When Aldo Starker Leopold in 1953 published his report on how the National Park Service should manage wildlife resources, he wrote that, "(A) national park should be a vignette of primitive America."
While perhaps a laudable goal when Leopold wrote that, that vision seems to drift further away from possibility as society evolves and national parks become hemmed in by development. Roads crisscross many parks, cell towers are sprouting, national parks are becoming biological islands that need more intensive management of their species and landscapes.
Though it did not fully endorse Leopold's vision, the distinguished panel that wrote Revisiting Leopold: Resource Stewardship in the National Parks did call on the National Park Service to tread more carefully with its management decisions when they could impact the natural, and even cultural, worlds within the national parks.
"Because ecological and cultural systems are complex, continuously changing and not fully understood, NPS managers and decision makers will need to embrace more fully the precautionary principle as an operating guide," reads the report, which National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis requested to see how the agency might continue to evolve its resource management as it nears its second century.
"Its standard is conservative in allowing actions and activities that may heighten impairment of park resources and consistent in avoiding actions and activities that may irreversibly impact park resources and systems. The precautionary principle requires that stewardship decisions reflect science-informed prudence and restraint. This principle should be integrated into NPS decision making at all levels."
Loosely defined, the precautionary principle might be seen as, "first, do no harm," a phrase borrowed from the medical community. But how easily can that be accomplished and managed?
Recreational snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park is one activity that perhaps would not be considered "prudent" under the precautionary principle. Kurt Repanshek photo.
Across the National Park System, there are several high-profile approaches to managing resources that have drawn criticism and which possibly could run afoul of the Revisiting Leopold report's dictate due to their impacts on park resources.
At Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida, the agency is being sued for decisions concerning off-road vehicle access in landscapes considered to be key to more than a few plant and animal species listed as threatened or endangered. Foremost in this leafy and swampy wild kingdom is the Florida panther, which has been described as the most-endangered mammal in North America.
Back in July, a federal court ruled the Park Service acted without sound reasoning in 2007 when it reopened more than 22 miles of off-road vehicle trails in the preserve and ordered that the routes be closed.
Courts currently are reviewing the decision by preserve Superintendent Pedro Ramos to open much of the Addition Lands unit of Big Cypress to ORV use. The Addition Lands had been closed to both ORV use and ORV-assisted hunting ever since they came to the preserve in 1996 while officials worked on developing a management plan for the area. Of the thousands of species of flora and fauna found in the Addition Lands, nearly 100 plants are listed by the State of Florida as endangered or threatened while 29 animal species have federally protected status.
At Yellowstone National Park, the issue of recreational snowmobile access has been flogged for better than a decade at a cost of millions of dollars. While science has pushed the issue towards a resolution that inflicts the park's resources with far fewer impacts than were seen a decade ago, there remain issues relating to bombing mountainsides within the park in the name of snowmobile safety along with the sheer numbers of over-snow vehicles proposed to be allowed into the park on any given winter day.
Point Reyes National Seashore has been the focal point of a bitter battle over the future of a commercial oyster farming operation in an area of Drakes Estero being eyed for officials wilderness designation, a designation that normally would prohibit such things as oyster farms. More than a little science, and more than a little debate over the soundness of that science, has been conducted on the oyster farm's impact on the estero, and a decision on the fate of the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. is due any day now.
Much thought and consideration is being given to the plight of wolves on Isle Royale National Park. Photo courtesy of Wolves and Moose of Isle Royale Project.
Just as easy to cite are instances where the Park Service is being cautious in its approach to managing resources.
At Isle Royale National Park in Michigan, much thought is being put into how, or whether, the agency should intervene to prevent the park's nine wolves from blinking out.
A great deal of thought, science, and consideration was put into the decision -- albeit, a highly controversial one -- at Cape Hatteras National Seashore into how best to manage the needs of piping plovers and sea turtles alongside those of off-road vehicle use on the beaches.
At Olympic National Park, the Elwha watershed is being restored to its natural condition. Two dams have been removed, and crews have been revegetating exposed sediments of the former Lake Mills and Lake Aldwell. The results so far have been impressive, with King salmon migrating back up the Elwha River into the park this summer for the first time in decades.
However, the Park Service is being sued over its plans to release hatchery raised smolts to bolster the Elwha recovery. In its story about that development, the Peninsula Daily News reported that the request for an injunction against the release argued that, “The large-scale releases of hatchery fish proposed to occur this spring will have severely deleterious effects on the wild fish population and their recovery potential."
Obviously, fully embracing the precautionary principle system wide won't be an easy task.
Gary Machlis, the science advisor to Director Jarvis, declined during a recent conversation to discuss the principle specific to Park Service decisions in places such as Big Cypress or Point Reyes. But as a general approach to management in the parks, he was optimistic it could be applied.
“I would tell you that the precautionary principles described by this committee, (the committee argues) that that precautionary principle is necessary as a guiding principle at all levels of the Park Service, not just in Washington, D.C., but at the individual park level," said Dr. Machlis.
King salmon returned to the Elwha watershed in Olympic National Park in August. Photo by John McMillan, NOAA-Northwest Fisheries Science Center.
"And so I would think that if this report has traction, and if these recommendations are accepted, you would see the precautionary principle as a key focus all the way down the line in the Park Service," he continued.
The science advisor did acknowledge that there are times when adopting the precautionary principle into Park Service decisions will be opposed.
"A principle is always a guide in a democracy. There are always competing elements. And as the report clearly states, one of the key things that I think is an advance is the clarity of what this committee wrote about how the Park Service should make decisions," Dr. Machlis said. "And that was a combination of best available, sound sicence, accurate fidelity to the law, and long-term public interest. Not just one of those things, but all three of those things. And I believe that if the Park Service listens to this committee’s recommendations, it will have a very sound basis to make decisions."
Comments
Sorry, Ranger Dave, I forgot that whenever I enter a National Park, I'm supposed to kneel, bow down and contemplate the beauty of my surroundings. This is the only government sanctioned way of enjoying the parks. :)
No, what I really prefer is that humans, realizing that we are part of the natural process, work within its constraints to avoid destroying ourselves. What frightens me is the vision that someday my great grandkids may be living in what India is like today. I sincerely hope that if Man will actually use his intelligence and act before it's too late, that can be avoided.
Gee, Founding Fathers? Really? And Zebulon, did you read the whole post?
Let's do a little history lesson. Here's some of the founding concepts for our National Parks:
In managing these areas the NPS was directed “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” (emphasis mine)
“Every activity of the Service is subordinate to the duties imposed upon it to faithfully
preserve the parks for posterity in essentially their natural state,”
The National Park Service, recognizing the need for other types of recreation, beginning in 1933 created another category, national recreation areas, to provide for folks who wanted more than what the original intent of national parks allowed. Some were based on roads or reservoirs—modern developments rather than natural or historic resources. Others were based on natural resources that did not necessarily meet national park or monument standards and that were set aside primarily to be developed for intensive public use.
So, the NPS is an all-inclusive organization. And, Fathers and Zeb, if we could just agree that we need to hold to those original concepts for our national parks as places with some scenic, natural, historical or wildlife related elements that were set aside for the enjoyment of those scenic, natural, historical or wildlife related elements (no, we don't need to kneel down but we should comtemplate) and keep the intensive public use in those areas the park service manages for that reason, then we can all have our part of the parks we pay to enjoy. This is the basis of all my arguements on this website.
Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, I did copy some of the qoutes and information in this post from the National Park Service website: particularly from the history section and a book you can find there titled The National Parks: Shaping the System. I suggest anyone who is interested in the NPS read it. I learned some things I didn't know and I'm sure anyone who takes the time to read it will find some information there of interest to them.
Don't get your point Dave. The question here is do we base policy on facts or just personal opinion. If there is no evidence that an activity is a threat to "conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” then should it be banned just because someone doesn't like that activity?
It's a generational thing. We just need for the old guard to retire. Meanwhile, I go recreate outside of the parks where it's okay to have fun and contemplate.
I don't know, imtbke. For the most part, the Puritans viewed wilderness as a region of terrible fallen-ness to be redeemed only by "reclaiming it"--i.e. turning it into materials for the construction of civilization. Pretty much the exact opposite of the Organic Act. See Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind. Or right to some primary sources--Cotton Mather, Decennium Luctuosum: An History of Remarkable Occurrences in the Long War Which New-England Hath Had with the Indian Salvages; William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647; etc. Even if Nash overstates the case, the Puritan attitude toward the natural world still ranged from fear and trembling to deep ambivalence. The Protestant work ethic described in the article you cite emerges out of this very motivation to destroy wilderness. So, if the Puritan mindset does persist in the American imagination, it would seem to be in its stark opposition to preserving wilderness.
There ought to be a program under which people intensely devoted to these issues would spend two years in any other country, looking at how it administers its parks.
Of course, some of these countries would have bad conservation programs, but others would enable one to see that it's possible to have wonderful land preservation while not adhering to the unique and often rather strange park administration standards in effect since the NPS's Organic Act of 1916 and similar scripture. New Zealand, Canada, France, Australia, and Portugal all come to mind. But above all the United Kingdom, which has managed to meld conservation with activities people (beyond the seemingly ever fewer hikers and horsemen) want to do and boost local economies in a health- and environment-affirming way. Here's an example of a marvelous public-private partnership, the United Kingdom's Seven Stanes, that allows for widely appealing and exhilarating activities and preserves an area: http://7stanesmountainbiking.com/About-7stanes/What-Are-The-7stanes
The Organic Act approach, cited approvingly above, has done much good but has also precipitated a lot of problems, one of the main ones being people's seeming inability to consider new conservation approaches, like the United Kingdom's Seven Stanes. It's rather like King Arthur's sword, with no one able to pull it out.
More important than the Act and its positive and negative aspects, our approach to land preservation is heavily informed by the United States' continued suffering under the yoke of the Puritan tradition, which, among other things, sets up Manichean separations between the sacred and the profane and easily attracts preservationist devotees to the maintenance of the former in national parks and forests. Here's a recent New York Times article on the subject:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/are-americans-still-pur...
Hi, Justin H — That's a great reply, and thank you in particular for referring me to Cotton Mather's writings, complete with original spellings—that's marvelous. I often refer to Cotton and Increase Mather when making this point, so it behooves me to know rather better than I do what they said about this topic in particular, as opposed to their Puritan philosophy generally. I am aware of the Puritans' deep ambivalence (at best) toward wild places and their fear and dread of it as a locus of evil or at least peril, although I've heard less about their desire to civilize it.
My point wasn't, however, about how Puritans viewed wilderness, but about how we view capital-W Wilderness. That view, along with opinions about front-country national park acreage, is, I maintain, heavily influenced by Puritan and other fundamentalist forms of Manichean thought—the sacred versus the fallen. How many times have we seen references to sacred spaces or outdoor cathedrals in these forums and others too? I suspect you've read the writings of William Cronon and other people along these lines (although, since I haven't memorized Cronon chapter and verse, I'm hard put to quote him here without going back to his influential but outrage-producing "The Trouble With Wilderness" essay).