Craters of the Moon Administrative History

Chapter 6:
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Resource Management At Craters Of The Moon:
NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: FIRE ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT

Fire's history and management at Craters of the Moon are not well documented. While fire is important for maintaining a healthy ecosystem, historically it was not considered in such a positive light. It can be assumed that monument fire policies have followed Park Service trends, beginning with suppression and culminating with allowable burning in recognition of natural processes, with more recent revisions prompted by the Yellowstone National Park fire in 1988.

Early Management

In the first decades of management, fire appeared as a largely insignificant issue at the monument. Most discussion centered on fire as a threat and the need to suppress it. In September 1940, for example, Associate Forester Jack B. Dodd noted that in the past fire posed few problems, but the potential for increased risk existed with increased visitation to the area once the highway was rerouted and paved through the area in 1941. The forester stated, though, that Craters of the Moon's main fire threat stemmed not from forest cover, as was common in most parks, but from ground vegetation composed of grasses and sagebrush on the lava terrain. Frequent high winds added to the fire danger. [158] Even at that, the vegetative cover was sparse and located in isolated islands separated by vast expanses of barren lava. These two factors made fire a minimal threat to the monument's resources, Regional Director O. A. Tomlinson reported in July 1943. The lava fields acted as a barrier reef protecting vegetation from fires, thus minimizing management concerns. [159] In the monument's more lush northern foothills, though, fire posed more concern, as with the Little Cottonwood Canyon fire in the fall of 1945. [160]

Cooperation in Fire Management

Although fire was not considered a great threat, Craters of the Moon and the Bureau of Land Management signed an informal cooperative fire-fighting agreement in October 1959. Reasons for this were due to the monument's remoteness, its a lack of personnel, and its location next to BLM lands. Initiated during Superintendent Floyd Henderson's tenure, the agreement appears to have formalized cooperation with fire suppression at the monument for several decades. The document called specifically for aid in detecting and reporting fires; it established a "Common Dependency Zone," an approximately one-mile-wide zone on either side of each agency's shared boundary. The two agencies agreed that the first available agency fire crew would respond to a fire in that zone at no charge for the initial fire-fighting period. After 10 a.m. of the day following the outbreak of the fire, if personnel were still required, then the agency whose land the fire was on would reimburse the other for that additional assistance. In the event of a fire on both Park Service and BLM lands, both agencies agreed to either mutually suppress the fire and compromise on costs, or suppress only that portion on their lands, and incur all costs. The agreement also provided for other logistical matters, and is currently in force. [161]

Natural Burning

In the 1966 resource management plan, Superintendent Roger Contor stated a new phase in fire management. Expressing the growing ecological emphasis of the 1960s and the NPS emphasis on "original conditions," Contor's fire policy emphasized the need to allow naturally caused fires to burn. Both the monument's vegetation and its value for ecological research would benefit. Fire was a main determinant in and "absolutely essential" to maintenance of "the mosaic of mixed successional stages in the ecological sere of any pristine area" like Craters of the Moon, Contor stated. The superintendent noted that the combined factors of the monument's sparse vegetation, mostly barren lava terrain, and grass islands within natural lava fire-breaks raised little possibility of fire danger to surrounding areas, to the highly visible areas of the monument, to the monument's man-made infrastructure, and to visitor safety. Such a fire program, however, would only be successful after educating the public and securing its approval for such actions. The plan also mentioned the possibility of using prescribed burning as an appropriate management tool, but more research was needed, and at the time, such a management practice did not appear necessary. As a general rule, remote or wilderness area fires would burn unchecked with some limitations; any threats to the aforementioned would require suppression. On the other hand, human-caused fires would be suppressed. For both the sake of the vegetation and the sensitive volcanic landscape, minimum-impact fire-fighting techniques must be followed at all times. All too often in the past, the "only damage ever caused by fires in Craters of the Moon" came from "bulldozers, roadgraders and other machinery used in non-existent emergencies." [162]

In reality, the superintendent concluded, this "will not change very much the fire behavior history of the area. Most of our infrequent fires flare up and die out independently of man's influences." In addition, this policy might "put us at peace with ecologists who correctly criticize our inconsistent policies which sometimes destroy, rather than perpetuate, the original scene." Properly presented, the role of fire in the monument could "impress upon the public" the Park Service's "very special mission" at Craters of the Moon. [163]

Wood Fire Ban

The next fire-related policy decision originated in 1974, when Superintendent Hentges decided to discontinue wood burning in the monument. Hentges did so because wood fires were fueled by the dominant tree at the monument, limber pine. Wilderness and auto campers fueled their fires with the trees scattered throughout the monument, and it was evident that this practice could lead to serious impacts. In the wilderness area, limber pines occurred less frequently than in the more developed northern section of the monument. Any depletion through wood gathering or inadvertent fire would diminish their "ghostly" presence and the wilderness experience.

In the campground area it was especially important to discontinue wood burning in order to protect the forty to fifty remaining live and dead pines left from mistletoe eradication in 1960s. The control program had concentrated in the monument's frontcountry, thinning the already sparse pines and making their protection all the more significant. Near the campground, the few remaining trees represented the only wood source, and no matter enforcement or regulations, visitors were slowly eliminating the standing pines as they stripped them for burning. In addition, many of those visitors who complied with regulations found wood along the loop drive for their fires. This latter practice promised only to spread the problem to other sites. [164]

Prior to receiving official authorization to ban wood fires, the monument employed a temporary solution during the 1975 season, permitting wood fires only in the campground, and only if visitors collected the wood from outside the monument's boundaries. Furthermore, plans called for removing any incentive for wood fires altogether by replacing the concrete fire pits with aluminum charcoal grills (completed in 1976). [165] It was felt that both human and natural environments would benefit from this change. At the end of the 1975 season, Superintendent Hentges submitted a draft of the wood fire ban regulation to the Pacific Northwest Regional Director Russell E. Dickenson, who approved the measure on March 1, 1976. In its final format, the regulation called for a ban of wood fires within the monument, except for the north unit group campground (the draft regulation provided for fire at the amphitheater). There the monument would supply wood imported from outside the area for campfires. [166] Even though the monument enforced restrictions on wood fires within the monument beginning in 1976, Acting Superintendent Neil King reported in February 1982 that the regulation had never been published in the Federal Register or appended to the CFR as required by Park Service policy. Thus the regulation, still not codified, has been enforced through voluntary compliance only. [167]

Fire Ecology in the 1980s

In 1980 Superintendent Hentges and his staff turned again to fire and its ecological role in sound resource management operations. Although the 1966 resource management plan stressed the importance of fire, no subsequent research had followed to form the basis of a fire ecology plan. The fire management plan, drafted that year, did not cover any "prescribed conditions for natural burns" and called for fire suppression throughout the monument as the general rule. [168] A year later, Hentges informed Pacific Northwest Regional Director Daniel J. Tobin, Jr. that the monument's wildfire management plan was "proposing prescription burning within the wilderness area." In order to win approval of its wildfire policy, the monument took steps to establish prescription burning guidelines in 1981 through research conducted by the Cooperative Park Studies Unit at Oregon State University. [169] The research was never conducted and the advances in the wildfire program went unmet.

The 1982 resource management plan underscored management deficiencies caused by total fire suppression, noted the possible benefits of natural fires for vegetation, and emphasized the fact that "little is known about the role of natural wildfire on the various plant communities of the monument." Once the role of natural fire was determined the monument could best manage its flora and fauna. Finally, full suppression in the remote districts of the monument was not economically sufficient. Management boiled down to a question of ecological stability and economic feasible. The 1982 plan suggested a reformed program of fire ecology, one in which ecological principles and financial costs were key components, as was the desire to emulate and to be compatible with the "fine program" of natural-prescribed burns practiced by the surrounding land owner, the BLM. The main purpose was to create an allowable burn program by researching the fire history and fire ecology in the monument. This would establish the most comprehensive ecological management for the monument's flora and fauna. [170]

The fire ecology program at Craters of the Moon has developed slowly. After an October 1985 fire on BLM land, the monument signed a memorandum of understanding to establish vegetation plots on the burned lands to collect fire ecology data. [171] In 1988 a wildfire ecology study was initiated by the University of Idaho's Cooperative Park Studies Unit. [172] Completed in 1990, the study of both the fire history and ecology at the monument revealed substantial evidence of natural fires at Craters of the Moon in nearly all vegetation types. Reflective of the 1966 observations of Superintendent Contor and his staff, the study concluded that the majority of the monument's vegetation (except for the northern unit) was distributed throughout isolated pockets of lava flows, and that fuel buildups were low. For these reasons, the study recommended that prescribed natural fires be included in the monument's fire management plan; to that end, the document also furnished parameters as a departure point for a prescribed natural fire program, as well as data to be incorporated into the existing plan. [173] With this information and the NPS policy fire policy revisions following the Yellowstone fires, the monument could finally see fire's role in resource management.