This Land Is Your Land: The National Park Service - A National Treasure

 According to the American Rivers organization, "life depends on rivers - and rivers depend on us." Gauley River National Recreation Area draws outdoor whitewater enthusiasts from all over the world to this national park area in Central West Virginia. In the fall of each year, water is released through Summerville Dam to lower the lake level (behind the dam) in anticipation of winter/spring runoff. The massive surge creates a one-of-a-kind extravaganza called "Gauley Season." This water release, along with the river's steep gradient and boulder piles, turns the Gauley into one of the world's prominent whitewater recreational rivers. The National Recreation Area portion of the Gauley River boasts the more one hundred rapids ranging from Class II to Class V. The American Whitewater organization helped to establish the National Recreation Area in 1988 to conserve 25 miles of the Gauley's incredibly scenic gorges and valleys containing a wide variety of feat...

Carr Fire of 2018 - Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, CA (NPS Photo Files) Part 1 highlighted the early history of wildland fires in the National Park Service (NPS), from an era of suppression to science-based fire management. Check out the previous post if you missed it. But that account wasn’t the end of the story.  The evolution of NPS wildland fire management was a steady process of decades-long science interspersed with some political intrusion. In 1978, innovations from the 1976 Task Directive review were codified into the National Park Service Fire Policy (NPS-18) and applied to most individual park area fire plans up through the mid-1980s. As the decade drew to a close, the NPS had a structure and process for managing fire, albeit one that had yet to be seriously tested.  That test came in the summer of 1988. In the first sixteen years of Yellowstone's natural fire policy (1972-1987), 235 fires were allowed to burn (only burning 33,759 acres) and only 15 fires were...

From suppression to science-based fire management in NPS (photo by the National Academy of Sciences Some of you may not know but prior to my 43 years with the National Park Service (NPS), I was a seasonal wildland firefighter with the Kootenai National Forest in NW Montana. After joining the NPS, I continued to serve for additional years (on short-term collateral duty assignments) with wildland fire crews from the park areas I worked.  Federal fire protection began in the national parks in 1886, when the U.S. Army administered Yellowstone Park. After the trauma of the 1910 conflagration fire season, and creation of the NPS in 1916, the new Service embraced the Forest Service’s policy of aggressive suppression. Federal land agencies generally saw forest and grassland fires as the “bad guy;” something to fight and extinguish.  Suppression was reinforced with five major fire years between 1919 and 1934. Although some wildlife biologists such as George Wright may have disagreed, t...

Rocky Mountain National Park                                                                                          (Photos by Mark)     In my last blog, in Part 1, I drafted a post highlighting four  national park areas: Rocky Mountain National Park, Vicksburg National Military  Park, New River Gorge National Park, and Dry Tortugas National Park.     Have a  look back if you missed it. But that wasn’t the end of the story, for all is not well   with these four examples into our National Park System. At Vicksburg, the USS Cairo experiences environmental decay, particularly fungal  and insect damage, and requires preservation of its wood and metal components. Its supporting structure needs regular inspection and mai...

Rocky Mountain National Park, CO (Photos by Mark) Imagine you are planning a route for an upcoming cross-country trip. Which national park areas might you choose to visit?  You have 433 to choose from but decide well because you’ll probably have company. National park areas are very popular; last year 43 million visitors from all over the country, and the world, were doing the same thing. Consider Rocky Mountain National Park? From Mexico to Alaska, for 2,700 miles the great Rocky Mountain chain forms the backbone of N. America, the world’s longest mountain barrier. Set in central Colorado, this park climbs high – from 7,600 ft to 14,259 ft Longs Peak.  Here, tree-line and tundra, beaver ponds, and montane forests are accessible to all along the park's Trail Ridge Road – spectacular scenery and wildlife are guaranteed. In the Never Summer mountains, you might discover where melting snow begins the Colorado River.  Consider Vicksburg National Military Park? The Civil War c...

My friend William experiences the "Tonic of Wildness" hiking his 1st mountain at Shenandoah National Park (Photos by Mark) Someone once said that the Big Bend is so large, you might get lost out there. I say Big Bend is so large, and so diverse, you just might "find" yourself out there.  From 1988 through 1999, I served at Big Bend National Park, TX with one of the most amazing backyards anyone could ever imagine: Chihuahuan Desert, Rio Grande, and Chisos Mts. I return many times and each time, the sights and sounds and smells of this place come flooding back. It is truly a place for people to discover, and re-discover, what our national parks are all about. A long-forgotten cowboy once wrote that Big Bend is "…where rainbows wait for rain, where the river is kept in a stone box and the water runs uphill, and the mountains tower into the sky except when they disappear to visit other mountains..." One attached image shows a desert thunderstorm with rainbow ...

A bridge between 2 cultures   (Photos by Mark)  Last week, Part 1 looked at a brief historical summary between Tribal Nations and the Federal Government – mostly a dark history. If you missed Part 1, go back and check it out. In the past several decades, however, recent actions by the NPS have slowly been creating an atmosphere of trust and communications against the backdrop of wariness towards Federal authority. Change can occur but to many Indigenous cultures, change is also perceived as cyclical: the “Sacred Hoop.”  A related piece of news made headlines one year ago when an historic settlement enshrined the Jamez Pueblo's right to use an ancestral portion of a NPS area - Valles Caldera National Preserve, NM. Attorneys asked a federal court to close out litigation in light of a settlement being reached after a year of negotiation. The agreement signed by then U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (a member of the Laguna Pueblo and the country's first Native American Cab...