Washington office, the
regions, the cooperative park studies units, and parks such as
Everglades, Great Smoky Mountains, Yellowstone, and Sequoia, their
personnel numbers had risen. An internal report issued in 1980 declared
that the Service had "about 100" scientistsan estimate that
probably included research scientists as well as administrators of
science programs. Although the Park Service still did not have adequate
tracking and accountability for science, the report stated that funding
for natural science research had reached $9 million. Some of these funds
were used to support resource management or other activity rather than
research. Having worked in natural resource management during this era,
William Supernaugh later observed that the science program remained "a
kind of mystery to many park managers," adding that, "what you don't
know about you either distrust or ignorethe situation did not lend
itself to success." Much stronger than before, the science programs
still faced problems identified in the 1963 National Academy Report:
they tended to be "fragmented" and "piecemeal," lacked "continuity,
coordination, and depth," and were marked by "expediency rather than by
longterm considerations." The academy had believed it "inconceivable"
that science was not used to ensure preservation of the national parks'
"unique and valuable" properties. But in the more than a decade and a
half since the report appeared, the Service had failed to establish a
comprehensive, coordinated scientific management program. [106]
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