NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Research in the Parks NPS Symposium Series No. 1

The Yellowstone Act of 1872 coupled the purposes of preservation and the use of the park as a "pleasuring ground." The National Park Service Act of 1916 also stressed preservation and stated that parks were for the "pleasure of the people."

Over the years there has developed a variety of interpretations of these purposes, including a feeling that they are in conflict, even incompatible. This difficulty can be resolved if the meaning of these acts of Congress is: preservation for the enjoyment of the people in the natural values being preserved.

Congress could not have anticipated the changes that have brought new pressures on the national parks. A century ago, not only Yellowstone but most of the West was wilderness. Fifty-six years ago the Industrial Revolution was well under way but private autos were still few in number and most roads were narrow, rough, and unpaved. Mechanization had not yet produced high-powered outboard motors, over-terrain vehicles, and snowmobiles by the millions. Camping equipment was primitive and much of it was World War I army surplus. The few auto-campers were mostly home-built. The large and luxurious house trailer was yet to come. Campers expected to rough it.

Some parks were reached by railroads. Some rather grand hotels were built to house the comparatively small percentage of Americans who were better off. Travel about the park was mainly by horse-drawn vehicles. Many of the visitors expected to hike and climb for their special views. I believe that we can assume that most of the park visitors during these early years did expect to take their pleasure in the natural values that were being preserved in perpetuity. The recreation explosion is a phenomenon of the last quarter of a century. Because the parks are public land, many persons seem to feel that they have a right to take their pleasure in them in almost any way they please. These antithetical uses have produced a dilemma for the National Park Service.

Most important have been the demands arising from the prevalence of private autos. Time and distance ratios have changed, and as families crossed the continent to flood the western parks, roads and campgrounds became inadequate. New and different facilities were needed. Much of wilderness quiet disappeared with the throngs of people, noisy cars, and blaring transistor radios.

Historic and archeological sites and structures were added to the system with the same purpose of preservation that lay behind the formation of the great wilderness parks. Recent years, however, have seen the system greatly expanded in kinds of areas as well as in numbers of units. The system now contains national recreation areas, seashores, lakeshores, wild and scenic rivers, and linear trails and parkways extending for hundreds of miles. The most recent thrust is toward urban-related areas for recreation, open space, and some remnants of nature.

These newer areas in their great variety serve many purposes but central among them is that of active recreation, often organized and frequently mechanized. Still, the pressure remains on the great wilderness parks and the dilemma is with the management of them as each year sees the visits increased by millions. Some innovations are being made and imaginative and bold measures are contemplated, but the National Park Service is not yet well prepared to enter its second century since Yellowstone.

This sketchy historical account leads me to some remarks on research in the parks, the central theme of the symposium. I will bypass archeology, anthropology, and history because they have been better served and funded over the years and will confine my remarks to the social and biological sciences.

Although the social sciences have not been thought by Congress to be a need of the National Park Service, that opinion seems to be changing. On the face of it, it is absurd to manage many millions of acres of public property worth unestimated billions of dollars and serving hundreds of millions of citizens and know almost nothing about the customers, or should I say, clients. There is great need to employ the modern methods of survey research to learn the motivations and expectations of park visitors. Careful studies need to be made of the behavioral patterns of park visitors, with an effort to determine why people do what they do.

Without knowing the answers to the questions, even what the questions should be, we can assume that most persons who misbehave—I use the expression to mean behavior that is inappropriate to the purposes for which Congress established the various units of the National Park System—do so out of ignorance. If this is true, the extent to which it is true, suggests that there is a need for public education. In my opinion, the National Park Service should be encouraged and well funded to use all the media to explain what it is about—newspapers, magazines, movies, radio, and television. This would not go far enough. It should use the opportunities that exist in the schools and in citizen organizations of a thousand kinds. The Service should produce more abundant, free, and cheaper informative material about the parks. And these technically accurate and attractive brochures, pamphlets, and books must go farther than to describe geology and the plant and animal life of the parks. There should be brochures that describe the structure and functioning of the Service, and especially the problems it faces in meeting its obligations for pleasure of the people while guarding what must not be allowed to be destroyed or even diminished. Most obvious are the captive audiences—the park visitors who look at the museum exhibits and attend the campfire programs, who walk the trails and read the trailside signs. Let us talk problems to them, and not just about things. An informed public could help the park management meet its every need, instead of causing it ever-greater headaches.

Every employee of the Service needs basic training in public relations as well as thorough grounding in the purposes of the Service. There is need for a sizable staff to help train existing personnel and to do various kinds of social science studies, especially in sociology and psychology. Beside the in-house efforts, there should be funds and a system of investing them in support of contract research in these fields.

One would expect the situation to be much better in the fields of biological research, but there are glaring deficiencies. Every park should have a base map that shows the cover types. It is relatively easy with today's remote sensing techniques to overfly a park and obtain images that can be translated into the various kinds of forest, grassland, and other types of plant-animal communities. Such a map is basic to two needs. It provides the base for an inventory of the cover types and for locating special features that assist research and interested visitors. The park naturalists and investigators can identify on such a map the location of special communities and rare and endangered species as well as the sites selected for special investigation. The second important use is to determine where developments should not occur. The biological importance of prime examples of community types and of the location of special features such as the habitats of rare species or the sensitive breeding grounds of animals have all too seldom been a factor in the location of roads, campgrounds, and other constructions. Engineering and cost considerations, even simple convenience, have typically been the determining factors. These have led in the past to bringing the people and their activities as close as possible to special park features. Fortunately, this trend is being reversed.

The wealth of research opportunity in the great wilderness parks has attracted numerous investigators from the colleges and universities. At various times in the past, qualified park personnel have been granted time for on-the-job research, but most park staff are subject to extensive distraction from research by duties related to the public and management needs. There is a clear need for a greatly enlarged scientific staff with a variety of skills and understandings to carry on much needed studies. The results of such research would serve the public in providing richer and more varied information about the natural history of the parks and would be an important ingredient in management and planning decisions of the Service. This line of thought leads to a recommendation that there be identified for each important cover type three typical locations. These would serve different purposes. One example of each type should be selected in places convenient to visitors so that they could freely get into the stands and see for themselves just what a given plant-animal community is like. This experience could be guided or self-guiding on a basis of the nature-trail approach, perhaps with a descriptive booklet. Such stands would be living museum-type exhibits. A second example would be located far from the centers of visitation and would be regarded as isolates to be given as complete protection as possible. The third stand of each type would be reserved for experimentation. It should be located somewhere essentially out of sight of the public. In such places basic research could be carried on that requires some harvest of specimens or other experimental manipulations. Such research should be designed to serve the needs of basic understanding or, in some cases, the needs of management. As to the latter point, experimentation with controlled fire would be an example.

Rare and endangered species deserve particular attention. From the point of view of any one park, the local rareness of a species population is important whether or not the species as a whole is rare and endangered. The first consideration is to provide as much protection as possible. Nothing that the Service does or allows visitors to do should weaken the survival possibility of any such species or species population.

Each community type should be analyzed and described as to composition and structure and, where feasible, as to matters of energy flow, mineral recycling, and the like. Parks are almost devoid of this kind of basic data. Most studies are directed at the life history and ecology of selected individual species. This is fine and more of it needs doing not only for the public information value but also because of the importance of such knowledge when management problems arise. Such studies just do not go far enough.

I have stressed the need and the opportunities for basic research on the natural history of parks, park management problems, and the social science inputs which are desperately needed to improve public relations and service and to improve the management of parks under the guidelines of the basic statutes.

If the National Park Service undertakes such a research program, it will need an enlarged staff and a variety of skills that are not presently available to it.