Once Again, Why Public Parks?

James A. Pritchard The Meaning of Nature: , Wildlife, and Ecological Values in the National Parks

uthor Judith Meyer (1996) suggests that tourists writing postcards home from Yellowstone added layers of cultural meaning to the park. In a similar way, Americans layered wilderness, wildlife, and ecological values on top of the original meanings assigned to national parks. Of considerableA interest is how these values became tied together in a cultural bun- dle, with wildlife taking the starring role. Yellowstone provides an example of how scientists and the public came to see wilderness, wildlife, and ecological sig- nificance linked together in the national parks. As historians Aubrey Haines mals. In 1919, Yellowstone’s first (1977) and Alfred Runte (1979) point (NPS) superin- out, Congress established Yellowstone tendent, Horace Albright, worried National Park for protecting scenic that elk might become extinct if they wonders and wilderness landscapes of were not protected in Yellowstone. unique beauty against tawdry Wilderness, as environmental his- exploitation and industrial incursion. torians remind us, is partly a place and Yet animals did not receive effective partly human conceptions of a place protection for some time, and various (Worster 1997). Around 1900, a animals were valued very differently. nature study movement helped alter Two useful milestones indicating the views of the wilderness from an intim- addition of wildlife values to park pur- idating force toward a landscape that poses occurred in 1886, when the challenged people (Nash 1967). U.S. Army protected the park, and in When Theodore Roosevelt visited 1894, when the Yellowstone Park Pro- Yellowstone with nature writer John tection Act made poaching in the park Burroughs and Yosemite with John a federal offense. While this ended the Muir, he brought along his concep- local slaughter of wildlife for market, tions of the virtues of a strenuous life. federal assumption of authority over Although he shared cultural preju- wildlife in the parks also ended tradi- dices against wolves and coyotes, Roo- tional hunting practices by Native sevelt moderated his view, partly Americans and transformed hunting because of his experiences in Yellow- by rural folk into an illicit activity stone (Johnston 1998). (Spence 1996; Jacoby 2001). Motivat- The founders of animal ecology ed by the near-extinction of the plains first added ecological values to the bison, conservationists looked to Yel- meanings of wilderness and wildlife in lowstone as a refuge for big game ani- the national parks. From 1908 into the

46 The George Wright FORUM Once Again, Why Public Parks?

Figure 1. Ranger Sam Woodring nurturing “good” animals in Yellowstone National Park. Common wisdom of the 1910s vilified the “bad” predators. Woodring wrote the rationale for predator control in the park. Courtesy National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park. 1920s, scientists came to believe that landscapes, as much as watching the places where naturalists might study development of tourism, agriculture, nature at work were disappearing and timber and mining industries in quickly. Despite the warnings of western states, drove botanists, zoolo- botanist Ada Hayden from 1919 to gists, and ecologists to argue for land- 1947, Midwestern prairies continued scape preservation throughout North to disappear under the plow. Plant America. The words “landscape ecologists became concerned that no preservation” are used here because prairie larger than a few acres would scientists from 1908 to 1920 didn’t remain. On the Mississippi River, sci- start with the term “wilderness”; entists propagating mussels for the rather, they began by arguing for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries (ca. 1914-30) preservation of “natural,” “primeval,” witnessed pollution and power dam or “primitive” conditions in particular construction that profoundly altered places. riverine habitats and species composi- From 1916 well into the 1920s, tion. Observing the profound changes Joseph Grinnell, director of the Muse- in prairies and rivers in Midwestern um of Vertebrate Zoology at the Uni-

Volume 19 • Number 2 2002 47 Once Again, Why Public Parks? versity of California at Berkeley, pro- Turner 2000). Yet a substantial part of vided leadership in countering intense their thinking also was shaped by development pressures in Yosemite practical concerns. The hunting meth- (Runte 1990). Charles C. Adams, who ods employed by native peoples, for wrote Guide to the Study of Animal example, worried scientists. Seal pop- Ecology in 1913, and Victor Shelford, ulations historically had done well in like Adams an organizer of the Ecolog- Glacier Bay, they reasoned in 1920, ical Society of America (ESA), provid- but now that native peoples used high- ed enduring enthusiasm for landscape powered rifles, and would surely begin preservation. They formed a Commit- to use motorized boats, in hunting, tee on the Preservation of Natural what would prevent the decimation of Conditions under the auspices of the the seals? ESA. The national parks were promi- Some conservationists may have nent in the committee’s 1926 wish-list conceived of a “pristine” wilderness of places worthy of preservation, The untouched by human hand, but most Naturalist’s Guide to the Americas scientists thought of landscape modifi- (Shelford 1926; Shelford 1943). cation and preservation as conditions Beginning in 1919, Adams had sent on a relative scale. For example, while scientific teams from the Roosevelt the metaphor of “the balance of Wild Life Experiment Station (at New nature” was used frequently,ecologists York State University’s School of of the early twentieth century knew Forestry) to Yellowstone, where Mil- this was a relative balance, not an ideal ton P. Skinner, the park’s first natural- condition. The term “natural condi- ist and associate of the station, exam- tions” signified that scientists thought ined the life history of grizzly bears in humans had not substantially altered a ecological detail not replicated until landscape. Informed by the contem- the 1970s. Animal ecologists’ first porary context of modern landscape- concern—vanishing animals such as scale development, Victor Shelford the mountain lion and wolf—con- believed that indigenous people had a tributed to their worry over transfor- relatively limited effect on the environ- mations of natural landscapes. ment. In terms of preservation, Landscape preservation did not Shelford discussed first-, second-, and come without a cost. In the 1920s, third-class nature sanctuaries, when Congress considered establish- research reserves, natural and buffer ing Glacier Bay National Monument, areas, and experimental, primitive, scientists lobbied for its creation. This and wilderness areas. All these desig- group, including plant ecologist nations depended on relative degrees William S. Cooper, made efforts to of disturbance and differing agency exclude native hunters from the new purposes (Shelford 1933; Sloan monument. Conservationists’ views of 2002). Similarly,around 1926 Charles the landscape as “pristine” led them to Adams wrote on “the varying degrees see humans as apart from nature and of the wilderness,” making distinc- shaped their conclusions regarding tions among human influences on a policy (Catton 1997; Cronon 1996; landscape. Areas to preserve “natural”

48 The George Wright FORUM Once Again, Why Public Parks?

Figure 2. Horace Albright shows tourists how to feed the bears, ca. 1923. Property damage and many injuries, as well as views on a more natural presentation of wildlife, prompted NPS to discourage this activity in the early 1940s. Courtesy National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park. or “wilderness” conditions would be work” of civilization had “reasonable places where “nature is allowed to take bounds” (Adams 1929). her course with the minimum of Placing those reasonable bounds human interference.” Adams felt that on remaining undeveloped landscapes even the “excellent and necessary became an obsession for Shelford and

Volume 19 • Number 2 2002 49 Once Again, Why Public Parks? Adams. By 1932, the ESA’s Commit- Yellowstone Park Naturalist C. Max tee on the Preservation of Natural Bauer defended the coyote when Conditions had written a detailed plan ranchers on the Absaroka Conserva- for nature sanctuaries and the ESA tion Committee desired deadly baits had unanimously adopted it. By this placed close to the park’s northern time, their language emphasized “the border. preservation of natural biotic commu- Author Jennifer Price (1999) iden- nities.” The National Parks Associa- tified public protest over women’s tion helped publicize the plan for feathered hat fashions (ca. 1890s) as a nature sanctuaries and pushed the turning point in valuing wildlife. Birds Park Service to help carry it out. By were also central to Yellowstone’s new 1933, NPS established twenty-eight valuation of wildlife, at the same research reserves in ten parks. moment that ecologists were urging Development of the NPS educa- the NPS to protect coyotes and tional division, beginning in 1920 wolves, as parks had traditionally pro- when Harold C. Bryant organized the tected big game animals. Partly in NPS Yosemite Free Nature Guide Ser- response to mammalogists’ protests vice, provided an institutional home against the Bureau of Biological Sur- for college-trained naturalists. While vey’s predator control program, the the ranger division provided the per- National Park Service declared in sonnel for managing wildlife, the natu- 1931 that all animals would find ralist division housed most wildlife refuge in the national parks (Dunlap research until 1964. Referred to as 1985). Yet for some time pelicans “posie pickers,” the naturalists provid- feeding on native trout stocks had ed leadership in adopting ecological been surreptitiously killed on Yellow- values. During the 1940s, for example, stone Lake, in theory to enhance fish-

Figure 3. Scientists banding pelicans on Molly Island on Yellowstone Lake, ca. 1932. With a nudge from Rosalie Edge and ecological knowledge from the NPS wildlife division, all predators in the park received protection. Photo by Chief Ranger George Baggley, courtesy National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park.

50 The George Wright FORUM Once Again, Why Public Parks? ing and reduce losses from the Bureau activities (e.g., artificial feeding), of Fisheries’ trout propagation pro- reducing the herd size, and ending the gram. Ardent conservationist Rosalie bison stampede for visiting digni- Edge called public attention to the taries. Similarly,Drury advocated end- slaughter of pelicans and bird lovers ing the roadside feeding of bears and objected, causing embarrassment for the popular “bear shows” at NPS Director Horace Albright. The amphitheaters. Horace Albright final crux over the role of predators in protested ending the bear shows, the parks had been reached over claiming visitors should have every nature’s feathered friends. In 1932, chance to see wildlife. Reflecting the Yellowstone Superintendent Roger goals of the NPS wildlife division, Toll declared that pelicans also would Drury argued that “our aim ... should be protected. In doing so, he redefined be to place each wild species ... on its the park’s valuation of wildlife and put own, without dependence upon man, nature’s purposes ahead of human and occupying its natural niche in the designs. biota of the park.” Drury received During the 1930s, ecological and strong support from ecologists nation- wildlife values became firmly inter- wide, such as S. Charles Kendeigh, twined in the national parks, repre- chairman of the ESA Committee for sented by the establishment of the the Study of Plant and Animal Com- NPS wildlife division, led by George munities, who suggested that the bear Melendez Wright. The division insti- shows were “not in harmony with the tuted the Fauna series of publications purpose of the national parks as repre- on national park wildlife, recommend- senting natural communities of plants ed extensive biological research in the and animals in an undisturbed condi- national parks, and proposed guide- tion, where each species is leading its lines for wildlife management that normal existence” (Pritchard 1999). departed from single-species manage- Although Drury solicited scientific ment to emphasize an ecosystem-ori- opinion, from the 1940s into the ented approach and the restoration of 1960s scientific research within the wildlife to natural conditions. At the NPS took a backseat to its traditional same time that the division con- emphasis on tourism (Sellars 1997, tributed ecological knowledge, it Wright 1992). brought a confidence that human The National Park Service did not intervention could restore natural bal- embrace the wilderness preservation ances disturbed by humans, for exam- movement that culminated in the ple by controlling “abnormally large” of 1964. The roots of ungulate populations (Wright 1992; that reluctance dated from the early Sellars 1997). days of the NPS. At a fundamental During the early 1940s, ecological level, NPS founding fathers Stephen values pushed park management away Mather and Horace Albright did not from overly artificial wildlife manage- see a serious conflict between preser- ment. NPS Director Newton Drury vation and development. As Ethan proposed discontinuing bison rearing Carr (1998) points out, they believed

Volume 19 • Number 2 2002 51 Once Again, Why Public Parks?

Figure 4. The Bison Ranch, where Yellowstone’s herd was nurtured back from the brink of extirpation, was closed in the early 1940s as part of an effort towards a more naturalistic presentation of wildlife to the public. Courtesy National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park. that preservation of scenic landscapes Undoubtedly aware of the 1946 reso- would be effected best through devel- lution by the American Society of opment creating a wide base of sup- Mammalogists endorsing the preser- port for the national parks. Road vation of natural areas “against which building in the parks, however, elicited the practices in game production on resistance. The modern wilderness lands under management can be meas- movement, argues Paul Sutter (2002), ured,” their use of the term “wilder- began with opposition to road build- ness” incorporated both new mean- ing projects such as the Skyline Drive ings and implications previously in Shenandoah National Park. During attached to “primeval conditions.” the early 1930s, Benton MacKaye, Both brothers had studied coyotes in , Bob Marshall, Yellowstone, and Adolph scrutinized Howard Zahniser, Olaus Murie, Aldo wolves in Mount McKinley National Leopold and others created The Park. They lobbied against coyote Wilderness Society.During the 1950s, control along Yellowstone’s northern conservationists successfully opposed border, and Adolph tried to moderate a Bureau of Reclamation plan for a wolf control in Mount McKinley dur- dam at , inside Dinosaur ing the 1940s (Rawson 2001). To National Monument (Harvey 1994). Olaus Murie, wilderness advocate, Like writer Freeman Tilden Yellowstone and Grand Teton nation- (1951), wildlife biologists Olaus and al parks appeared largely unaffected Adolph Murie looked to large natural by the managing human hand when parks as they considered wilderness. compared with the industrial forestry

52 The George Wright FORUM Once Again, Why Public Parks? just to the west on the Targhee Nation- Leopold agreed with the common wis- al Forest, an example of the maximum- dom that the elk herd should be yield approach to forest management. reduced to the carrying capacity of the Concerned about the press of tourists, range. Today, the Leopold Report is Murie wanted the NPS to protect the remembered for suggesting that the feeling of wilderness by limiting facili- parks should represent a “vignette of ty development. The Muries remained primitive America.” This vision made uncomfortable with needless manipu- the Leopold Report an enduring icon lation of park landscapes, appreciating for park management. The committee a friend’s comment to a tourist, “This did not advocate any particular land- ain’t no zoo, lady.” scape condition, but rather spoke to The wilderness movement did not the purposes of the parks as a manage- attract enthusiastic commitment from ment guide. The Robbins Report, the NPS. Park Service Directors New- released shortly thereafter by the ton Drury (1940-1951) and Conrad National Academy of Science, called Wirth (1951-1964), a landscape archi- for more biological research in the tect by training, supported the view Park Service. Science was briefly ele- that large parks such as Yellowstone, vated to a high priority, yet a reassign- Glacier, and Grand Canyon, as entire ment of biologists to regional offices units, possessed the essential qualities again reduced the profile of park sci- of wilderness. Declaring any particular ence (Sellars 1997). part of the park as wilderness was sim- During the 1960s and 1970s, ply redundant, and so the NPS wildlife and ecological values found advanced conservative proposals for new focus in Yellowstone with the park wilderness areas. In Yellowstone, work of John and Frank Craighead. only remote parts of Yellowstone Lake The Craigheads’ work on elk and bear were zoned as wilderness in 1958. In movements provided proof positive 1980, however, Congress designated that wildlife were not just park 32.4 million acres of Alaskan parks as denizens, but animals of a significantly wilderness, and thus the Park Service larger ecosystem (Craighead et al. came to manage more wilderness than 1995). Conservationists began to see any other agency (Sellars 1997). problems that transcended boundary Beginning in the 1960s, controversies lines, and, beginning in 1983, the over the construction of visitor facili- Greater Yellowstone Coalition advo- ties in Yellowstone got as hot as the cated conservationists’ viewpoints on wilderness debate in surrounding regional issues and conveyed to the states. public the conception of a larger The 1963 Leopold Report accen- ecosystem centering on Yellowstone tuated wilderness and ecological val- National Park. ues for the park system (Rydell 1998). During the 1960s and especially Originally convened in response to the the 1970s, scientists began to incorpo- controversy over direct reductions of rate new concepts into ecological val- elk in Yellowstone, the special adviso- ues for the parks. By the time of the ry committee chaired by A. Starker 1976 Tall Timbers Fire Ecology Con-

Volume 19 • Number 2 2002 53 Once Again, Why Public Parks?

Figure 5. Frank and John Craighead with radiotelemetry gear, 1966. Their work on elk migra- tion and bear movements shaped modern perceptions of a Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Courtesy National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park. ference, for example, Yellowstone was replaced during the early 1970s staff, including plant ecologist Don by a new paradigm of flux, character- Despain, created a plan allocating nat- ized by change and unpredictability ural fire zones encompassing thou- (Pickett 1995). Instead of “natural sands of hectares. Scientists’ argu- conditions” or “wilderness,” scientists ments for restoring this natural began to refer to “natural processes.” process to Yellowstone’s landscape Since 1967, the Park Service view that were related to wider interests of the direct manipulation of elk herd num- scientific and land management com- bers was not necessarily warranted munity, including restoration ecolo- within large parks was facilitated by gists. Landscape ecology contributed new understandings of ecosystems in notions of patches, mosaic patterns, dynamic flux, disturbance as the rule, flux, and disturbance. Indeed, the and multiple states of equilibrium. entire classical equilibrium paradigm The subject of “natural regulation” (known as “the balance of nature”) remains a matter of vigorous debate

54 The George Wright FORUM Once Again, Why Public Parks?

(Boyce 1998; Wagner et al.1995). Sig- glades National Park). Scientists echo nificantly, 1988 NPS management the call of Victor Shelford and Charles guidelines calling for working with C. Adams when they suggest that pro- natural processes leave room for inter- tected areas where managers use a pretation. This flexibility is desirable, light hand “have become baselines for because no policy could cover all con- measuring ecological change” else- tingencies. In Isle Royale National where (Sinclair 1998). Ultimately, Park, for example, there is a recent understanding the parks as continual- concern that wolves could be extirpat- ly evolving landscapes, rather than as ed. Preserving the wolf in the park places where managers select for might require highly manipulative desired conditions, has proven a sig- techniques (Wright 1992). Judging nificant transition in valuing wilder- how much to intervene to re-establish ness and ecological qualities of the natural processes, or when to watch parks. nature at work, has been a complex Since the parks were established, judgment call since the NPS wildlife each generation has assigned its own division came to Yellowstone in 1930. significance to the national parks, It is hard to overstate the enduring adding meaning and cultural depth. significance of ecological, wildlife, and As author Paul Schullery (1997) sug- wilderness values associated with the gests, “the search for Yellowstone is as national parks, even while we conceive much a search for ourselves as it is a of new models for national parks or search for biological understanding.” wildlife refuges to be established in Successive understandings of nature places where existing land uses make have redefined the meanings of wilder- any traditional archetype unworkable. ness, wildlife, and ecological relation- Aboriginal land use and hunting, for ships. While parks of the late nine- example, remain central issues for teenth century originally provided species preservation efforts in third- scenic landscapes envisioned as world countries (Rettie 1995). Today, wilderness, these landscapes also pro- we wonder how to establish wildlife vided physical habitats and resident corridors to link existing refuges with- wildlife, a grand focal point for adding in a larger matrix of developed land- layers of ecological meaning to the sig- scapes, and worry over external nificance of our national parks. threats to existing parks (e.g., at Ever- References Adams, Charles C. 1929. The importance of preserving wilderness conditions. New York State Museum Bulletin 279. Boyce, Mark S. 1998. Ecological-process management and ungulates: Yellowstone’s conservation para- digm. Wildlife Society Bulletin 26:3, 391-398. Carr, Ethan. 1998. Wilderness by Design: Landscape Architecture and the National Park Service. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Catton, Theodore. 1997. Inhabited Wilderness. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Craighead, John J., Jay S. Sumner, and John A. Mitchell. 1995. The Grizzly Bears of Yellowstone: Their Ecology in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, 1959-1992. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Cronon, William. 1996. The trouble with wilderness, or, getting back to the wrong nature. Environmental History 1, 7-28. Dunlap, Thomas R. 1988. Saving America’s Wildlife: Ecology and the American Mind, 1850-1990. Volume 19 • Number 2 2002 55 Once Again, Why Public Parks?

Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Haines, Aubrey. 1977. The Yellowstone Story. Yellowstone National Park, Wyo.: Yellowstone Library and Museum Association. Harvey, Mark W.T. 1994. A Symbol of Wilderness: Echo Park and the American Conservation Movement. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Jacoby, Karl. 2001. Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Johnston, Jeremy. 1998. Preserving the beasts of waste and desolation: Theodore Roosevelt and predator control in Yellowstone National Park. The George Wright Forum 15:4, 19-26. Meyer, Judith L. 1996. The Spirit of Yellowstone: The Cultural Evolution of a National Park. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Nash, Roderick. 1967 [1982] Wilderness and the American Mind. 3rd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Pickett, S.T.A., and Richard S. Ostfeld. 1995. The shifting paradigm in ecology. Pp. 261-278 in A New Century for Natural Resources Management. Richard L. Knight and Sarah F. Bates, eds. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1995. Price, Jennifer. 1999. Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America. New York: Basic Books. Pritchard, James A. 1999. Preserving Yellowstone’s Natural Conditions: Science and the Perception of Nature. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Rawson, Timothy. 2001. Changing Tracks: Predators and Politics in Mt. McKinley National Park. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press. Rettie, Dwight F. 1995. Our National Park System: Caring for America’s Greatest Natural and Historic Treasures. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Runte, Alfred. 1979 [1987]. National Parks: The American Experience. 2nd ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ———. 1990. Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Rydell, Kiki Leigh. 1998. A public face for science: A. Starker Leopold and the Leopold Report. The George Wright Forum 15:4, 50-63. Schullery, Paul. 1997. Searching for Yellowstone: Ecology and Wonder in the Last Wilderness. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Sellars, Richard West. 1997. Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Shelford, V.E., ed. 1926. Naturalist’s Guide to the Americas. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins. Shelford, V.E. 1933. The preservation of natural biotic communities. Ecology 14:2, 240-245. ———. 1943. Twenty-five-year effort at saving nature for scientific purposes. Science 98:2543, 280-281. Sinclair, A.R.E. 1998. Natural regulation of ecosystems in protected areas as ecological baselines. Wildlife Society Bulletin 26:3, 399-409. Sloan, N.A. 2002. History and application of the wilderness concept in marine conservation. Conservation Biology 16:2, 294-305. Spence, Mark David. 1999. Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks. New York: Oxford University Press. Sutter, Paul S. 2002. Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Tilden, Freeman. 1951. The National Parks: What They Mean to You and Me. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Turner, James Morton. 2000. Charting American ’s early (intellectual) geography, 1890- 1920. Wild Earth 10, 18-25. Wagner, Frederic H., Ronald Foresta, R. Bruce Gill, Dale R. McCullough, Michael R. Pelton, William F. Porter, and Hal Salwasser. 1995. Wildlife Policies in the U.S. National Parks. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Worster, Donald. 1997. The wilderness of history. Wild Earth 7, 9-13. Wright, R. Gerald. 1992. Wildlife Research and Management in the National Parks. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. James A. Pritchard, Department of Animal Ecology,Iowa State University,Ames, Iowa 50011; [email protected] ❖

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