>From a management perspective, you really need a collection of smart,
sensitive, interested river runners who have built up a long-term
understanding of the canyon. In Dinosaur, these comprised certain boatmen
and non-commercial river runners with great learning and excellent
memories, as well as photo banks and notes going way back. You need to
give them opportunities to create themselves, sustain and increase their
knowledge, share it with others, and give it to you. It's critical to the
area and critical to your decisions to be able to get their knowledge
informing your action. Long before I became a ranger, the resource manager
at Dinosaur (then and now Steve Petersburg) used me in just this way, even
as I could use people like Day De La Hunt and Heather Campbell when I was
out there. My photos of Grand in 1967, for instance, or Yeamans', could
be of use in any baseline studies -- but They have to know We exist. Later
as a ranger and planner I was to use long-term area residents in this way
-- people who remembered the effects of the high water of 1917 on squawfish
and chubs, for instance. Petersburg still uses me this way -- I think I
may have found where the juvenile/adolescent squawfish actually go, last
year; nobody had much idea what happened between when the wave of fry swept
down into the Uintah Valley and the full-grown adults congregated in the
Yampa Canyon to breed years later. But I repeat -- you have to give that
kind of river runners the chance to create themselves.
>What we lack is rigor and ways in which to informally organize
>our efforts, collaborate and exchange ideas and information.
>How many out there would enjoy a focused scientific
>investigation as part of a trip?
Well, the adventure travel companies market and presumably sell trips like
this. Pay your money and band birds or make observations of monkeys. One
thing that would be of use is a list of research topics from the parks.
But the fact is that the kind of people you need as a manager keep their
own brains going. For instance, what is the rate of decay of fluting and
what does that tell you about recurrence intervals? How fast do different
species of lichen migrate down to the new annual floodlevel in response to
dam construction upstream? Do lichens die when flooded, or are they
abraded off? How fast does driftwood of different diameters really decay,
and what governs that decay rate and process? At present, the parks ask
you for sightings of certain wildlife, but they could get much more use out
of us. One of the things that frustrates me as a former ranger is just how
little use the Grand Canyon staff has made of the noncommercial public.
Story: there was a young boatman for Adventure Bound who was energied and
spent it hiking. Everywhere. He found a small cave containing a
shredded-bark bed and a bow stave, presumably Fremont or even Desert
Archaic. He was really proud of this, and I was excited. I got the
regional office involved. Later he called them to ask what they'd learned
from his find. They told him, "Owing to the senstive nature of these items
and possible penalties with the Antiquities Act, we don't release any
information about archaeological sites to the public."
"But I found it. I just wanted to know about..."
"I'm sorry, but we have a policy here not to disclose to the public...."
So he called me and told me, "Fuck it. I'm going to keep hiking and I'm
going to find other stuff, and I'm not going to touch it, but I'm not going
to tell you. And I'm sure as hell not going to tell them."
I told him, "I expect you not to, and I don't blame you." The fact is, you
can choke off or never even find your best information sources and assume
only scientists and staff members know anything, but it isn't true, it
isn't good for management, and it isn't good for the river.
>Of course, first we need to get into the canyon.
>
>Ben
Yup. And I don't want to sound overly pessimistic. Just somewhat
pessimistic. Jim Detterline, the climbing ranger at Rocky, organized a
sort of climb-fest for the old-time climbers of Long's Peak. Hell of a
success according to the climbing community. But he got cross-ways with a
superviser and does regular backcountry duty now, latrines et al; he's not
the climbing ranger any more. The boatman's quarterly review has been
collecting the memories of the primal boatmen for some time, though I don't
know to what extent the Park helps or uses the material.
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