THE GEORGE WRIGHT
Volume 18 y 2001 y FO RU M
Number 2 2 4 8 Society News, Notes & Mail Box Sixty-Five � Thoughts on the Arctic Refuge's Future William E. Brown The Human Element Roger Kennedy The U.S. National Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative and the Role of Protected Areas Russell J. Hall and Catherine A. Langtimm 14 Searching for Biological Specimens from Midwestern Parks: Pitfalls and Solutions James P. Bennett P ROTECTED A REAS IN EAST A SIA : A N OVERVIEW AND TWO CASE STUDIES Twenty-first Century Strategies for Protected Areas in East Asia David Sheppard 40 26 Establishing Protected Areas in the Philippines: Emerging Trends, Challenges, and Prospects Rafael G. Senga 56 Conservation of Protected Areas in Thailand: The Case of Khao Yai National Park Pakkawadee Panusittikorn and Tony Prato 66 On the Cover : A "froglogger"--an automated device for recording frog calls. USGS photo taken at Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge Volume 18 � Number 2 2001 1 Wiliam E. Brown Box 65: Commentary from the GWS office and our members
Thoughts on the Arctic Refuge's Future
remember the shock that swept the country when the Exxon Valdezbecame grounded on Bligh Reef in 1989. Day after day the crude oil spewing from her punctured hull spread at whim of wind and current. Eventually the black muck coated a thousand miles of mainland and island coastline, killing countless sea mammals, birds, and fish. Who can forget the nightly pictures of doomed, oil-soaked creatures staring at us from the TV screen? The residues of this calamitous spill still poison Alaska's Pacific shores and the animals that live there. This was a singular event. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 had transformed Alaska from Seward's Folly and Gold Rush plunder into America's last citadel of expansive wild lands. Nearly two-thirds of the nation's protected lands--national wildlife refuges, national parks, national wild and scenic rivers--were created by that single act of Congress. In a mystical, even repentant way, we as a nation had tried in Alaska to make up for what we had done to most of the country Down Below. But the oil spill had shaken our vision of this remote domain. Now, these spectacular and biologically stunning shores where harmony existed, where "the wild ran free upon the crisp fresh land," have lost that freshness. They have joined the larger neighborhood where industrial accidents routinely happen and are as routinely dismissed: "An anomaly. Statistically insignificant. Part of the external costs of progress and industry." Neither these places nor our luminous vision of them will ever be quite the same again. I yyyyyyyy So far, the 19-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been lucky, despite its proximity to Prudhoe Bay and adjacent oil fields. Now comes the push to get inside the refuge. Why? Is our national security at risk because of dependence on foreign-oil imports? That's what Alaska's congressional delegation and its political and corporate allies say. But these are the same people who in 1995 lifted the ban on Alaska oil exports. Prudhoe oil sold to Japan resulted in higher gas prices on the West Coast--to the benefit of Alaska's oil-tax revenues, the profits of big oil, and the campaign funds of the politicians. Given these bottom-line realities, and the prodigal waste of oil since the discarding of President Carter's energy conservation programs (and the
4 The George Wright FORUM mindless perpetuation of such waste in the Bush Administration's new energy policy), the national security argument fails to persuade. Beyond the dollar sign, the urgent rationale for a new Arctic oil rush flows from the pending implosion of Alaska's fading oil boom. As in territorial days, modern Alaska still depends on a colonial economy--by definition a boomand-bust economy. It exports raw materials (principally oil) and imports virtually everything that it eats and uses to support its inflated urban lifestyle and population. Excepting traditionalists who live off the land, modern Alaska depends on Prudhoe Bay oil as the engine of its economy. But that oil draws down and the pipeline flows at half capacity. So the rush is on to develop a combined oil-and-natural-gas extension of the boom. That's where the Arctic Refuge comes in. No one knows whether the refuge's geologic structures hold oil, or, if so, how much. U.S. Geological Survey estimates indicate a potential for a large oil discovery of several billion barrels--which would translate to a few months' equivalent of the nation's annual rate of consumption. Experts are skeptical of a mega-giant field of Prudhoe or Persian Gulf scale. Are these same old, same old ploys reason enough to invade the Arctic Refuge? I don't think so. At the least we should conserve Arctic oil resources until we're forced to use them for valid societal purposes, i.e., in the transition from prodigality to sustainability, under a rational national energy regime that combines conservation, alternative energy sources, and fossil-fuel production. All we have now, and for at least the next four years, is wanton waste, which means the wanton impairment and destruction, in part, of a very special place.
yyyyyyyy More than 20 years ago I conducted historic-site surveys along the Arctic Coastal Plain for the North Slope Borough, both within and adjacent to the Arctic Refuge. For longer periods I worked on a cultural landscape plan with the Inupiat people of Nuiqsut, a small village near the mouth of the Colville River, west of the refuge. During extended visits I was privileged to accompany village elders to several hunting-and-fishing, historic, and sacred sites. These tradition bearers shared with me their cultural history in these places. Their stories gave me great appreciation of the people, their homeland, and the creatures that sustain their lives and culture. The Nuiqsut people were concerned about oil developments in their traditional lands. Because these hunter�gatherers live in a spare Arctic desert, they must roam far and wide, as do the animals they hunt for food. The traditional-use area of the Nuiqsut people is as big as a good-sized state Down Below. My job was to listen and observe as these people pursued their way of life in a homeland they have occupied for thousands of years. Then to translate--for the invading world from Outside--their concerns for their
Volume 18 � Number 2 2001 5 homeland. Then, maybe, the Outsiders would see the value of these seemingly barren lands and seas. And be careful how they would use them. After many drafts and discussions we finally agreed on this translation, this approximation of their core ideas: The cultural landscape of Nuiqsut is occupied by a heritage community that perpetuates Inupiat culture by harvesting the wild resources of land and sea, by preserving places and ideals of value, and by transmitting this heritage to future generations. It is a place that cannot be truly owned by any transient human group nor consumed for any ephemeral human purpose, for it must be passed on intact. It is a cosmos that unites time and space, people and nature, resources and values. This place cannot be understood in simple economic or physical-resource terms. Such tools of understanding are too primitive. Yet those from afar who have plans to alter this landscape are using such primitive tools, as did their predecessors. Sometimes I lose my way and wonder what it's all about--these endless struggles to hold on to the valued places of this world. Then I go back to this statement, to these ideas that I finally understood after many evenings of sitting around campfires in the lee of a skin boat listening to old people in skin clothes who haltingly--with the help of a translator--told me what it's all about.
yyyyyyyy Why were these people worried about oil developments in their homeland? Because they had seen Prudhoe Bay and the other oil fields. They had even worked in them. They knew that oil development is fraught with catastrophe, especially in the Arctic. What are some of the things they feared? Here is a sampler: � � � � � �
6 Oil and chemical spills into rivers and Arctic seas that would kill underice algae, the first link in the Polar marine food chain; Disturbance of caribou calving and snow-geese nesting sites, with international implications for Alaskan and Canadian indigenes; Industrial sprawl from collection and distribution pipelines, residence and work camps, roads, power and pump stations, etc.; Industrial-scale water needs that would drain ponds and lakes for many miles around every development site--all of them fish-spawning, nursery, or overwintering water bodies; The immeasurable aesthetic violation and disaster; And on, and on, and on.
The George Wright FORUM yyyyyyyy But I want to stop this catalogue of bad things that will happen in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge--if it is opened to oil development. For I want to conclude with the wisdom of the Inupiat elders, whose principal goal is to pass on intact the homeland over which each generation temporarily exercises stewardship. The views and values of these homeland people have capacity for infinite expansion and application to all special places, to the world in its entirety. The universal goal must be balance between the true needs of a stabilized humankind and sustaining natural systems. But there is nothing balanced about the current assault on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In the present prodigal temper, industrial invasion would simply waste the refuge's oil. It would define the ephemeral, the primitive, the socially useless. Let's hold on to this place. Let it stand for its own sake. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should be a marker, a symbolic turning point in the human condition, not a sacked industrial wasteland. William E. Brown is retired from the National Park Service. His column "Letter from Gustavus" appeared for many years in The George Wright Forum. 1
Reminder: this column is open to all GWS members. We welcome lively, provocative, informed opinion on anything in the world of parks and protected areas. The submission guidelines are the same as for other G EORGE WRIGHT FORUM articles--please refer to the inside back cover of any issue. The views in "Box 65" are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position of The George Wright Society. Volume 18 � Number 2 2001 7 Roger Kennedy The Human Element
Ed. note: These remarks were delivered at the close of the National Park Service conferenceCultural Resources 2000: Managing for the Future, held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, December 2000. y text for this morning's sermon is drawn from the gospel according to Henry David Thoreau and Wendell Berry. First, the familiar verse from Thoreau: "In wildness is the preservation of the world." And then the gloss put on it by Berry: "In human culture is the preservation of wildness." With those texts in mind, let's talk ward. Nonetheless, let's stick with about why your work is especially the artificial construct of a division important at this moment to Ameri- between cultural and natural life just can society, and will always be im- long enough to look up the word portant to this ravished yet still mag- "culture" in the dictionary and see nificent continent upon which we what it implies. Then we can get on live. to the moral consequences of re-deBerry defines the work of the Na- fining it as Wendell Berry urges us to tional Park Service, though without do. quite saying so, situating its role in The first usage is that which gives society at the frontier between what dignity to you as professionals--we is frequently stated to be "civilized," use culture to mean "development of or "civic," or "urban," "urbane," or the intellect through hard work "cultural" activity--the adjectives all --training and development." From mean roughly the same thing--and which comes the verb "to cultivate," what is often presented as essentially as in: to cultivate a singer's voice, a unaffected by humans--or "wild." teacher's skill, a rock climber's Our qualities, as humans, are "culti- balance, a dancer's grace, the skill of vated." The quality of nature, while a preserver of adobe buildings or the affected by human activity, is that competency of an analyst of changes which has not been so altered by that in the minnow population of a deliberate activity as to lose its es- stream. You are cultivated people. sential "wildness." We all know that You have worked hard to learn your there isn't a square mile of this conti- professions. You spend years nent that hasn't been affected by hu- sharpening your skills. If you are mans, nor will there be one unaf- superintendents, you derive from fected by what humans do hencefor- your own cultivation a profound M 8 The George Wright FORUM commitment to helping the people who work for you to improve their competency. You rejoice that the National Park Service has heeded E.O. Wilson's admonition to make use of the Advanced Studies Program, and such implements as the Bearss Fellowship, to go back to school and get better. You will of course see to it that these implements are used in the parks where you work, and maybe by yourselves. Because you respect yourselves, and revere your teachers, you want to make it easier for those who work around you to get better at theirs--to cultivate their competency . You do this in the context of the knowledge, painfully gained, that there are people who want a weakened set of stewards for our parks, because they have designs upon those parks that are incompatible with high standards of stewardship. They want you either to be frail--inept, insufficiently trained, and therefore easily dismissed--or out of the way. They don't want you to cultivate your skills and help others to cultivate theirs. These are not necessarily evil people. They are just impatient. They want what they want--and they do not hold stewardship to be very important if it gets in their way. Besides, you are professionals, and professionalism, cultivation, is insufficiently honored in this society. Because your adversaries do not revere the things you revere, and do not respect your work very much, whenever they increase in power you are
Volume 18 � Number 2 required to show courage in demonstrating your faith in that work and in yourselves as professionals. Complacency is even less appropriate at this meeting, here in Santa Fe, than it was a few months back in St. Louis [at the Discovery 2000 Conference]. My theme is cultivation and professionalism; my conviction is that the National Park Service must be fully professional so that it may be continue to be a credible steward. The watchword is and ought to be: you can trust the National Park Service. To merit that trust, we must develop in greater numbers experienced and competent people who know they are the first line of defense of resource protection and of good science. Already, the people of NPS are the first teachers many Americans encounter on the ground--as soon as they leave home--to learn about biology and history. Every person in this hall knows that competent resource protection begins with knowing what you're doing--doing with and to the resources for which you are the steward. Protectors are also expositors of applied science and applied history. Competent resource protection requires constant interaction with academic institutions and with "applied science"--science on the ground, tested and made useful. And explained to the public through effective education. I've said it before and I'll say it again: resource protection has to walk out of the park in the heart of the visitor. Resource protection only
9 2001 has staying power if it is also education. The pride of Park Service people in their work as professionals must radiate outside the parks. Only if it is radiant, in that way, will it educate the public about the values that led to the establishment of the parks themselves. There are calls to remove wilderness designation from many areas now protected. The best defense against these pressures are: unassailable professionalism in protecting resources, education, and constituency building. In a democratic system, that is where resource protection begins. This leads me to the second primary meaning of the word "cultural" and to that interaction to which Wendell Berry calls our attention--an interaction among humans and non-human species, between human activity and natural processes. When he writes that "in human culture is the preservation of wildness," what does he mean by "human culture?" The dictionary says he must mean "the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought." We've talked a little about human work--recognizing how much hard work there is in becoming and sustaining one's right to be heeded as a professional. Let's talk for the rest of our time together about how beliefs and thoughts may preserve "wildness."
10 First let's be clear about a fact so obvious and fundamental that it is seldom a subject of remark: wilderness does not know that it is wilderness. Humans know it is wilderness. Few eagles cogitate much about being wild. They are wild. We think about their wildness, and when they fly they carry our metaphors as additional weight upon their pinions. But they show little resentment, perhaps because they know that we are the concept-making species. We may not make wilderness, but we have made up the concept of wilderness. Every natural phenomenon--from the soaring of an eagle to the reproduction of an amoeba, from the explosion of a volcano to the erosion of a granite outcrop, is seen by us through some kind of lens of our own creation. Microscopes and telescopes, cosmologies and chaos theories are our contrivances through which we observe nature. And here is my primary point: because we possess such contrivances as the toolmakers and concept-makers we are, because we have memory and are capable of anticipation--we are the responsible species. We have moral obligations arising from competencies. What we have learned as we became professionals directs what we do with and to the other species with which we co-inhabit this earth--and to the inanimate earth itself. And as people who share a set of beliefs, as people who spring from a continuous culture, we have strong judgments upon what is mined, grazed, timbered, or preThe George Wright FORUM served. The job of the National Park Service is to stand between the eager visitor-learner--and we are all, wherever we are, visitors to this earth for our allotted span--and learners--and the natural world. We see that natural world through the lenses of our culture--through lenses ground and shaped by that "totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought." And we can decide to preserve "wildness," by which we mean nature on its own terms, because we believe in certain fundamental principles, which are also cultural. May I once again suggest that included in that "totality"--indeed, at its core, around which all else constellates and nucleates--is our religion--a cultural reality. We believe that we humans are not masters of the universe; we are not even masters of this earth. We are, instead, co-inhabitants of the earth with a multitude of other creatures. We are not masters, though we try to be good stewards of some portions of it which fall within our specific responsibilities. Of course from time to time nature brings us fire and flood and great winds to remind us of a central attribute of wildness which is more widely diffused outside of what we call wilderness than we in our pride like to admit--it is essentially beyond control. We do manage the way people act upon wildness, and when it has been too obviously ravaged we attempt to restore it to health. When
Volume 18 � Number 2 the damage can be repaired without much intervention from us, or when that damage is imperceptible to us, we leave place alone. When we were enduring, together, the last set of assaults upon wilderness and upon the parks, I suggested that among our caring allies were explicitly religious people. The central concept of religious life is the same as the central concept of wilderness preservation. That concept is a sense of scale, of human scale. We humans believe ourselves to be important, but not all- important. Religious people speak of ourselves as humbled in the presence of God; even the most secular of conservationists would admit, I think, that they often feel humbled in the presence of wilderness--a feeling that is deeper than awe--it can truly be said to be reverence. Most religious people think of the universe as intentional, as a creation--not necessarily all at once, nor necessarily taking only a week's time--but intentional. Therefore, all its parts have value, all it species, all its mountains, waters, fields, and oceans. Humans, in the religious tradition, are not the only significant species on this earth. Our orchards, farms, and woodlots are not the only places worthy of respect. All creation is worthy of respect. That respect requires a moral focus, and a determination, culturally, that we resist the current and recurrent tendency of people living in market economies to become fascinated--obsessed indeed--with money, with reducing all values to money
11 2001 values. Thomas Jefferson warned us of that; looking toward us, his posterity, he feared lest "the people will forget themselves in ... making money," losing sight of larger and longer values. It is a noble endeavor to keep a check-book, but that is not the only Good Book. There are other applications for the human brain than counting. We should be good accountants, but we should also be good stewards. We may recall that Daniel Boorstin, America's greatest living conservative historian, helped us understand that Jefferson was the philosophical father of the Endangered Species Act: "in his writings, we frequently come upon the appropriate verses of the Psalmist, `O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.'" And Jefferson himself wrote that "if one link in nature's chain might be lost, another and another might be lost, till this whole system of things should vanish by piece-meal." When Boorstin or Jefferson write in that way, they recall to us the cultural tradition that unites them, Thoreau, Wendell Berry, and John Donne, a tradition that provides us with lenses with which to scrutinize the natural world. When we take off our glasses, remove those lenses, and hold them in our hands, we see in their inner surfaces ourselves reflected. We see ourselves as nature sees us. And we are reminded of that reciprocity of which Thoreau and Berry wrote, a reciprocity between
12 the observer and the observed, between wildness, preserving us, and us preserving wildness. With that interchange in mind, we may recall a passage from a sermon of Donne's. It provided to Ernest Hemingway a book title. It provides us with a text to set beside those of Thoreau and Wendell Berry, recalling to us the moral basis for our professional lives: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.... Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." And, looming beyond John Donne, are the great figures of an older and broader tradition, Saints Patrick and Francis, and Buddha among them, who remind us of other endangered species beyond our descendants: The tolling of the bell is for the death of any living thing; we are "involved" in all life. Our "involvement" with other species of living things arises in part because we share with those species--indeed with earth, air, water and fire--a place in an intentional and not an accidental universe, in which all these, all animate species and all inanimate objects from stars to starfish, have a place. "...if one link in nature's chain might be lost, another and another might be lost, till this whole system of things should vanish by piecemeal." And so they might, friends, and so they might, one species after another.
The George Wright FORUM Unless we rally round each other, and join with all others who acknowledge with us that the bell is tolling constantly now, tolling all day and all night without surcease, as species after species dies, creation after creation, friend in the earth after friend in the earth. I urge, therefore, that we cultivate our competence the better to serve the cultural values we bring to this work, in order that we may serve all nature and some portion of humankind. It is true that the Organic Act of the National Park Service only requires that the people in its service sustain "unimpaired" the places put into their trust, but that Act is merely one expression of a cultural tradition requiring us to give heed to the seamless, coherent fabric of God's creation, in all its interlinked parts. Each of those parts is of ultimate value, each is essential, each cardinal, each indispensable. There is no surplus in God's creation. All of us are conservationists; we would not be in our line of work if we were not. Some are secular conservationists. Others are religious conservationists, unabashedly affirming that our obligation arises from a due respect for this created universe. We are preservationists because we are in awe of the accomplishments of our predecessors in the American tradition and do not wish to lose a single cubic foot of the ground they hallowed. The dictionary has helped us define our task--and our role as good stewards--by providing two meanings of the word "cultural." One reminds us that we are professionals. The other reminds us that we are citizens--standing in a great tradition. Let us get on with our work--respectful of each other, as fellow-laborers toward a moral end, courteous even to those who bore us, or infuriate us, or who don't seem to "get it." We are fellow voyagers on a vessel which is heading into rough seas--we will need each other to man the oars and the pumps, and, if necessary, to repel the boarding parties. Indeed, we will require all the help we can get. Much of that help will come from within, from our religious convictions, from our cultural values. They are the values that led us into this line of work. Roger Kennedy, 855 El Caminito, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501-2842 1
Volume 18 � Number 2 2001 13 James P. Bennett Searching for Biological Specimens from Midwestern Parks: Pitfalls and Solutions
Introduction his paper describes the results of searches of herbarium and museum collections and databases for records of vertebrate and vascular plant specimens that had been collected in 15 midwestern National Park System units. The records of these specimens were previously unknown to the National Park Service (NPS). In the course of our searches, numerous obstacles were encountered that prevented us from fully completing our task. These ranged from difficulties with the way databases are structured, to poor record-keeping, to incomplete or incorrect information on the actual location of specimens within collections. Despite these problems, we are convinced that the information to be gained from such searches is invaluable, and we believe that our experience, and the recommendations we offer, may well prove instructive to others undertaking this kind of work. NPS is responsible for adminis- west Region status of inventories retering lands that contain natural re- port. Inventories are typically based sources of value to the USA. In the on anecdotal records of species (sight midwestern part of the nation, some records), although a few may have of the lands are particularly impor- voucher specimens as their basis tant for managing and preserving (e.g., Hopewell Culture; Bennett and natural prairies and woodlands of the Course 1996). Mississippi River Valley and the surRecently, NPS has become interrounding region. Parks in this ested in determining if there are "Heartland Network" are shown in voucher specimens for plants and Table 1. These 15 parks range from animals collected in the parks, either just under 200 to almost 95,000 before the park was authorized or acres in area, and occupy a total area afterwards. Park records of speciof 234,191 acres. mens collected using the NPS permit Plant inventories for some of the system are incomplete and unreliparks are not complete (Bennett able, particularly in earlier years. 1996). The status of animal inventoRepositories of plant and animal ries is summarized in the NPS Mid- specimens (herbaria and museums, T 26 The George Wright FORUM Table 1. The 15 National Park System units in the Heartland Network. Park Arkansas Post National Memorial (Arkansas) Buffalo National River (Arkansas) Cuyahoga Valley National Park (Ohio) Effigy Mounds National Monument (Iowa) George Washington Carver National Monument (Missouri) Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial (Indiana) Herbert Hoover National Historic Site (Iowa) Homestead National Monument of America (Nebraska) Hopewell Culture National Historical Park (Ohio) Hot Springs National Park (Arkansas) Pipestone National Monument (Minnesota) Pea Ridge National Military Park (Arkansas) Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve (Kansas) Ozark National Scenic Riverways (Missouri) Wilson's Creek National Battlefield (Missouri) respectively) exist throughout the USA, and are typically found at colleges and universities, while a few exist as separate institutions. Some have been in existence longer than the parks, and collectors typically deposit specimens at such repositories to guarantee a long life for the collection. It is highly likely, therefore, that there exist collections of specimens from these national parks that are unknown to the NPS. The agency would benefit from the knowledge of these specimens in at least eight ways. Such knowledge would: � Make the species inventories specimen-based; � Make inventories more complete;
Volume 18 � Number 2 Year authorized 1960 1972 1974 1949 1943 1962 1965 1936 1923 1832 1937 1956 1996 1964 1960 Acreage 389 94,309 32,525 1,481 210 200 187 195 1,130 5,549 282 4,300 10,894 80,790 1,750 � Aid in understanding vegetation changes through time; � Help determine the effects of management; � Determine if particular species are no longer found in the parks; � Aid in ecological restoration projects; � Document previously unknown collecting activity; and � Aid in understanding the history of the area. Objectives This project was initiated to search selected herbarium and museum collections and databases for records of vertebrate and vascular plant specimens collected in the 15 Heartland parks. The objectives
27 2001 were to: � � � � Improve our knowledge of park biota by tracing unknown collections and locating specimens; Gather collection-level data for newer collections; Gather specimen-level data for older collections; and Assemble such data in a format usable to NPS for inclusion in the NPSpecies database. Methods Collections on the Worldwide Web. The study began by consulting the Natural History Collections Database, compiled for the NPS Midwest Regional Office by Susan Gucciardo (2000). This database provides statistics on flora and fauna repositories in the USA, including Universal Resource Locator addresses for those repositories having Web sites. Some of these Web sites could access the database of the repositories' collections, while others had no links at all. Each one was viewed, and those which were searchable were searched by park name/locality, or by county or state name, if possible. Next, the database was filtered to include only those repositories which had placed information on their collections into a database, although they had Web site access to the information. This list was then reviewed for relevance and usefulness to the project. Approximately ten institutions were selected and all were contacted by phone or e-mail, with varying degrees of success. The
28 names of all contacts and the status of the computerization of the collections were recorded in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet / database. Collection site visits . It was discovered that the Zoological Department of the Field Museum in Chicago had a complete database of their specimens, but the staff did not have time to query it for this study. Therefore, a trip was made to the museum in order to perform queries of the database on-site. Although there was a locality field in the database, the staff member we consulted was not sure if it had ever been used when entering data. Queries were thus performed for each county in which the 15 Heartland parks are located, and the results printed out. Because the Field Museum also has extensive botanical collections, the Herbarium staff was consulted to determine a method to search the non-databased specimens. First, the collector's log book was studied to determine if links could be found between collectors and the parks, but such information was not recorded there. Second, the folders containing a common grassland species, Bouteloua curtipendula, were searched manually for those counties in which the Heartland parks are located. Three were found, but the labels did not give specific locality information. This species was picked at random and no others were tried. No published list of specimens from any of the 15 parks was ever found that referred to them being deposited in the Field Museum.
The George Wright FORUM A site visit to the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG) in St. Louis was made specifically to look for specimens from Hot Springs National Park collected by E. J. Palmer in the 1920s and 1930s. The original reference to these specimens (Palmer 1926) was discovered in the park archives by the park historian. One day was spent by at the MBG's Monsanto Center searching for woody plant specimens of half the species in the 1926 Palmer report. The curator of the herbarium printed out the records for all the Palmer collections from Arkansas that were in the herbarium database. These were searchable on the Web, but a search would have taken too long to do because the Web site does not allow multiplex searching by several fields. Floristic references . It was thought that references providing historical narratives on collecting in the parks would be useful, because non-computerized institutions could search for species names that the collectors had recorded, and collectors' names could be entered into databases without locality queries being available. Floras of all states in the study were consulted for this purpose. The bibliography information was then recorded along with a code to explain how the text relates to this study. Natural Heritage Inventories . The Natural Heritage Inventories of the eight states in the study were considered to be possibly valuable sources. Since the inventories have information on which species are
Volume 18 � Number 2 rare in the state, it was thought that, consequently, they might also have information on historical collections of those species. The eight Natural Heritage Programs were contacted by letter, telephone, or fax, and each was requested to search its database for information relating to the parks of the state. The results from those who responded were also recorded in the Excel spreadsheet. Index Herbariorum. The latest Index Herbariorum (Holmgren 1990) was consulted, and all herbaria in the USA were evaluated based on the information on collections provided there. An attempt was made to contact all herbaria that appeared to be useful to the study. All attempts were recorded in the Excel database. In cases where contact attempts were successful, the status of the computerization of the collections in those herbaria was recorded. For herbaria with adequate databases, searches of collections were performed by the herbarium staff. Park managers . It was necessary to contact resource managers of ten of the fifteen parks in order to refine the reference list provided in the proposal for this project. It was not clear whether the references were already known to the park, or were to be considered leads for further searching. Some managers had more to add to the list of references, others said it was complete, and still others said that many of the collections of the listed studies were not known. The suggestions given by the re29 2001 source managers were then undertaken. NPS Natural Resource Bibliography . The NPS Natural Resource Bibliography on the Web (NPS 2000) was searched for each of the 15 parks and relevant references, if any, were recorded. Automated National Catalog System (ANCS) records . A file containing records of specimens from the ANCS listings for 10 of the 15 parks was reviewed for specimens that were not on-site at the parks. All the repositories listed for off-site specimens were contacted for information about the specimens and others that may be at the repositories. Latitude and longitude searches . No searches using park latitudes and longitudes were performed. Only one herbarium Web site was searchable via latitude and longitude, but it was not necessary to use those coordinates because it was also searchable by park name. A few other repositories allowed searches by park latitude and longitude, but no results were found. Results In the time allotted to this project, 329 sources of specimen information were evaluated for the 15 parks (Table 2). In the final report of the project as submitted to the NPS Midwest Regional Office, an appendix was included containing a complete listing of the 329 sources with information on each, extracted from the Excel file. The appendix (which had to be omitted from the present paper
30 because of space considerations) also contains hot links to other files, all of which are provided with the final report in the form of computer files at a file transfer protocol (FTP) site: http://www.ies.wisc.edu/pub/jpbenn et/NPS. Access to these files does not require a password. Instructions for using the files are provided at the FTP site. The appendix does not contain fields for specific collector names or collection dates because the sources do not consistently have this data. For example, collector names are not available for the Tulane University or University of Kansas collections, and the dates are not available for New York Botanical Garden collections. The information displayed in each hotlink is the total amount of data recovered from the source, and any missing information is simply not available. The individual park for which we found the greatest number of sources was Hot Springs, with 30 sources (9% of the total). Homestead had the least, with 8 sources (2% of the total). Individual parks averaged about 18 sources. The sources fell into two groups: computerized data sources and literature sources. The characteristics of the source, and the degree of usefulness of each, were coded and are shown in Table 3. These codes are used in the appendix for brevity. Almost a fourth of the sources were computerized databases that could be searched on-site, but not via a Web site. Almost a fifth were collections that were not computerized in
The George Wright FORUM Table 2. Number of sources of specimen data for the 15 parks. The category "All 15 parks" includes sources of data that could be searched for all the parks in the study, not just a single park. Park; number of data sources Arkansas Post Buffalo Cuyhoga Valley Effigy Mounds George Washington Carver Herbert Hoover Hopewell Culture Homestead 17 24 24 18 14 18 21 8 Hot Springs Lincoln Boyhood Ozark Pea Ridge Pipestone Tallgrass Prairie Wilson's Creek All 15 parks 30 16 14 19 17 17 12 60 Grand total = 329 Table 3. Number of sources. Number of Code sources 0 61 21 2 76 3 17 4 33 5 2 A 31 B 6 B,C 1 C 18 C,D 2 D 6 E 2 F 2 G 3 H 2 I 1 n/a 2 nc 43 sources by characteristic code for 329 specimen data Code explanation 0= Collections are not computerized in any way; no database at all. 1= Collections are currently being entered into a database but are not yet searchable, even on site. 2= Collections are databased and can be searched on site, but not via a Web site. 3= Collections are searchable through the Web but not through search fields that are useful, or specimens that are useful have not been entered into the database. 4= Collections are fully searchable through remote access on Web site. 5= Web site only describes collections but does not allow searches. A= Text contains no search leads. B= Text contains some vegetation distribution by county. C= Text contains some history of past collectors. D= Text listed where a collection/voucher specimens is/are located. E= Text mentions that live specimens were released, or that data was observational, i.e., no collections were made. F= Text contains flora/fauna distributions by some area other than county but none of particular relevance to this study. G= Text implies a collection was made but does not provide further information. H= Text lists species present or provides an inventory. I= Text not seen, but collections were found serendipitously at MBG and University of Missouri. n/a = Not applicable. nc = No contact made. Volume 18 � Number 2 2001 31 any way at all. Ten percent were fully searchable on a Web site. Thirteen percent of the sources were not contacted. Six percent of the collections were being entered into a database but were not yet searchable. Ten percent of the literature sources provided no leads at all as to collections, while 5% provided some history of collecting. Five percent of the searchable collections did not have useful search fields or specimens entered that were relevant to this study. We were able to retrieve record information from 56 sources (17%) (Table 4), with Hot Springs having the greatest number. All parks had some record information, although Lincoln Boyhood had the smallest, with only one source. The 56 sources contained a total of 3,292 specimens representing 991 species across all 15 parks. It is not known if there are duplicates in these tallies, so the actual numbers may be lower. Time did not allow us to break down the species and specimens by park. However, the breakdown by biotic group is shown in Table 5. This table is a bit misleading because the herpetofauna and mammal sources are mostly all one source, the University of Michigan collections, and are repeated for many parks. The plants group are actually the largest category of specimens and collections (17%), followed by birds at 12%. A tabulation of results by source and park is shown in Table 6. Fifteen sources contained specimens or
32 specimen data from all the parks in the study. The 56 sources are hotlinked in the final report's appendix. Some of these sources are actual Excel spreadsheets in native format from the source and have not been edited. Many contain county-level information only, and each park will have to determine individually if the records refer to specimens from within park boundaries. Other hotlinks are for Microsoft Word text files or images of texts. Some of the hotlinks are only for the first page of a set of records because including the entire original document would have been prohibitively long. All originals will be sent to each park and the NPS Prairie Cluster long-term ecological monitoring office for their files. As a result of contacts found in Index Herbariorum, some curators were able to provide helpful information. For example, Iowa State University provided bibliographic information on many studies performed in the Iowa counties of Allamakee and Cedar, in which Effigy Mounds National Monument and Herbert Hoover National Historic Site, respectively, are located. These studies often mentioned the location of voucher specimens, although no subsequent action could be taken because the repositories mentioned were not computerized, and it was too late in the study for travel to those locations. Also, the herbaria are too understaffed to search for hundreds of specimens by hand.
The George Wright FORUM Table 4. Number of sources from which records were retrieved for the 15 parks. The source category "All 15 parks" (see Table 2 caption) contained no source records because once records were found for a particular park, that information was moved to the park category to which it belonged. Park; number of data sources from which records retrieved Arkansas Post 2 Hot Springs 9 Buffalo 5 Lincoln Boyhood 1 Cuyhoga Valley 5 Ozark 5 Effigy Mounds 2 Pea Ridge 4 George Washington Carver 5 Pipestone 5 Herbert Hoover 2 Tallgrass Prairie 4 Hopewell Culture 2 Wilson's Creek 2 Homestead 3 All 15 parks 0 Grand total = 56 (17% of 329 total sources) Table 5. Number of record sources by biotic group. Biotic group; number of record sources All 1 Herpetofauna Birds 7 Mammals Bryophytes 5 Plants Fish 1 Grand total 13 19 10 56 A large amount of specimen data was found for two parks: Pipestone and Hot Springs. For Pipestone, we were able to locate label data for almost 500 specimens at the University of Minnesota Herbarium. These specimens contained "Pipestone National Monument" in the management area field, and were fully searchable at the Web site. However, twenty-five records were viewable on a screen, and it was not possible to download the results of the search from the Web site. We contacted the database manager with a request for the full query results, and these were sent by e-mail at no charge. The Pipestone records represent the best retrieval of all the parks in the study, and are the model which other collection institutions should follow.
Volume 18 � Number 2 The complete set of Pipestone records are in an Excel spreadsheet as part of the final report to NPS. It appears that there has been a lot of collecting activity at Hot Springs for some time. The park provided a list of collectors dating back to 1804, and we were able to locate specimens gathered by one of the collectors, E. J. Palmer. We also discovered collections by another botanist, Delzie Demaree, of whom park officials had no knowledge. There is also evidence of collections by H. R. Gregg at the National Herbarium in Washington, but we were unable to verify their existence. The earliest collections from Hot Springs were those of Palmer in the early 1920s. Palmer published findings on specimens of the woody spe33 2001 Table 6. Specimen collections from the 15 parks by source and biotic group.
Source Cleveland Museum Field Museum Biotic Group Plants Birds Parks Cuyahoga Valley Arkansas Post, Buffalo, Pea Ridge, Pipestone, Ozark, Homestead, Cuyahoga Valley Hot Springs, Herbert Hoover Tallgrass Prairie Pipestone Hot Springs Buffalo, Hot Springs, Pipestone, George Washington Carver, Ozark Hot Springs George Washington Carver, Ozark Buffalo Hot Springs Buffalo, Pea Ridge, Effigy Mounds, Herbert Hoover, Tallgrass Prairie, Pipestone, George Washington Carver, Ozark, Wilson's Creek, Cuyahoga Valley, Hopewell Culture Arkansas Post, Buffalo, Hot Springs, Pea Ridge, Lincoln Boyhood, Effigy Mounds, Tallgrass Prairie, George Washington Carver, Ozark, Wilson's Creek, Homestead, Cuyahoga Valley, Hopewell Culture Pea Ridge, Tallgrass Prairie, George Washington Carver, Homestead, Cuyahoga Valley Pipestone Hot Springs Completeness Complete Complete Field Museum Kansas State University Minnesota Natural Heritage Program Missouri Botanical Garden New York Botanical Garden Smithsonian Truman State University Tulane University Museum University of Arkansas at Fayetteville University of Kansas Mammals Plants Many Plants Bryophytes Plants Plants Fish Mammals Mammals Complete Complete Complete Incomplete Complete Incomplete Complete Complete Complete Complete University of Michigan Museum Herpetofauna Complete University of Michigan Museum University of Minnesota Herbarium University of Missouri Mammals Complete Plants Plants Complete Incomplete cies he collected (Palmer 1926), but not on those of the herbaceous species. He stated that the woody specimens were deposited at the Arnold Arboretum, the MBG, and the University of Arkansas. A visit to the MBG located 115 records in
34 their database of Palmer specimens from Garland County, many with the phrase "hot springs" in the locality field. However, of these 115 records, only 11 of the specimens were actually at MBG, because the remainder are located at the University of MisThe George Wright FORUM souri Herbarium in Columbia. The MBG database includes the University of Missouri records, so both are retrieved. The MBG database only contains about one-quarter of all the specimens at MBG because it is not yet complete. A physical search of part of the MBG herbarium for Palmer specimens using t