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Narrator 1: What is it that we really enjoy about national
parks? The outdoor experience? Viewing wildlife and
wildflowers? The dramatic scenery? Nature?
The Wilderness? In 2016, the
National Park Service celebrates its centennial.
One hundred years of ensuring quality outdoor experiences that make a national park
so different from any other natural area.
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By preserving the quality of the park's natural resources, Mount Rainier National Park strives
to bring enjoyment of this place to all for generations to come.
Over the last century or more, how we treat park resources has drastically
changed. With a better understanding of the impacts of human use and the
implications of past resource approaches. Narrator 2: Mount Rainier became
the nation's fifth national park in 1899, 17 years
before the National Park Service was created in 1916.
Those early years saw an explosion of growth and recreation in the fledgling park.
By 1904, developments in transportation brought a new
visitor to the park, the day user. Day users quickly
outnumbering the dedicated outdoorsmen, campers, and climbers that
first explored the park.
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(♪....and his little old Ford just rambled right along... ♪)
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During these early years, park administrators focused not so much on
protecting the natural resources that were attracting so many new visitors
but on building facilities to support those visitors.
Day users were not as satisfied with roughing it in tents so
hotels and day lodges will built in the subalpine meadows
Roads were carved though the old growth forest with bridges stretching across
glacier-fed rivers.
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One major threat to this new development was fire. Which also
destroyed the beautiful forests that appealed to visitors.
Instead of managing fires as natural part of forest systems
it became a primary goal to stop all forest fires in the park completely.
In 1907 Superintendent Allen
started developing the trail system, primarily to allow rangers to get to
forest fires faster in order to fight them. Ironically an
improved trail system also brought more people, one of the main causes of fire
to Mount Rainier's forests.
Practices that hurt the park's natural environment also included the logging
of trees that were dead, damaged, or too old, removing an
essential component of forest ecosystems.
Old trees serve as nurse logs, feeding the next generation of forest
saplings and provide food and home for insect and animals.
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Large predators like bears and mountain lions were hunted and several mining claims were
allowed to operate on park land.
Narrator 1: Though these policies are seen as harmful
to the environment today, they were the first attempts to protect the park's resources
according to the knowledge of the time.
The creation of the National Park Service in 1916
brought new order and stability to Mount Rainier
The first park naturalist was hired. Rangers became
professionalized and capable of enforcing park regulations and
landscape, road, and sanitation engineers worked to improve and expand facilities.
Views in managing natural resources also started to shift.
Instead of just using resources, administrators started to think of how they could
protect resources. Narrator 2: As views of
managing park resources changed, so did views of wildlife management
Hunting of predator species was halted in 1924
in part due to a growing understanding and appreciation of wildlife as part
of the natural environment. However, wildlife viewing was
also growing as a popular park attraction. Sometimes at the cost of
the animal's health and the visitor's safety.
Early park administrators also believed they needed to correct
the natural lack of fish in Mount Rainier's many lakes and started stocking
them with fish. The understanding that lakes could have
healthy ecosystems without fish was not realized for decades
to come. Other policies of the
previous era were not as quick to change. A wave of fires
in the park during the late 1920s reinforced the policy of
completely suppressing all forest fires. However, the study
of how to best fight forest fires led to some of the first scientific research
conducted in the park. Other early research included the first
glacier surveys in the 1920s, with yearly glacier recession surveys
starting in 1933.
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More and more visitors flocked to see the wildflower meadows
often camping, horseback riding, and hiking with little regard
to trampling vegetation. During the 1930s, park concessioners
even built a golf course in the Paradise Valley.
This growing impact of visitors on subalpine meadows sparked the first
plant and meadow surveys in the park in the 1940s and '50s.
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Narrator 1: Visitors and administrators
started to see Mount Rainier National Park not just as a place for recreation
but also as a place for education.
People started coming to the park to learn, leading them to think about the value of
Mount Rainier's natural resources in a new light. The Wilderness Act
of 1964 introduced the idea of recreational carrying capacity.
The "levels of recreational use an area can withstand
while providing a sustained quality of recreation"
People realized that the natural beauty that so attracted them to places like Mount Rainier
was being damaged by human use and required protection if it was to be
maintained. This view brought another shift in the management
of Mount Rainier National Park Narrator 2: Due to the Wilderness Act
the park was zoned for different types of use. The front country
with buildings, roads, and car camping, was less protected than the more pristine
backcountry, where the goal was to minimize human impact.
This allowed for a balance in the goals of the park, permitting visitor
recreation but also protecting the parks natural resources as
much as possible. Limiting visitor use wasn't
possible in certain areas like Paradise and Sunrise.
Decades of visitors left their mark on the park's delicate subalpine
meadows, leaving them a shadow of their former glory.
If future visitors were to enjoy the same quality of experience as those first visitors
to the park, the meadows needed to be restored.
The first park greenhouse was built in 1974
allowing thousands of new plants to be
restored in areas damaged from visitor overuse.
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Additional legislation in the 1970s, including the
Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act also brought
a new resolve and dedication to scientific research in the park.
From the 1970s into the 1980s scientists coming to
the park started to study mountain goats, reptiles, amphibians,
endangered birds, like the spotted owl, and other species.
A study of native fish finally led to the end of
stocking park lakes in 1972.
Mount Rainier is also a volcano. During this time
a partnership with the United States Geologic Survey led to the first
comprehensive study of the mountain's volcanic activity
and geologic history.
The policy towards forest fires finally started to change as well.
Instead of preventing all fires, Mount Rainier National Park started allowing
some natural-caused fires to exist. Fires started by people
or fires that could harm people or property were still suppressed.
But this was the start of a new way of thinking of wildfire as a natural part of
a dynamic ecosystem instead of solely as a destructive force.
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One of the largest changes in resource protection was a growing awareness
and involvement of visitors themselves. Volunteers started to assist
with rehabilitation efforts and wilderness education.
Visitor advocates encouraged the protection of Mount Rainier's natural beauty
and worked to preserve it alongside park administrators.
Many of the challenges
facing natural resource protection at Mount Rainier National Park
today have existed throughout the park's history.
From the first visitors coming on foot or horseback
to the thousands coming to the park today
human use continues to have the greatest impact on park resource
conditions. The park greenhouse
grows thousands of native plants every year from seeds collected within the park
using those plants, the Meadow Restoration Program maintains
subalpine meadows in the park's most visited areas, an effort that will
continue as long as visitors come to experience the meadows.
Advancements in
technology, particularly in mapping, tracking, and data collection
allow scientists to better understand and monitor the
complex ecosystems of Mount Rainier. Instead of focusing on
isolated species, Mount Rainier National Park joined the
National Park Service Natural Resource Inventory and Monitoring Program
Created in 1998, the program manages the long term study
and protection of park ecosystems across the country.
Determined to maintain Mount Rainier's native environment
park scientists also work to detect and control invasive species
animals and plants that can be harmful to naturally occurring species
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The park is also planning for the future in order to best
protect natural resources from new challenges. One of the most important
considerations is climate change. Changing climate conditions
have the potential to drastically alter the park's environment, affecting
everything from glaciers, water resources, and air quality,
to the distribution and long term survival of plant and animal species.
Visitor education and involvement will
continue to be key in mitigating future threats and
protecting the park's natural resources.
Narrator 1: It's easy to look back at the mistakes of the past
and wonder why people didn't do things differently.
Why would past park administrators allow meadow damage
or hunting? Did they not care, or did they not just know better?
Throughout the park's history, visitors, rangers, and resource
managers deeply valued the mountain's environment and managed it to
the best of their knowledge of the time. Today, we too, constantly strive
for ways we can do better, just as people in the park's history strove to do better
This park, its wilderness, forests, plants, and animals
all still exist because of the work they did to preserve it
We are the future generation able to enjoy a quality
outdoor experience because of the work of past generations.
We can also make sure we are not the last generation to enjoy Mount Rainier's
amazing natural resources, but that continue to be preserved and
celebrated by future generations.
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