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Lassen Volcanic National Park plan needs your support

In 1915 Lassen Peak began two years of impressive volcanic eruptions. In 1916, inspired by awestruck accounts of explosions and smoke, Congress declared the peak and its surroundings "Lassen Volcanic National Park," setting aside over 106,000 acres (roughly 65 square miles).

Today, even without an eruption to remind them, the staff of Lassen Volcanic National Park are proposing changes in park management that may permanently preclude large, destructive, tourist development, return disturbed ecosystems to a more natural state, and provide high-quality recreation experiences to the public. The park staff have released a draft management plan that describes how the park will be managed for the next 15 years. The following is a description of the plan’s key elements.

Wilderness
In 1972, Congress designated over 78,000 acres of the park as wilderness. This was important because the National Park Service of that day had made it a priority to "develop" park lands. Ski areas, new roads, and garish buildings were despoiling many of our parks and conservationists saw the rather ironic need to protect large portions of Yosemite, Yellowstone, Lassen, and other parks as wilderness to stem the tide of development.

While only Congress can protect an area as wilderness, the recommendations of federal land managers often greatly influence Congress’s decisions. The newly released Lassen plan proposes to study the possibility of recommending to Congress that an additional 25,000 acres of the park be designated as wilderness. If Congress accepts and acts on this recommendation, it would enlarge the park’s wilderness lands to 104,594 acres—a full 99 percent of the park. (Currently, over 75 percent of the park is designated as wilderness.) Until an in-depth study is completed of how much of the 25,000 acres should be recommended for wilderness status, staff will manage these lands as though they were already protected as wilderness. The plan notes that wilderness expansion will provide "permanent protection against future development."

Managing ecosystems
One of the greatest issues facing public land managers today is fire. Most
of California’s ecosystems need periodic, low-intensity fire to remain healthy, but decades of Smokey Bear rhetoric have convinced the majority of the public that fire must be fought at all times. As more people move into California’s forests, fire management becomes even more complicated.

The draft Lassen plan notes that fire suppression has ecologically degraded large portions of the park, and proposes that overall philosophy of the park be as follows: “Fire is recognized as a normal process necessary for the restoration of natural vegetative communities.” To translate this philosophy into an effective management tool, the park proposes to increase the amount of land it burns intentionally every year.

The park has recorded populations of 56 mammals, 190 birds, and 18 amphibians and reptiles. The park’s plan proposes the visionary step of reintroducing species like the fisher and wolverine, which once lived in the park, but have been driven out, probably due to logging and development pressure outside the park. The National Park Service apparently hopes that improved management on the adjacent Lassen National Forest will improve the chances of survival for these creatures.

What you can do
It is fairly rare to see such visionary blueprints for the future from the federal government. It is likely that supporters of new road construction and tourist development in the park, as well as opponents of scientific fire management and new park wilderness, will strongly oppose the draft management plan. Please support the National Park Service’s vision for Lassen Volcanic National Park by writing a letter to:

Marilyn H. Parris, Superintendent
Lassen Volcanic National Park
P.O. Box 100
Mineral, CA 96063-0100
Fax: 530-595-3262
E-mail: marilyn_h_parris@nps.gov

Letters are due by October 31, 2000. In your letter, please mention that
you support Alternative C in the draft general management plan, and specifically express support for: