Protecting the Crown: a Century of Resource Management in Glacier National Park

Protecting the Crown A Century of Resource Management in Glacier National Park Rocky Mountains Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (RM-CESU) RM-CESU Cooperative Agreement H2380040001 (WASO) RM-CESU Task Agreement J1434080053 Theodore Catton, Principal Investigator University of Montana Department of History Missoula, Montana 59812 Diane Krahe, Researcher University of Montana Department of History Missoula, Montana 59812 Deirdre K. Shaw NPS Key Official and Curator Glacier National Park West Glacier, Montana 59936 June 2011 Table of Contents List of Maps and Photographs v Introduction: Protecting the Crown 1 Chapter 1: A Homeland and a Frontier 5 Chapter 2: A Reservoir of Nature 23 Chapter 3: A Complete Sanctuary 57 Chapter 4: A Vignette of Primitive America 103 Chapter 5: A Sustainable Ecosystem 179 Conclusion: Preserving Different Natures 245 Bibliography 249 Index 261 List of Maps and Photographs MAPS Glacier National Park 22 Threats to Glacier National Park 168 PHOTOGRAPHS Cover - hikers going to Grinnell Glacier, 1930s, HPC 001581 Introduction – Three buses on Going-to-the-Sun Road, 1937, GNPA 11829 1 1.1 Two Cultural Legacies – McDonald family, GNPA 64 5 1.2 Indian Use and Occupancy – unidentified couple by lake, GNPA 24 7 1.3 Scientific Exploration – George B. Grinnell, Web 12 1.4 New Forms of Resource Use – group with stringer of fish, GNPA 551 14 2.1 A Foundation in Law – ranger at check station, GNPA 2874 23 2.2 An Emphasis on Law Enforcement – two park employees on hotel porch, 1915 HPC 001037 25 2.3 Stocking the Park – men with dead mountain lions, GNPA 9199 31 2.4 Balancing Preservation and Use – road-building contractors, 1924, GNPA 304 40 2.5 Forest Protection – Half Moon Fire, 1929, GNPA 11818 45 2.6 Properties on Lake McDonald – cabin in Apgar, Web 54 3.1 A Background of Construction – gas shovel, GTSR, 1937, GNPA 11647 57 3.2 Wildlife Studies in the 1930s – George M. Wright in Yosemite, 1929, photo by C. P. Russell, HPC 000210 60 3.3 Elk and Winter Range – elk in meadow, 1968, GNPA 5130 68 3.4 Grazing and Horse Use – pack string by 50 Mountain, GNPA 526 75 3.5 Fisheries – collecting sockeye salmon spawn from McDonald Creek, c. 1952, National Archives – CPR, Region II General Files, Box N-11 79 3.6 Forest Fire Protection – CCC enrollees, c. 1935, GNPA 590 85 3.7 Forest Pathogens – Supt. J. Emmert and Asst. Supt. G. Miller, GNPA 172 93 3.8 Glacier View Dam – North Fork river, Web 97 3.9 Dams on the East Side – Lake Sherburne, Web 101 4.1 The Leopold Report – moose, Web 103 4.2 Wilderness Management – horses tied to trees instead of to hitch rail, 1970, photo by Bob Frauson, GNPA 7033 110 4.3 Logan Pass – boardwalk to Hidden Lake overlook, Web 119 4.4 Bear Management – grizzly bear, standing, Web 123 4.5 Toward Ecosystem Management – grizzly bear, walking, Web 131 4.6 Kokanee Salmon and Bald Eagles – bald eagle, perched, photo by Tom Ulrich, GNPA 8744 136 4.7 Changing Fire Policy – landscape view of a burn, Web 140 4.8 Historic Preservation – St. Mary Ranger Station rehabilitated, Web 149 4.9 Collection Management – Glacier National Park Archives, photo by author 159 v 4.10 Environmental Monitoring – Columbia Falls aluminum plant, Web 162 4.11 External Threats – upper Cabin Creek drainage, Web 166 4.12 Archeology – Chief Mountain, Web 175 5.1 The Crown of the Continent Ecosystem – pika, Web 179 5.2 Grizzly Bear Recovery – taking sample from a hair snag, 2000, photo by Jeff Stetz, GNPA 11279 189 5.3 Wolf Recovery – wolf in Glacier, Web 194 5.4 Vegetation Management – spraying knapweed, 1993, photo by Ken West, GNPA 9950 200 5.5 The Badger-Two Medicine Area – view of mountains, Web 209 5.6 The North Fork Area – Montana governor and BC premier sign accord, Web 211 5.7 Tribal Relations – tepees at Logan Pass, July 15, 1933, photo by George A. Grant, HPC 000131 213 5.8 Cultural Resources Management – GTSR, 1933, photo by George A. Grant, HPC 000001 220 5.9 New Networks – Main Hall, University of Montana, Web 228 5.10 Glaciers and Climate Research – hikers going to Grinnell Glacier, 1930s, HPC 001581 234 Conclusion – mountain goat in Glacier, Web 249 vi Introduction Protecting the Crown One hundred years ago, Glacier National Park’s first operations manual featured a set of rules and regulations that came to just 13 paragraphs. The miniscule park staff at the end of the park’s first year consisted of a superintendent and a handful of rangers. In contrast, at the present time (2010), Glacier has no fewer than 14 separate management plans pertaining to various park resources from bears and wolves to exotic plants and hazard trees. Its staff has grown to around 160 permanent employees in six divisions. The Division of Science and Resources Management includes specialists in the disciplines of terrestrial and fisheries biology, ecology, horticulture, geography, history, and historic architecture, among others, while the Division of Visitor and Resource Protection includes specialists in fire management and wilderness management. In addition, the park’s resource management efforts are directly supported by scientists employed by the U.S. Geological Survey who are assigned virtually fulltime to the park as well as numerous academic researchers and additional Park Service personnel located in other offices. Today, resource management in Glacier is the result of all these people’s combined efforts. At base, this report draws a timeline from 1910 to 2010 and describes the process of evolution of resource management over the park’s first century. It examines continuity and change within an organization whose trajectory, like that of most organizations, has been toward greater and greater specialization and complexity. This resource management history forms a part of the park’s administrative history. This report also aims to be an environmental history of Glacier. It aims to identify and analyze significant connections between environmental change and social change. In the Glacier context, social change encompasses everything from the growth of human population, agriculture, and industry in the surrounding region, to the evolution of the park visitor experience, the development of new environmental laws, and our changing conceptions of nature. One hundred years after Congress set aside Glacier as a public park and directed the Secretary of the Interior to preserve it in “a state of nature,” resource managers are probably more skeptical about their ability to fulfill that mandate than ever before. If we have learned one thing about the natural world over the past century, it is the fact that nature is dynamic and deeply intertwined with human civilization. If a state of nature once implied qualities of separateness and permanence, Glacier’s managers now emphasize that the park is inextricably tied to the surrounding region and that the only constant in nature is change. In the early days, park managers conceived of their task as principally one of resource protection – protecting park resources from various types of exploitation prohibited by law or regulations. Now they engage in a more active, science-based form of resource management . They aim to maintain natural processes, to preserve ecosystem resilience, to conserve biodiversity, and to protect and manage cultural resources. Acknowledging that human influences in nature are ubiquitous, they strive to temper those influences so that Glacier may exist in a relatively pristine, albeit humanly altered, condition. This report is in five chronological chapters. The first chapter describes Glacier’s natural and cultural setting prior to establishment. The subsequent four chapters cover the century-long history of the park in roughly 25-year increments. These four chapters each center on a dominant metaphor of how park managers conceived of nature and resource management in Glacier. Each metaphor or conceptualization may be viewed as the next in a sequence. But in each case the older thinking was not discarded; it was simply pushed into the background. Thus, earlier metaphors of nature may be more properly viewed as layers, one layered on top of another, each giving rise to a more complex and textured understanding of what was involved in preserving the park in a state of nature. The four metaphors might be given the shorthand labels of reservoir, sanctuary, relic, and ecosystem. • Reservoir. From 1910 to about 1931, the dominant metaphor for Glacier National Park came from the wildlife conservation movement and described the area as a big game refuge or “reservoir of nature” for the replenishment of depleted wildlife populations – especially such valued game species as deer and elk. Notable 2 Introduction features of this era included a strong emphasis on prevention of poaching and destruction of predators and efforts to “stock” wildlife range with game and to “stock” park waters with trout. • Sanctuary. From about 1931 to about 1963, the notion of the park as big game refuge was enlarged into “complete sanctuary.” Influenced by the rise of ecological perspectives, park managers sought to erase old distinctions between “good” and “bad” animals and to treat all native species as equal members in a total community of life. The era saw the beginnings of field research oriented to understanding species in relation to their habitat. • Relic. From 1963 to about 1992, the Leopold Report supplied the dominant metaphor for nature in Glacier with its famous proposition that “a national park should represent a vignette of primitive America.” Ecological restoration, research-based management, preservation of wilderness values, and recognition of historic resources were the hallmarks of this new outlook. The aim of resource management was to preserve or re-establish conditions reflective of a time in the past.

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