A Brief History: Invasive Species Introduced by the National Park Service
and one man's efforts to shift the park service from a tourism-centric approach to science-based land management (and how this is still a work in progress)
Biologists and the National Park Service (NPS) have long had a complicated relationship. I’ve been trying to put this at-odds into words for a long time now and the book I am reading does a much better job than I can, so this post is mostly a summary of Chapter 9 of Brave the Wild River by Melissa L. Sevigny.
You read the title of this post right— nonnative species have often been moved around willy nilly by the National Park Service to create a curated experience for visitors. A hot take, considering the park service is the most highly rated government agency in our country.
As an Ecologist, I can’t help but see many flaws in the NPS that others miss or are willing to overlook. I, too, am sometimes willing to overlook some of these flaws due to the immense good the parks provide us. I would rather have the land protected in perpetuity and not managed well than not protected at all, that’s for sure. That being said, I also feel empowered to hold an agency (that was created to work for the benefit of the people) accountable for their ecological actions. And, an agency with such an important job, should be held to the highest standards. That is what George Melendez Wright seemed to think as well.
George Melendez Wright: an Ecologist who should be a household name
Back in 1929, George Melendez Wright, a half white/half hispanic San Francisco native, was one of very few biologists who questioned the ark service’s focus on tourism and lack of focus on ecological preservation. Wright thought the parks had been “drawn like little chalk squares around pretty bits of scenery without any regard for the ecological needs of the creatures who lived within them.” And convinced the Park Service to let him conduct a survey of wildlife within the parks. He thought it was ironic that they (the park service) claimed to want to preserve the parks in their natural state without first doing any kind of formal survey on what plants and animals were there before they went and fooled around and made huge changes to the ecosystem. The name of this groundbreaking survey and proposed management guidelines by Wright was collectively called Fauna number 1 and in 1934 it was adopted, with hesitation and sheepishness, as the official wildlife policy for the NPS.
“Am I a visionary, or just crazy?” Wright wondered, writing this in a letter to a friend.
How the Park Service fooled around
There’s a long list of species introduced by the National Park Service to the wildernesses of the National Parks. A few of the best examples come from Grand Canyon National Park, where the Park Service transplanted twelve pronghorn from the state of Nevada in 1924, dumped ringneck pheasants and gamble’s quail into the bottom of the canyon, brought nonnative trout eggs down to the river in metal cans, and let deer be fed by hand on the south rim to please tourists. More than just merely encouraging the deer to be fed, park staff actively shot predators in order to protect these habituated deer, killing hundreds to thousands of mountain lion (~800), wolves (20), bobcats (hundreds), and coyotes (thousands) in the name of tourist attraction. Animals at the time were considered in two categories to the park service: 1. tourist attractions or 2. pests.
“Here one could experience the wonders of nature… and have a nice clam chowder dinner. This was after all the National Park Services mandate: to provide for the public enjoyment. That’s what it said in the legislation that established the National Park System in 1916. From the start, the Park Service sought to bring tourists in and, less consistently, to keep mining, logging, grazing, and dams out.”
- Brave the Wild River, by Melissa L. Sevigny
Wright argued a few things in his Fauna number 1, including, that wildlife should not be used as entertainment, nonnative animals should not be moved around at whim, predator control should not be allowed within parks, and habitats should be restored to pre-European alterations. He was one of the first advocates of the largely unpopular idea of “science-based land management”. He also believed indigenous knowledge of the ecosystems could help greatly in this restoration and encouraged cooperation between the area's tribes and the NPS. The last Havasupai resident was forcibly removed from Havasupai Gardens area of Grand Canyon a year before Wright’s years at the Park Service began (1928). The Park Service took control of the Coyote Tail Trail and renamed it the Bright Angel Trail and used it as a toll road for tourists. Havasupai started calling the South Rim a word translating to “where the train stops.”
“Bilingual in Spanish and English and with roots in Central America, Wright understood that ecology could benefit not just from scientific research but also from the knowledge of indigenous peoples who had acted as stewards and skilled land managers before the National Park System came into being.”
- Brave the Wild River, by Melissa L. Sevigny
Wright was able to influence policy— NPS adopted some of his ideas such as conducting formal park surveys, ending predator control (at least on paper) and stopping the introduction of nonnative species (except for sport fish). He may have been able to create even more change if it wasn’t for his early death by car accident while on the way to inspect areas for new National Park sites in New Mexico.
But, by 1938, the NPS had largely lost interest in Wright’s science-based stewardship method— he was dead and no longer a spokesperson for sound ecological practices— and the Park Service had fewer than a dozen Biologists on staff. The focuses of the parks instead remained on tourism and recreation instead of ecology, conservation, and preservation.
“Most tourists believed that because the Grand Canyon was pretty and inaccessible, it was pristine. The national park service encouraged these romantic perceptions.”
— Brave the Wild River, by Melissa L. Sevigny
The park service still perpetuates this belief, ignoring their own drastic changes to the ecosystems over the last 100+ years as well as the tending of the land by the native americans for hundreds of years before that. This false perception of “untouched beauty” encourages the removal of anything that doesn’t fit neatly into its narrative— predators, wildfire, insects all still being actively removed and artificially controlled by the National Park Service within areas of wilderness designated as National Parks.
It’s one of the great contradictions: the park service trying to control control control while also marketing the areas as wild, remote wilderness. Even the idea of marketing the national parks seems to go against the very grand and noble gesture of preserving the land in the first place.
“In his second wildlife report, published in 1935, Wright explored the inherent contradictions in the park services mandate to preserve landscapes and open them up to public enjoyment. ‘Ice and fire’ in his words. To reconcile the two goals, he wanted the park service to stop dulling out cheap thrills— penned bison, fed bears— and encourage visitors to instead seek out the story of the endless change and struggle and the marvelous interrelations of all living things.”
— Brave the Wild River, by Melissa L. Sevigny
Wright’s ideas were transformative to the way the Park Service conducted stewardship in the early 1930s, and even though the Park Service has improved since its days of bear-feeding, it’s still evident today that more of us need to carry on Wright’s legacy and build upon his ideas. Wilderness areas within our country should not be focused on attracting tourist dollars or providing paved roads for vehicular access, or scaring bears away from shops and restaurants, but instead be saved as sanctuaries for native species, places of great study and ecological education, and vast wild churches for the human soul.
Next time you visit a National Park
go as an apprentice to Mother Nature herself
and never as a tourist
