Yellowstone Foundation’s Annual Dinner

Speech Given By Nathaniel P. Reed
for the Yellowstone Foundation’s Annual Dinner
on October 2, 2009

Superintendent Suzanne Lewis, you are the consummate manger, diplomat and steward of Yellowstone National Park: the Mother Park!

Chairman Bannis Hudson, President Paul Zambernardi, staff members of the Foundation and members of the staff of the park: Alita and I are honored to be here with you. It is for both of us a return to paradise. The Foundation’s beginnings are worth a few minutes of memories….

My great friend, John Good, then the park’s chief naturalist, came up with the idea that a foundation differing from the Yellowstone Association could make a significant difference funding projects that the Congressional Appropriations process neglected. John persuaded Superintendent Anderson to attract a bevy of very serious scientists to come and work in the park. John became superintendent at Acadia and Everglades National Parks rounding out a distinguished career.

We all owe then Superintendent Michael Finley a vote of thanks for having the foresight, courage and ability to attract the original group of ‘true believes’ to discuss the proposal, agree to proceed and then come to our first meeting in mid November to create the Yellowstone Foundation.

I vividly remember trying to get to our meeting room avoiding a great elk bull who was still feeling his oats.

Frankly, it never crossed my mind then and I find it hard to believe now, how committed our original group was to the concept, but our successors and you – the present board – have lifted the bar and raised an incredible amount of money for a vast variety of pressing needs.

The fires and the snow storm prevented Alita and I from seeing the Old Faithful Visitor’s Center. The Visitor’s Education Center has been a dream – an elusive dream – for more than 60 years. We share your pride and incredible sense of accomplishment to have raised the necessary funds and agreed on the architecture that will lead to the opening of the center next fall.

I tingle with joy and pride when I contemplate the reactions of millions of undereducated visitors who will visit the center for many years to come and come away with a sense of wonder and excitement that led the early Yellowstone adventurers to clamor for the creation of the world’s first national park.

Thanks, boundless thanks, go to the corporations, foundations, incredible personal donations and the countless donors of small gifts who wanted to be participants in this great donation to the park and to its visitors.

I hope to be with you when the doors open!

To each of you, board members and staff, boundless thanks. You are doing ‘God’s work’!

The creation of Yellowstone National Park, the Mother Park, has had an incredible influence across the globe. On every continent and in almost every country citizens can take pride in special areas, unique, magical areas that are their parks to be protected and preserved for all time. What a magnificent legacy!

I came to this park as a teenager and have returned many times to fish, to gaze, and to hold special seminars and symposiums.

I am going to recount just a very few of my vast quiver of memories.

I have always been fascinated by natural science research. In rethinking the park service’s commitment to sound science influencing all decisions, I pay homage to Dr. Starker Leopold, the great ecologist from the University of California-Berkley who had chaired a pair of very important committees: The Leopold Report published in 1963, which in turn led to the 1968 National Park Advisory Committee’s Report, which he chaired, that strongly recommended and continued to encourage the National Park Service to initiate serious science within the National Park System.

Remember, these were the days when the superintendents of major parks considered themselves masters of their fiefdoms. They were not anxious to have major and even minor decisions reviewed by bright young scientists, especially those with master’s degrees and more especially those with PhD’s and above all those who had PhD’s that were women!

Starker was determined that neither report was going to be ‘lost’ on the shelves of park service headquarters. He stubbornly persisted until slowly, ever so slowly, the Washington office and then even slower the regional offices and even slower the major park superintendents responded until the format, the base of a sound science program became a feature of the park service budget process, but a real impact on decision making within the individual parks.

It was John Good who vigorously supported the beginning of the research program in Yellowstone centering on the USGS study program.

John persuaded Jack Anderson, the legendary superintendent, to attract a bevy of very serious scientists to come and work in the park.

There are numerous men and women of multidisciplines that have studied every aspect of the park’s resources. I will mention a few, who I had the honor to know, support and who became great friends.

One of the key figures in the history of the park's research must be Glenn Cole’s role as the supervisory scientist who selected the expertise of particular scientists for the particular problems for four major parks: Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Rocky Mountain.

Glenn selected Doug Houston to work on the Yellowstone northern range. It was a monumental job that took years of research. Doug was a truly great ecologist, before that description was fully understood; his monumental work won him the Wildlife Society’s Award in 1983.

Glen couldn’t resist an elk study of his own. He selected the unique Firehole elk herd and in his spare time produced a splendid study of lasting value.

One of Starker's prize PhD students, Dr. Mary Meagher, spent her career here studying bison, and brucellosis and took an interest in every aspect of the park's science program. I have spent many days with Mary who has opened my eyes to a world that I knew too little about. A walk with Mary is a rare treat. Best of all was a walk or dinner with Starker and Mary, Durward Allen and Woodrow Middlekrauff. Their observations, insights, their ability to contemplate the whole scene, not just the problems of individual animal populations or botanical impacts, theirs was a wider view – a wider horizon – the horizon of the ecology beyond the individual expertise of a particular subject.

We discussed Durward Allen’s and Starker’s dreams of returning the wolf to Yellowstone.

Thank you Secretary Bruce Babbitt and the National Park System.

The famed Dr. E.O. Wilson summed up their ability to comprehend and rationally discuss the ‘big picture’ when he challenged: “How can you study ecosystems and know what is happening in them IF you don’t know what’s in them? It is sort of taking medicine without knowing 90% of what’s in the body”.

It was in this period within Yellowstone National Park that science spread to other parks – sort of like a healthy virus. I know of many superintendents who watched with dumbfoundment and even amazement as the Yellowstone program expanded and attracted a cadre of expert scientists.

Starker admitted that he had telephone calls from superintendents all across the system requesting advice and assistance in establishing a science program within their park’s jurisdiction.

I was adamantly supportive of the increased science budgets at OMB and before the Congressional Appropriations Committees. This was ‘new business’ for them. Beyond curiosity, they became convinced that we were on the right track and appropriations began to catch up with needs.

Today, here in Yellowstone National Park, note the expertise that Tom Olliff has attracted: Kerry Gunther and his continuing bear research, Rick Wallen’s important continuation of Dr. Meagher’s bison studies and the incomparable Doug Smith and his wolf team.

Yesterday I met Todd Koel and Pat Bigelow at the lake discussing the incredible transformation of one of the world’s greatest trout fisheries, the home of the most productive Yellowstone cutthroat trout resource that is threatened with destruction unless a surge – a major effort is made to dramatically reduce the numbers of the invasive lake trout. This may be the most threatened resource in the park.

I urge the Foundation’s leadership to receive the briefing we were privileged to watch yesterday and consider making a grant that would encourage other grants to save this all important life form. It is threatened with extinction unless a major effort is made to remove or dramatically reduce the unwelcome predators.

Let me share an impression, no, a real conviction that has grown on me over the 60 years that I have visited national parks here and abroad.

Standing with dozens of fellow citizens – and visitors from many counties – we knew none of them and they did not know us – watching the wolves, the bison herds, the big horn sheep, and the ageless choreography of the elk mating sequence, it’s the vast enthusiasms of the park visitors. They become participants. They are thoroughly, completely captivated and engaged. They are transformed. Their experiences, many of them as urban people are new and unforgettable. This too must be a vital mission of the service, as important as the preservation of the unique features of the unique park.

I spent a long session with Charissa Reid giving an oral history of my years of service and the traumatic conclusion of the Craighead grizzly bear study. Let me make it clear: the Craighead Study utilizing radio collars and telemetry was a major scientific breakthrough. Their innovative work is copied around the world.

What must be made clear is that their Yellowstone grizzly bear study, brilliant as it was, centered on bears that were conditioned on human garbage. They studied garbage dump bears.

The dumps had been closed just before my confirmation and trouble was expected and I was ill-prepared for the resulting furor that I inherited.

I spent a long session with Charissa Reid giving an oral history discussing the controversial conclusion of the Craighead’s grizzly bear studies in Yellowstone National Park.

Simply stated: I followed the advice of two great ecologists: former Assistant Secretary Stanley Cain of the University of Michigan and Starker Leopold who both assured me that once a grizzly bear was deliberately fed human garbage, it was hooked just as a heroin user is hooked. They maintained that there was no way that grizzly’s could be weaned from garbage and that I had the unfortunate duty to accept the fact that a great many bears would die or be euthanized or sent to zoos as the full impact of the closure of the garbage dumps was felt.

Of the many decisions that I made in my five plus years in office, the grizzly bear saga weighed on me, troubled me even frightened me more than any other of the hundreds of decisions I made.

The grizzly bear saga became national news as critics claimed that dump closure would be the nail in the grizzly bears coffin.

To be accused of causing the extinction of the great bear when I was one of the authors of the Endangered Species Act and the representative of the Nixon administration who ushered the Act through multiple congressional hearings to passage, frankly, the criticism that was heaped on me hurt. I cried when young bears had to be put down, but I was confident that good research proved that there were a population of wild grizzly’s that were not addicted to garbage that would, in time, follow one of the maxims of nature: ‘the power of replacement’. This is a natural force that is indisputable.

Secretary Morton and the two secretaries that followed him all asked me one simple question: “Are you right?” Recognizing that good science can always be trumpeted by bad politics, I never wavered. “I am following the best science and although it is tough sledding, we will live to see the great bear thrive once again.”

They never questioned me again, never rear-guarded my decision, defended me and the park from outrageous charges that we collectively were on a course to extirpate the great bear.

Although I left office before the incredible turn around fully took place, successive superintendents kept me intimately posted with the good news of the bear’s recovery.

Credit goes to Dr. Richard Knight for his incomparable work on free-ranging grizzly bears and Christopher Serveen who created and chaired the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee. Regardless of the recent judicial decision, returning the bear to threatened status, the 600 plus bears presently filling all the niches of the vast Yellowstone ecosystem – none of them addicted to garbage – prove that sound science and patience can make a meaningful difference in a creature’s survival.

Here at Mammoth for five plus years Starker and I chaired informal meetings – we called them conversations – that attracted working biologists across the country, from Canada, even from abroad, who wanted to listen and take part in responding to fascinating reports on seemingly intractable ecological, environmental problems.

The results have had a major formable impact on wild trout management across the west.

An unforgettable memory: a call to join President Ford at the Oval Office. He asked, “Nathaniel: find me the summer employees who worked with me in the park. It was one of the finest experiences of my life. I want them to be my guests at a private hamburger lunch set up in a grove of trees near Old Faithful. I am going to give a thumping good speech on my commitment to the System, the Service and reflect on my happy days working in Yellowstone. I want you to prepare a good speech with some real money and manpower increases for the Service and I’ll send it as a message to Congress!”

What a joyful assignment!

I asked the director’s staff to locate the living members of the President’s work crew. Somehow they were reached and couldn’t wait for a reunion with the president.

There were endless meetings at the Old Executive Building with presidential policy staff and as always meetings at OMB discussing budgeting impacts and close coordination with the Secret Service. It was campaign time so the public relations advance staff and the campaign staff became involved. Besides the meat of the speech, the key campaign impact was for Old Faithful to blow just as the president finished his address. He was to turn on the podium and Old Faithful would live up to it’s name.

I had the assignment to call Jack and inquire: “What day in late July or early August can you assure me that Old Faithful will blow at approximately 11:15 to 11:20am?” Even Jack was flustered with such a request.

A week later the date was set. One of the advance men said to me: “Your neck is on the line if that damn geyser doesn’t behave on schedule!”

At one of my early meetings with the president discussing his options he stated quietly but firmly: “Don’t let Dick Cheney have anything to do with ‘my day’!”

The event was a great success. The president’s speech was outstanding. Old Faithful performed 10 seconds after the conclusion of the president’s speech. The ever suspicious press corps was certain that we had spiked the vent with chemicals to have it blow on schedule.

So many memories flicker back, good memories, even during the inevitable great fire and the opportunity to observe the resurrection of the park post fire.

I think of the many concerned members of the loyal service staff, so many fascinated visitors, and the many problems that challenged good solutions. They all form a wonderful mosaic. I think I am one of the luckiest men alive that ever had the privilege of serving at one of the most important periods of national environmental awakening. It was a different time, a far different Congress and the commitment of the American people to preserve, protect and enhance our natural resources was similar to the Teddy Roosevelt era.

I want to especially thank Alita Reed who has never wavered in supporting and even consoling me during difficult times and sharing a quiet smile when we shared those victories that make life really worth while.

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the board and staff of the Yellowstone Foundation, Superintendent Lewis and the members of the National Park Service staff and friends of Yellowstone: You are stewards of Yellowstone National Park: the world's Mother Park.

Stewardship is defined by Webster as: “The careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care.”

All of you: be proud to be stewards of Yellowstone National Park, an example of the very best of America and Americans.

I am reminded of Margaret Mead’s pertinent observation: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has!”

You are fitting examples of Margaret Mead’s thoughtful and accurate conclusion.

Thank you for the honor of being invited to come home to this very special unique park and address you.