Mark paid you a compliment one time.
Mark?
Buktenica. He said that he has a job because of Doug Larson.
Oh. (laughter) This happened at Waldo Lake too. The Forest Service now has a million dollar program now to do research and improve toilets and so forth at Waldo. This is something they should have had 50 – 100 years ago. These are things that you would think should be protected at all costs. I don’t know a lot about it, but there was research about the trees and elk in the park (47). I think this is good, but we have elk at Mount St. Helens and we have similar tree species elsewhere. We only have one Crater Lake and research about it can’t be neglected.
A lot of those studies were done because the CPSU were set up to do them (48). They could do the forestry work inexpensively.
I’m not saying that it was bad decision making to pursue those kinds of studies because they’re essential, too. I was saying that you have to remember that there’s one thing about Crater Lake that’s unique I believe, and that’s the lake. I don’t know about the wildlife or plants there. I don’t think there are any organisms in the lake that might be classed as unique.
How about a water mite?
There might be some invertebrates in there; I can think of two species of zooplankton. Some of those rotifers might be unique but I don’t know. The lake in its entirety is unique, even though its inhabitants aren’t necessarily endemic. The lake is, as Gary Larson would say, holistically a unique system.
