Enjoying Katmai

• Citation: Vol. 33
• Publication year: 2016

§ 33 Alaska L. Rev. 65. ENJOYING KATMAI

Alaska Law Review
Volume 33, No. 1, June 2016
Cited: 33 Alaska L. Rev. 65

ENJOYING KATMAI

John Copeland Nagle ^[*]

ABSTRACT

Katmai National Park has been part of the national park system since 1918, just two years after Congress created the National Park Service. Located about 300 miles southwest of Anchorage, Katmai's attractions have evolved from the aftermath of an epic volcanic eruption to world-class fishing to the place to go to see brown bears catch salmon. These attractions have yet to attract the hordes of people who visit other national parks, and Katmai remains one of the least visited of the 59 national parks. The Park Service is responsible for managing Katmai consistent with the Organic Act's dual goals of enjoyment and conservation. In practice, Katmai experiences much more conservation than enjoyment. The proposals to increase visitation to Katmai have failed because of a consensus that not all national parks are alike even though the law governing them is nearly the same. Katmai's history of benign neglect by Congress and the courts demonstrates that the Park Service is capable of managing remote national parks in a manner that achieves the law's goals while serving the public's desires.

INTRODUCTION

Nearly 275 million people visited America's national parks in 2013. ^[1] Their most popular destinations were Great Smoky Mountains National Park (9.4 million visitors), Grand Canyon National Park (4.6 million visitors), and Yosemite National Park (3.7 million visitors). ^[2] By comparison, fewer than 29,000 of them visited Katmai National Park and Preserve, ^[3] even though Katmai's first explorer insisted that Yellowstone was "decidedly inferior to the Katmai District as a wonderland." ^[4]

Katmai is located along the Alaska Peninsula about 300 miles southwest of Anchorage. It became a national monument in 1918 and a national park in 1980. ^[5] It is best known for the largest volcanic eruption in North American history, as the destination for world-class salmon fishing, and as the ideal location to observe brown bears. ^[6] Yet Katmai remains one of the least visited national parks, ranking 53rd in visitation among the 59 national parks in 2013. ^[7]

The paucity of visitors is surprising given that the National Park Service (NPS) is obliged to facilitate the enjoyment of Katmai and the other 400 units of the national park system. In 1916, Congress enacted the Organic Act, which continues to govern the management of national parks 98 years later. ^[8] The heart of the Organic Act is its mandate that the National Park Service facilities the enjoyment and preservation of the lands that it manages. ^[9]

Katmai National Park illustrates a pattern of broad NPS discretion, conservation constraints imposed by other federal environmental statutes, and infrequent specific congressional action to authorize special provisions for enjoyment of the park and other activities. Katmai has been immune from judicial oversight. The NPS has managed Katmai since 1918 without ever being second-guessed in a reported court case. The NPS has often cited federal environmental statutes such as the Wilderness Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the NEPA as guiding the management decisions at the park in favor of environmental conservation. ^[10] And occasionally Congress has engaged in informal oversight of the NPS's management of Katmai to encourage greater opportunities to enjoy the area or to authorize commercial activities even though they would otherwise be prohibited by the Organic Act and other environmental statutes.

Left alone, the NPS has endeavored to promote both the enjoyment and the conservation of Katmai. Conservation has been easier because of the general absence of threats to the park's landscape and wildlife, but enjoyment has been trickier. A trip to Katmai typically involves multiple airplane flights, and the facilities within the park are limited.

This is as it should be. The law's hands-off treatment of Katmai enables the NPS to respond to changing understandings of the area's importance. Management decisions evolved as the opportunities to see the effects of the volcanic eruption, then to enjoy world-class fishing, and then most recently to see brown bears, drew visitors to Katmai. The number of visitors to Katmai remains modest, but that number has increased dramatically during the past half-century. The NPS built facilities that provide access to the bears, fishing, and volcano, but the agency has also resisted more ambitious development plans to build additional lodging, roads, or airstrips in the park.

Part I of this Article describes the history of the Katmai area that culminated in the congressional establishment of Katmai National Park and Preserve in 1980. Part II examines the legal, management, and logistical challenges to achieving the Organic Act's twin goals of enjoyment and conservation. It first discusses the efforts to make Katmai more accessible to visitors, followed by an account of the facilities and proposed facilities for visitors to the park, and concludes with an explanation of how the NPS ensures the conservation of Katmai's resources.

I. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF KATMAI NATIONAL PARK

Katmai is located on the Alaska Peninsula, which stretches southwest from Anchorage toward the Aleutian Islands. It is bounded by the Gulf of Alaska to the east, Bristol Bay to the north, and the rest of the Alaska Peninsula to the northeast and the southwest. The landscape changes from the rugged coastline to towering mountains to abundant lakes, rivers, and wetlands. Naknek Lake-the largest freshwater lake located wholly within a national park-is situated at the western edge of the park. ^[11]

Katmai is home to an extraordinary number of salmon, trout, and other fish. About four million sockeye return each summer to the Naknek River system, and one million of the fish reach their spawning grounds. ^[12] Those fish attract Katmai's 2,000 brown bears, the largest concentration of anywhere in the world. Many of those bears congregate along the Brooks River, which feeds into Lake Brooks just south of Naknek Lake. The area is also home to moose, caribou, red fox, wolves, lynx, wolverine, bald eagles, and countless other wildlife. ^[13]

Historically, Katmai has rich cultural and historic significance. The remnants of homes and villages range from those left by native Alaskans over the last several thousand years to those of early twentieth century Russian, European, and American trappers, miners, and clammers. The native settlement of Katmai along the coast "was once the central transit point for travel and traffic." ^[14] Russian fur traders then arrived in the second half of the eighteenth century and "virtually enslaved the Eskimos along the Shelikof Strait." ^[15] King Salmon, the closet town to Katmai (about nine miles west of the national park and the site of the park's headquarters), hosted an Air Force base during World War II. ^[16]

Katmai itself erupted onto the world stage in June 1912. Novarupta, one of several active volcanoes in the area, exploded for the greatest volcanic event of the twentieth century (and the second greatest of recorded history). The eruption spewed thirteen cubic kilometers of magma and lasted for sixty hours. Ten miles from Novarupta, the caldera at Mount Katmai collapsed, thereby confusing a generation of volcanologists who wrongly concluded that it was Mount Katmai that had erupted. "The ashfall was global, an aerosol-dust veil was reported as far as the Mediterranean, and worldwide temperature depression was measurable." ^[17]

News of the eruption was slow to reach the outside world. The only congressional response to the eruption was the appropriation of $50,000 for the relief of its victims. ^[18] Additionally, Robert Griggs, a botany professor at Ohio State, led four National Geographic Society expeditions to Katmai between 1915 and 1919. ^[19] "Exploration," Griggs explained, "undertaken primarily for the scientific study of the effects of the ashfall, led to the discovery of one of the great marvels of the natural world, a place unseen and unsuspected by white man and native alike until entered by a National Geographic Society Expedition." ^[20] He discovered the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, where steam burst through thousands of vents in the 100 to 700 foot deep ash flow that the eruption deposited over forty square miles.

Thanks to Griggs' expeditions, the National Geographic Society soon championed Katmai's addition to the new national park system, which Congress had established in 1916. Griggs wrote NPS Director Stephen Mather at the end of 1917 asking how to form a national monument proposal. ^[21] Alaska's congressional delegate agreed that "we could gain some useful publicity to this great natural phenomenon of the North by creating a national park there." ^[22] Griggs wrote National Geographic Society president Gilbert Grosvenor in May 1918, explaining that Yellowstone was "decidedly inferior to the Katmai District as a wonderland." ^[23] Horace Albright, Mather's assistant and later the NPS director himself, explained how he "hatched a plan for Katmai" for which "Grosvenor merits ninety-nine percent of the success." ^[24] Grosvenor proposed a new Katmai National Park, but Albright preferred a national monument because the president can establish them unilaterally pursuant to the Antiquities Act of 1906. ^[25] Congressional...