The Science of Politics/The Politics of Science: Examining the Snowmobile Controversy in Yellowstone National Park

The snowmobile controversy in Yellowstone National Park not only pits snowmobilers against environmentalists, but it also pits the Bush Administration against the Clinton Administration. Caught in the middle are the National Park Service, scores of natural and social scientists, and Yellowstones permanent residents—the flora and fauna. The controversys political aspects are the focus of this paper; specifically, the tenuous relationship among research scientists, whose job it is to inform management and policy decisions; politicians, whose job it is to formulate those same decisions in the public arena; and public land management agencies, whose job it is to implement the decisions. The crux of the paper concerns the politicization of natural resource policy and ways in which research scientists tend to get caught up in it. Lessons learned from this Yellowstone episode regarding the role of science in policy-making processes are also considered. Two recent federal court rulings shed additional light on the politics surrounding Yellowstones snowmobile controversy, as does the importance of governmental checks and balances in resolving natural resource management disputes.     

Cooperation or conflict? Interagency relationships and the future of biodiversity for US parks and forests

Cooperation between the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service and the United States Department of Interior (USDI) National Park Service is most often advocated to protect biological diversity on national forests and parks, but the agencies, so far, have done little to implement the biodiversity mandates of such laws as the Endangered Species Act and the National Forest Management Act. The ideological and political history of the Forest Service and Park Service is explored to determine the roots of interagency conflicts. Several recent models of cooperative reform are also critiqued and found to be insufficient to stimulate better working relationships. To protect biodiversity, cooperation must be framed within conservation biology and must place primary emphasis on ecosystem patterns and processes as well as on individual species. Increased education of agency managers, ecosystem-level research, local and regional public participation, scientific oversight committees, new legislation, and enlightened leadership also play important roles. Ultimately, management policies must be reframed within a context of ecocentric values.     

Analysis and application of forest fuels data

Recent advances in fire modeling permit quantitative estimations of fire behavior from quantitative inputs that describe the fuel array and conditions, such as weather and site data, under which it will burn. This paper describes the collection, analysis, and stratification of flammable forest fuels data for coniferous forest ecosystems in Montana and then illustrates the resource management application of these data in three areas: the development of the fire behavior model, a determination of the model's sensitivity to input errors as reflected by fire behavior prediction errors, and the development of a fire hazard simulator (TAROT). A new integrated stand simulator, GANDALF, is highlighted.Conclusions center on the need to integrate fire management into the land management planning decision-making process.This work was supported by a USDI National Park Service contract to Gradient Modeling, Inc., a nonprofit research foundation devoted to ecologic research and resource management applications, and by cooperative aid agreements between Gradient Modeling, Inc. and the USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Northern Forest Fire Laboratory (Fire in Multiple Use Management, R, D, and A Program).     

External threats: the dilemma of resource management on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon National park,USA

The United States Congress established Grand Canyon National Park in 1919 to preserve for posterity the outstanding natural attributes of the canyon cut by the Colorado River. In some cases National Park Service attempts to maintain Grand Canyon's natural environment have been thwarted by activities outside the park. One of the most obvious external threats is Glen Canyon Dam, only 26 km upstream from the park boundary. Constructed in 1963, this gigantic dam has greatly altered the physicochemical and biological characteristics of 446 km of the Colorado River in Grand Canyon National Park. The river's aquatic ecosystem has been greatly modified through the loss of indigenous species and the addition of numerous exotics. We consider this anexotic ecosystem. The riparian ecosystem has been less modified, with addition of a few exotics and no loss of natives—this we consider anaturalized ecosystem.The great dilemma now faced by park managers is that, after 20 years of managing resources along a river controlled by Glen Canyon Dam, the Bureau of Reclamation has proposed major changes in operational procedures for the dam. Scientists and managers from the National Park Service, Bureau of Reclamation, and cooperating federal and state resource management agencies are using a systems analysis approach to examine the impacts of various Colorado River flow regimes on aquatic, riparian, and recreational parameters in the park. This approach will help in the development of management alternatives designed to permit the most efficient use of that river's natural resources without their destruction.     

Interpreting dynamics of aquatic resources: A perspective for resource managers

Since the presentation of the Leopold Report (Leopold et al. 1963) to the United States Secretary of the Interior, recommendations in the document for managing natural park resources on the ecosystem level have been included in the management policies of the National Park Service. In many instances, however, management programs have continued to focus on individual resource problems, without apparent concern for the ecological consequences on ecosystems. Without knowledge of the interrelationships of ecosystem components, solving one problem may result in other resource problems. Graphic approaches are presented as potential tools to view these complex interrelationships relative to the needs of the resource manager. Interpreting the dynamics of aquatic systems is emphasized.     

Confronting the challenge of greenline parks: Limits of the traditional administrative approach

The National Park Service, like other natural resource management agencies, has adopted the traditional model of public administration, which emphasizes efficiency, effectiveness, economy, and dichotomy between politics and administration. This approach is particularly ineffective in greenline parks and increasingly inappropriate in traditional areas. In an era of ecological interdependence, relationships with other agencies and jurisdictions and with adjacent as well as noncontiguous landowners are as important as controlling visitors. Recreation managers need to develop more skill in negotiation, cooperation, coordination, and interpersonal communication if they are to preserve and protect park resources.     

DINOSAUR NATIONAL MONUMENT: THE EVOLUTION OF A FEDERAL RESERVED WATER RIGHT1

ABSTRACT: Dinosaur National Monument, in northwestern Colorado, has become a test case in the establishment of a federal reserved water right to instream flows. For the first time, the Interior Department was forced to rigorously defend its claims in a watershed where the federal government did not control the upstream reaches. Inadequate quantification of minimum flow requirements, court orders, and an apparent Congressional ban on the spending of Water Resources Program funds by the Park Service to quantify its water rights have already placed the Service in a difficult position to protect instream flows for maintaining the ecological integrity of the Monument. As late as 1983, administrators of the Park Service were divided over their legal strategy, many wanting to pursue a policy of claiming “natural, historic” flows rather than “minimum” flows. The conditional right to instream flows panted to the Park Service in 1978 was subject to quantification within five years. That deadline has been extended, but it is not likely that the case will reach final settlement this decade. Until the design and conduct of federal water rights quantifications better integrate public policy and law with science, the principle lesson from Dinosaur may have to be repeated.     

Cross-boundary issues for national parks: What works “on the ground”

In recent years, cross-boundary management has become an essential part of park management. In this article we compare the perspectives of managers of several US national parks to the advice on this issue presented in the published literature. Data were obtained from interviews of the superintendents, assistant superintendents and resources managers of five major western national parks and from a survey of participants in a NPS workshop attended by park superintendents, scientists, and resource managers; law enforcement personnel; and interpreters. Three themes related to boundary management were consistently stressed by park managers: (10 a lack of sufficient funds and personnel within the parks; (2) the need for reliable information on both political and natural processes; and, (3) the importance of personal interactions between park staff and individuals from the surrounding area. Basic data collection, the documentation of trends, cooperative groups and personal contacts, educational programs, and land acquisition were the most useful strategies. A lack of funds and information, ineffective communication, enforcement problems, and a lack of motivation for parties to reach a negotiated agreement were the most serious obstacles. A wide range of valuable institutional knowledge concerning boundary management exists within the National Park Service; however, there appears to be a gap between published strategies and the approaches that work “on the ground”.     

External threats and internal management: the hydrologic regulation of the Everglades,Florida, USA

The ecological character of seasonal marshes is determined in large part by the pattern of water level fluctuation. As a result, the ecological health of a wetland reserve can be controlled by hydrologic regulation external to its boundaries. As an example, the Everglades marsh of Everglades National Park in Florida, USA, has been severely effected by management of the inflow of surface water. The Everglades occupies most of the interior of southern Florida, but only the lower 6% of the original marsh is contained in Everglades National Park. Shallow surface water reservoirs north of the park enclose 3600 km² of Everglades. Their levee system confines surface water flow into the park to several structures. Historically this water flowed across the entire core of the natural drainage. Flows into the park have been on a congressionally mandated schedule of minimum deliveries that is supplemented by additional water released into the park in amounts determined solely by upstream water management needs. My research, aimed at evaluating the effects of water conditions, has shown that this regulatory system has adversely affected reproductive success, community structure, and population sizes of sensitive species whose population stability is tied to natural water level fluctuations. These adverse effects were caused by water levels that for over a decade have been maintained at unseasonably high levels. Mathematically deterministic models of water level effects can provide management options based on biologial criteria. Park managers must incorporate understanding gained from such models into internal management decisions. Modifications of water control structures and alternative policies for managing the distribution and amount of surface water flow into the park appear attainable, can improve biological conditions in the park, and need not be adverse to neighboring external interests. Thus far biological changes are severe, and to a large extent irreversible. Ecologically sensitive management of an external threat under constraints imposed by history and setting can better maintain some semblance of ecological processes in the Everglades. If management decisions do not reflect such understanding of ecological processes, further ecological deterioration will result.     

A WATERSHED APPROACH TO ECOSYSTEM MONITORING IN DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE,ALASKA1

ABSTRACT: The National Park Service and the National Biological Service initiated research in Denali National Park and Preserve, a 2.4 million-hectare park in southcentral Alaska, to develop ecological monitoring protocols for national parks in the Arctic/Subarctic biogeographic area. We are focusing pilot studies on design questions, on scaling issues and regionalization, ecosystem structure and function, indicator selection and evaluation, and monitoring technologies. Rock Creek, a headwater stream near Denali headquarters, is the ecological scale for initial testing of a watershed ecosystem approach. Our conceptual model embraces principles of the hydrological cycle, hypotheses of global climate change, and biological interactions of organisms occupying intermediate, but poorly studied, positions in Alaskan food webs. The field approach includes hydrological and depositional considerations and a suite of integrated measures linking key aquatic and terrestrial biota, environmental variables, or defined ecological processes, in order to establish ecological conditions and detect, track, and understand mechanisms of environmental change. Our sampling activities include corresponding measures of physical, chemical, and biological attributes in four Rock Creek habitats believed characteristic of the greater system diversity of Denali. This paper gives examples of data sets, program integration and scaling, and research needs.     

三江源国家公园自然资源资产管理体制改革实践与经验研究

健全全民所有自然资源资产管理体制,是实现自然资源资产合理使用和有效保护、发挥社会主义公有制优势、推动生态文明建设的重要举措.提炼三江源国家公园在自然资源资产管理体制改革过程中的典型实践,梳理其改革经验与启示,为探索建设以国家公园为代表的自然保护地体系内自然资源资产管理积累"青海经验"、做出"青海贡献".     

Estimating the Economic Value of National Parks with Count Data Models Using On-Site,Secondary Data: The Case of the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve

We estimate an individual travel cost model for Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve (GSD) in Colorado using on-site, secondary data. The purpose of the on-site survey was to help the National Park Service better understand the visitors of GSD; it was not intended for a travel cost model. Variables such as travel cost and income were estimated based on respondents’ Zip Codes. Following approaches found in the literature, a negative binomial model corrected for truncation and endogenous stratification fit the data the best. We estimate a recreational benefit of U.S. $89/visitor/year or U.S. $54/visitor/24-h recreational day (in 2002 U.S. $). Based on the approach presented here, there are other data sets for national parks, preserves, and battlefields where travel cost models could be estimated and used to support National Park Service management decisions.     

Are bison exotic in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve?

The effect of past distributions of animal populations now extinct in an area from unknown causes is considered relative to their status as exotic or native in national parks. The example is the bison (Bisonbison) on the Copper and Chitina river drainages in Alaska in the USA which was introduced prior to establishment of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. The fossil record suggests that bison were present as recently as 500 years ago in Alaska. The policy of the US National Park Service to maintain natural ecosystems and restrict or eliminate exotic species raises the issue of whether this species should be treated as exotic or native.     

Building Trust in Natural Resource Management Within Local Communities: A Case Study of the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie

Communities neighboring federally protected natural areas regularly weigh the costs and benefits of the administering agency’s programs and policies. While most agencies integrate public opinion into decision making, efforts to standardize and formalize public involvement have left many local communities feeling marginalized, spurring acrimony and opposition. A significant body of research has examined barriers to effective public participation as well as strategies for relationship building in planning processes; many of which point to trust as a key factor. Trust is especially tenuous in local communities. This paper explores perceptions of trust, expectations for management, as well as constraints to building trust. In-depth interviews were conducted with 21 community members and USDA Forest Service personnel at the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in northeastern Illinois. The interviews revealed that trust is perceived as important to effective management. Distinct expectations for management outcomes and processes emerged, including the values, knowledge, and capacity demonstrated in management decisions and actions and opportunities provided for communication, collaboration, and cooperation within the agency-community relationship. The case study identified several constraints to building trust, including competing values, knowledge gaps, limited community engagement, and staff turnover.     

Integrating Social Marketing into Sustainable Resource Management at Padre Island National Seashore: An Attitude-Based Segmentation Approach

High demand for outdoor recreation and increasing diversity in outdoor recreation participants have imposed a great challenge on the National Park Service (NPS), which is tasked with the mission to provide open access for quality outdoor recreation and maintain the ecological integrity of the park system. In addition to management practices of education and restrictions, building a sense of natural resource stewardship among visitors may also facilitate the NPS ability to react to this challenge. The purpose of our study is to suggest a segmentation approach that is built on the social marketing framework and aimed at influencing visitor behaviors to support conservation. Attitude toward natural resource management, an indicator of natural resource stewardship, is used as the basis for segmenting park visitors. This segmentation approach is examined based on a survey of 987 visitors to the Padre Island National Seashore (PAIS) in Texas in 2003. Results of the K-means cluster analysis identify three visitor segments: Conservation-Oriented, Development-Oriented, and Status Quo visitors. This segmentation solution is verified using respondents’ socio-demographic backgrounds, use patterns, experience preferences, and attitudes toward a proposed regulation. Suggestions are provided to better target the three visitor segments and facilitate a sense of natural resource stewardship among them.     

An Interpretive Study of Yosemite National Park Visitors’ Perspectives Toward Alternative Transportation in Yosemite Valley

The National Park Service (NPS) is increasingly focusing on alternative transportation systems in national parks to address environmental and social problems arising from a historical reliance on personal automobiles as the primary means of visitor access. Despite the potential advantages, alternative transportation may require a reorientation in the way that Americans have experienced national parks since the advent of auto-tourism in the early twentieth century. Little research exists, however, on visitor perspectives towards alternative transportation or the rationale underlying their perspectives. It remains unclear how transportation systems affect visitors’ experiences of the park landscape or the factors influencing their travel behavior in the parks. This report presents an interpretive study of visitor perspectives toward transportation management in the Yosemite Valley area of Yosemite National Park, California. Qualitative analysis of 160 semi-structured interviews identified individual psychological factors as well as situational influences that affect visitors’ behavior and perspectives. Individual psychological factors include perceived freedom, environmental values and beliefs, prior experience with Yosemite National Park and other national parks, prior experience with alternative transportation in national parks, and sensitivity to subjective perceptions of crowding. Situational factors included convenience, access, and flexibility of travel modes, as well as type of visit, type of group, and park use level. Interpretive communication designed to encourage voluntary visitor use of alternative transportation should focus on these psychological and situational factors. Although challenges remain, the results of this study suggest approaches for shaping the way Americans visit and experience their national parks to encourage environmental sustainability.     

Title 16 united states code §55 and its implications for management of concession facilities in Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park is one of the nation's most scenic and ecologically/geologically important parks. Unfortunately, the park is subject to extensive development of concession facilities and associated high levels of visitor use. Those concerned with preservation of the park's resources have attempted to limit the types and extent of such facilities to reduce adverse impacts. Strictly speaking, resolution of the preservation versus use controversy must be based on whether the National Park Service is adhering to its legislative mandate to regulate development and use in the parks. The common interpretation of legislative mandates for national parks, including Yosemite, is that they call for a difficult balancing between the conflicting goals of preservation and use. Accordingly, although concession developments cause significant impacts, they usually have been interpreted to be within the legal discretion allowed the secretary of the interior. However, the usual interpretations of the meanings of legislative mandates for Yosemite National Park have not considered Title 16 United States Code §55, which is a very restrictive statute limiting concession facilities. Many of the limitations imposed on concession facilities by the plain language of the statute have been exceeded. If it can be shown that 16 United States Code §55 is a valid statute, the policy implications for park management in Yosemite National Park would be considerable — namely, that significant reductions in concession facilities could be required. This article examines whether the statute can reasonably be thought to be valid and encourages others to conduct further examination of this question.     

Speaking of fire: reflexive governance in landscapes of social change and shifting local identities

ABSTRACT

The concept of reflexive governance has to a large extent emerged from an increasing recognition of the need to consider different meanings of nature in the environmental policy-making process. Yet, so far, little attention has been paid to creating conditions for reflexive governance among different actors in intercultural settings, particularly in the context of environmental conflict and strong cultural change among indigenous peoples. This paper reviews three participatory research projects carried out in the Gran Sabana in Canaima National Park, Venezuela, which facilitated dialogue among indigenous people regarding their conflicting views of fire, in part by developing community-wide critical reflections on processes of cultural change and identity formations. These experiences suggest that once marginalized environmental knowledge is publicly acknowledged within the context of endogenous cultural processes, indigenous people feel more confident to engage in dialogue with other actors, thus allowing the emergence of reflexive environmental governance.     

Creating and sustaining community capacity for ecosystem-based management: Is local government the key?

Recently, collaborative approaches to natural resource management have been widely promoted as ways to broaden participation and community involvement in furthering the goals of ecosystem management. The language of collaboration has even been incorporated into controversial legislation, such as the US Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003. This research examines collaboration and sharing management responsibility for federal public land with local communities through a case study of the Ashland Municipal Watershed in southern Oregon. A policy sciences approach is used to analyze community participation and institutional relationships between the US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, and local city government in the planning processes of five land management actions occurring over a 7-year period. The knowledge gained from examining differing approaches to planning and decision making in the Ashland watershed is used to suggest future planning processes to develop and sustain the community capacity necessary to support implementation of community-based ecosystem management.