To increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the park’s fire prevention and control program a new ”Fire Management Plan” was approved in August 1977. The purpose of the plan was to provide overall program direction and establish approved procedures for the management of natural, wildland, and prescribed fires within the park. According to the plan, a primary objective of the National Park Service in managing natural areas was the maintenance of ecosystems in as nearly a pristine condition as possible. The primary emphasis was on the preservation of processes, such as plant succession, rather than preservation of single features or species. Thus, an important objective was “the management of fire to simulate pre-settlement influences on natural processes.” Since cultural resources and physical facilities needed protection, however, an important objective was the suppression or control of fires which might pose a threat to such resources. Fires that threatened to cause damage outside park boundaries were also to be controlled. To conform with these NPS policies the plan established three specific objectives for fire management at Crater Lake National Park:
1. Any fire which threatens cultural resources or physical facilities will be suppressed, as well as fires which may endanger resources adjacent to the park.
2. Fire will be reintroduced in those vegetation zones in which fire has significant primeval influences on natural succession. This may involve natural and/or prescribed fires. In some areas, heavy fuel accumulations will be reduced by prescribed fires before natural fires are allowed to burn. Two principal components of this objective are the restoration of primeval forest composition and reduction in probability of unnaturally intense or catastrophic wild fires caused by unnaturally high fuel accumulation.
3. Research on the role of fire in various Crater Lake ecosystems will be continued. This will include monitoring of ecological effects of prescribed and natural fires, as well as acquisition of information on fuel accumulations, forest insects and diseases, vegetation dynamics and other topics important to fire management and planning. [54]
Other resource management action plans were developed during the 1970s and 1980s by the Crater Lake staff to deal with specific problems. An example was the “Hazard Tree Management Plan” approved by Superintendent Rouse in July 1982. Many facilities in the park were located in heavily forested areas, surrounded by trees 50 to 150 feet in height. Periodically, trees, or parts of trees, fell and damaged park facilities, and the potential existed for loss of property or injury to park visitors or employees. Thus, the goals of the plan were to: (1) minimize the hazards to park visitors, employees, and facilities; (2) develop and use dependable, well-defined standards for hazard tree identification and evaluation; and (3) maintain the integrity of the park forests to the fullest extent possible. [55] Other examples of resource management action plans include a “Hydroseed Revegetation Plan” in 1985 to restore areas scarred by early park road construction, and a “Peregrine Falcon Action Plan” adopted in 1986 to ensure the retention of a reproductive population of such birds in the park. The former was based on revegetation plans to repair Annie Creek Trail and plant seedlings on the Annie Spring cut-off road cut. The latter plan was developed in cooperation with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group. A “Boat Operation Plan” was approved in May 1980 to provide for maximum human safety and to ensure the environmental integrity of the lake. [56]
By the early 1980s four cooperative agreements had been negotiated between the park and other government agencies for various phases of park resource management. One cooperative agreement was with the U.S. Forest Service for fire suppression and other resource management activities of mutual concern, including hazard tree reduction, cattle trespass across park boundaries, helicopter rental, and equipment loading. Another was with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife for research and monitoring of deer and elk. herds, including migration patterns, population trends, and range conditions and management of the reproductive success of the only known nesting peregrine falcons in Oregon. An agreement with the Oregon Department of Forestry provided for the management of prescribed fire smoke. A fourth agreement was with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality which provided for the monitoring of air quality in compliance with the standards of the Clean Air Act, as amended in 1977. [57]
During the mid-1970s Crater Lake park managers turned their attention toward the development of a resource management plan for the biological and natural features of the park. The plan was to be in compliance with both NPS management objectives and policies and the park’s “Statement for Management.” The objectives for resource management as adopted by the Park. Service in July 1975 provided that the “perpetuation of the full diversity of a natural environment of ecosystem . . . is and must remain a distinguishing aspect of the Service’s management of natural lands. Policy and management emphasis must be toward perpetuation of these natural processes, assuring that impacts are not irreparable.” Accordingly, the Park Service would continue “to perfect its expertise in ecosystem management, including programs relating to wildfire and prescribed burning techniques, wildlife ecology, necessary regulation and control of resource use and pollution control and abatement.” Critical resources were to be monitored for change and management of other practices having adverse effects on natural processes was to be modified.
The park’s “Statement for Management” developed in 1975-76 stated that it was the objective of the park “to conserve the Park’s ecological resources free from adverse influence of man while allowing those types of use and development that do not significantly impair park resources. ” For the purposes of natural resource management five land classification zones or ecosystems were recognized in the park: Crater Lake; ponderosa pine forest; lodgepole pine forest; mountain hemlock forest; and pumice desert.
