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seawallrunner
dilettante
Joined: 27 Apr 2005
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Location: Lotusland |
I was looking at my National Geographic tyvek map of the North Cascades this morning and wondered about something -
Why is Mt Shuksan part of the North Cascades National Park, and why is it not inside the Mount Baker Wilderness (like Larrabee) or inside Snoqualmie National Forest (like Watson and Sauk)?
The North Cascades boundary specifically draws a little 'square' around Shuksan to extend the region to contain this mountain.
I'm now quite curious about how park boundaries are drawn, and how such decisions are made. I am wondering if anyone here could shed a light on this process.
Thank you.
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Snowshoe Hare
Defunct lagomorph
Joined: 03 Dec 2004
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Just guessing but a landmark that significant seems obvious to include in a national park. Or else you may have ski lifts and chalets on its flanks.
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#19
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Joined: 17 Dec 2001
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#19
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 Sat Oct 01, 2005 12:51 pm |
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The NCNP boundaries were formed long before the the Mt Baker Wilderness was designated.
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Blue Dome
Now with Retsyn
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Location: Cleaning up the dogma. |
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Blue Dome
Now with Retsyn
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Sat Oct 01, 2005 1:44 pm |
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| seawallrunner wrote: | | Why is Mt Shuksan part of the North Cascades National Park, and why is it not inside the Mount Baker Wilderness (like Larrabee) or inside Snoqualmie National Forest (like Watson and Sauk)? |
Good question. How was the NCNP boundary established? (Snowshoe Hare’s got the gist of the answer regarding Shuksan.)
If you’re interested in that sort of thing, here’s a good resource and a longer answer: http://www.nps.gov/noca/adhi-1.htm
| Quote: | | The committee believed that the range, with its chain of five volcanic peaks, St. Helens, Adams, Rainier, Glacier Peak, and Baker, along with its intervening precipitous and glacier-clad mountains, was "unquestionably of national park caliber." It was a bold vision for a national park. The high Cascades (or "Ice Peaks" as it came to be known) would be a kind of "super park,"… The park proposal ignited controversy almost immediately…
With the nation's entrance into World War II, the Ice Peaks proposal faded from sight, an orphan of the New Deal. By 1941 the Ice Peaks proposal had been roundly defeated…
As the historian Samuel P. Hays has suggested, World War II and its aftermath gave rise to a new generation of Americans who valued the natural world as an amenity of life rather than a commodity for the marketplace…
In the 1950s, however, the Forest Service shattered this illusion when it began to reevaluate national forests, including the North Cascades, to meet the demands of the postwar housing boom and the pressures of a rising population… the Forest Service would ultimately decide how much of the North Cascades would be thrown open to development and how much would remain as wilderness. This new turn of events forced conservationists to consider how best to protect the northern Cascades as one of the nation's finest alpine wildernesses -- national forest or national park?…
As Grant McConnell wrote, for all its friendly talk about "non-market values," the Forest Service was still the Forest Service and was "mainly concerned about the maximization of cellulose."…the agency valued the forests of the North Cascades more for the market than for wilderness recreation…
A park seemed to offer the most practical alternative to saving the wilderness of the North Cascades. Under the Forest Service, wilderness received only administrative protection and therefore the agency was not accountable to Congress and the American people. National parks, however, represented the nation's premier form of scenic preservation; parks were legally bound to protect wilderness, for the most part, by their enabling legislation and the Park Service's Organic Act…
While it was true that the Park Service had its problems of tourists hordes and overdevelopment, McConnell noted, it could provide the kind of permanent protection for the region which the Forest Service could not. Without concern for commercial resource use, the Park Service could protect the range's forests, prevent mining (especially with the Kennecott Mining Company's interests on Miners Ridge near Glacier Peak), and design roads and developments that were sensitive to scenic preservation rather than focused on clearcuts…
Moreover, the Park Service could protect the area proposed for wilderness by Marshall (and the Mountaineers) just as it had in Kings Canyon, and unlike the Forest Service make the declaration last. "We have the tremendous advantage, working with the Park Service, of knowing that all of us seek the same ends -- sustenance for the national soul, not the local mill."
By early 1959, the National Parks Association, Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs, the Sierra Club, North Cascades Conservation Council, the Mountaineers, and the Cascadians had endorsed a national park for the North Cascades, generally, and requested that the Forest Service suspend its study and invite the Park Service to study the range for its national park caliber… The Forest Service, however, refused conservationists' requests stating that it was fully qualified to assess all of the range's values…
The poor relations between the Forest Service and Park Service continued to characterize the issue… The Forest Service recommended… the Park Service recommended…
The study team's chairman wrote the compromise proposal. Ed Crafts, the director of the recently created Bureau of Outdoor Recreation in the Department of the Interior, had been a career employee with the Forest Service for nearly thirty years, ten as assistant chief. He knew well the contentious relations between the Forest Service and Park Service…
Thus in drafting the final report, he proposed creating a park that both sides might accept. Totaling 698,000 acres, the new park would extend south from the Canadian border to several miles below the head of Lake Chelan, including Mount Shuksan, Ross and Diablo lakes (as well as the associated Seattle City Light operations), the Picket Range, the Eldorado Peaks country, and the Stehekin Valley. In Crafts' opinion, the North Cascades deserved national park status without question, for the range possessed "superlative mountain features" that would make it "one of the most outstanding units" in the park system… |
There were, of course, several changes to the final legislation, all intended to address the concerns of the many interested parties — conservation groups, private landowners, timber interests, electric power interests and others. But in the end:
| Quote: | | The fate of the North Cascades, as with conservation issues across the nation, lay in confrontation between conservation philosophies and power politics…
The reality, of course, was that a national park could provide the best and most immediate protection for the wilderness of the North Cascades. There were no guarantees with the Forest Service…
On September 16, the House passed the bill, and three days later the Senate concurred with the House amendment and passed the North Cascades National Park bill by voice vote, sending it to the White House where President Johnson signed it into law on October 2, 1968. [126] Signed on the same day as the bill creating Redwood National Park, the North Cascades bill ranked high among the accomplishments that earned the 90th Congress the distinction as one of the greatest in conservation history. The new park was hardly perfect from anyone's perspective, yet as one preservationist proclaimed: "Here a new park in matchless wilderness has been borne." [127] |
“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.”
— Harry S. Truman
“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.”
— Harry S. Truman
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seawallrunner
dilettante
Joined: 27 Apr 2005
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Location: Lotusland |
wow, thank you for your detailed response Blue Dome! Thank you as well for the link to further info. Prince Kuhio and Snowshoe Hare thank you for your responses and clarifications.
So the Snoqualmie and Baker Wilderness'es are State-managed by the WA FS whereas North Cascades is under Federal management? Would that be correct?
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Blue Dome
Now with Retsyn
Joined: 12 Aug 2004
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Location: Cleaning up the dogma. |
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Blue Dome
Now with Retsyn
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Sat Oct 01, 2005 6:33 pm |
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You're welcome.
| seawallrunner wrote: | | So the Snoqualmie and Baker Wildernesses are State-managed by the WA FS whereas North Cascades is under Federal management? |
The feds really manage the whole show.
The National Park Service, a bureau of the Dept of Interior, administers the National Parks. Incidentally, here’s a guide to all of the confusing designations that exist within the National Park System:
http://www.nps.gov/legacy/nomenclature.html
Wilderness land is managed by four federal agencies. All operate under the Dept of Interior or the Dept of Agriculture:
http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec=manage
| Quote: | | Four federal agencies manage designated Wilderness in the United States: Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service and National Park Service…
Common to all wilderness-managing agencies is the guidance and direction that is provided by the Wilderness Act. Although other wilderness legislation is followed when applicable, the Wilderness Act bonds theses agencies together in the planning, implementation, and monitoring of America's wilderness system. |
“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.”
— Harry S. Truman
“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.”
— Harry S. Truman
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Eric
Peak Geek
Joined: 21 Oct 2002
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Eric
Peak Geek
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Sat Oct 01, 2005 8:31 pm |
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Some people may not know it but in addition to the 24 USFS wildernesses and the 3 park wildernesses we also have 1 BLM wilderness and 2 USFW wildernesses. The BLM wilderness is Juniper Dunes out by the Tri-Cities and the other two are mostly aquatic ones out along the Coast, WA Islands and San Juan Wilderness. All three are pretty difficult to visit as Juniper Dunes has access issues related to surrounding private property and the other two are marine habitat areas really rather than recreation areas. WA Islands is a set of islands that run parallel to the Olympic shoreline and is strictly a sanctuary for birds and seals and such with no public access even by boat allowed. San Juan is fairly similar although I believe that there are 5 islands out of the group which are open to the public, Matia being the most noteable. Both are pretty tiny in land mass, less than a square mile in total for each IIRC.
AFAIK there is no formal state wilderness in WA although some park or WDFW might be managed in pretty similar ways to federal wildernesses. There are some other states which have state level wilderness laws and designations like CA, NY and AK. Naturally each state can set their own rules and standards and managements for state wildernesses so it won't necessarily be run the same way as federal wildernesses.
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mike
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mike
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Sun Oct 02, 2005 11:46 am |
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| Quote: | | I'm now quite curious about how park boundaries are drawn, and how such decisions are made. ..... |
I boils down to politics, pure and simple. Lots of input from all sides but the politicians make the final call.
And I might add that what the politicos give they can take away at any time so it pays to be vigilant
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Blue Dome
Now with Retsyn
Joined: 12 Aug 2004
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Location: Cleaning up the dogma. |
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Blue Dome
Now with Retsyn
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Sun Oct 02, 2005 12:14 pm |
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| mike wrote: | | And I might add that what the politicos give they can take away at any time so it pays to be vigilant |
Yes, excellent point. 
“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.”
— Harry S. Truman
“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.”
— Harry S. Truman
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