I think the ones at Crater Lake started in ’70 and then they had some recommendations in ’74.
Well, that is about all I can think of, unless you have something…
I was wondering about FOST. Did that have any immediate effects once they came out in ’69?
Without going back through all my notes, which I did not do, I really don’t have a very good feeling of when FOST came in. The I&RM concept was a spin off of that. Paul [Larson] was Chief of I&RM. They had one down, I forget who replaced Einar now, down at Lava Beds, we set up an I&RM there.
[Bill] Ben Ladd was there just before I went there. He was there in the late seventies or early seventies.
Then he went off to John Day after that.
I don’t think the staff, nor I, was ever really convinced that the I&RM concept was really valid. I know the staff didn’t care much for it, I wasn’t convinced either that was the best way to go about it. The problem was, you had a few Rangers that could do Naturalist work and Naturalists could do Ranger work, but we found they didn’t work that way. Their backgrounds were so diametrically different that they really didn’t mix well. Now there are exceptions, when you have a particularly adaptable ranger, any of the rangers, or the same thing on interpretation or history or whatever it is. Some people are adaptable, but there are not many that are. The interpreter likes to zero in on interpretation and the history folks do the same thing in their specialty. But all of a sudden we started to have law enforcement problems and then the rangers became highly specialized, somewhat detrimental, I thought, because they go out of the main stream of management and specialized.
Was that really after the aftermath of the Yosemite riots?
When Patrick was killed at Point Reyes I think that was the shoe that dropped, from that point on send the rangers to Glencoe (Georgia) and get with it.
[Bill] There was a poaching incident, was it not, at Point Reyes?
Yes, Patrick was a ranger, I don’t know if he was a District Ranger or not he stopped the car and they killed him.
Sort of like this situation with Gulf Islands, not long ago. Yes.
[Bill] Well, he knew these people, Patrick knew these people and that’s probably why they did it. See, the guy at Gulf Islands didn’t know who he was stopping.
I think it was a little over reaction, but the thing that bothers me is that, the rangers become so specialized that they would not be getting experience in management that they needed. Therefore, their opportunities for advancement were becoming highly restricted so that’s when you start seeing all different types of people come and shoe up at the Superintendent’s level and in the regional level. Highly specialized people in the region would be coming out into the field area and they did not know diddle about park management or managing people. They are specialists, see, and you really have to be, if I can use the term a jack of all trades to be any good as a manager.
