Chapter V. Special Management Units

From its beginning, the Izaak Walton League has recognized that certain outstanding land and water areas should be set aside for special management by government. In 1924, the League secured the establishment of the 300,000-acre Upper Mississippi Wildlife and Fish Refuge. Since those early days, the League has been a staunch promoter and dedicated protector of the National Wildlife Refuge System and National Parks System. It also helped develop the National Wilderness Preservation System and wrote important sections of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Most League policy statements about special management units have been directed at specific areas or issues. The League has played key roles in protecting special places such as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Canyonlands, Everglades, Indiana Dunes, Mount Rogers, New River, Rogue River, Alaska lands, Upper Mississippi River, Chesapeake Bay, and scores of others.

  • A) Antiquities Act
    • 1) This statute has for decades allowed the U.S. President to designate national monuments by proclamation. Nearly all Presidents have used the law to set aside, from most forms of development, natural areas of special value. The League opposes any congressional attempt to limit the power of the President to dedicate these rich historical and environmental areas for future generations.
  • B) National Parks
    • 1) National parks and monuments are established to preserve unique scenic, ecological, geological, historical, or other environmental values and the associated native ecological communities. They should be managed to maintain those values in natural condition, to educate visitors about the natural world, and to provide opportunities for outdoor enjoyment of the natural environment.
    • 2) Artificiality and development should be minimized. User facilities should, insofar as possible, be located outside the park and operated by private enterprise. Constructed recreation facilities, such as golf courses, ski lifts, and marinas, should be prohibited and eliminated where they exist.
    • 3) Water-resource development, timber harvest, mining, livestock grazing, and other commodity uses should not be permitted in parks and monuments—except as they are phased out of new areas during fixed periods.
    • 4) Because it believes visitors should have maximum opportunity to view and enjoy wildlife, the League holds that hunting should not be permitted in national parks and monuments.
    • 5) All private properties within these areas should be acquired by the public.
    • 6) The League specifically urges that restoration work in the Everglades focus on land acquisition using eminent domain as necessary.
    • 7) The National Park Service should be authorized to assure implementation of sound land-use controls within holdings and adjacent to park and monument boundaries to preclude development that adversely affects area values.
    • 8) National parks face serious threats: industrial and commercial development on adjacent lands; air pollution that cuts visibility and hides famous vistas; noise; overcrowding; overdevelopment; soil erosion; and encroachment of exotic species of plants and animals. In response, the League calls for:
      • a) Increasing the role of science in park management and sharply boosting the budget for research, monitoring, and resource management.
      • b) Focusing more efforts on external threats to parks, including closer cooperation with managers of adjacent public lands.
      • c) Decreasing overcrowding and use that poses a threat to park resources.
      • d) Controls on the use of all off-road vehicles in national parks and monuments due to impacts on wildlife, habitat, air, water, soil, and solitude
    • 9) The League urges Congress to provide funding to the National Park Service at a level that will preserve and protect the parks for future generations while providing access to the parks consistent with good management and protection of the wilderness experience.
    • 10) Units of the National Park System should provide special transportation services to urban residents who lack automobiles.
  • C) National Park Preserves
    • 1) TheLeague supported the creation of National Park Preserves in Alaska, the California Desert, Florida’s Big Cypress, and at other sites where it is desirable to protect the resource base as a unit of the National Park System. The League supports the permitting of traditional uses of the area—such as hunting, fishing, and, in some cases, motorized off-road access—to continue. Park preserve areas should be managed on the basis of sound biological data and established wildlife management principles. Traditional uses should be discontinued if not in harmony with other resource values of the
      area.
  • D) Yellowstone National Park Bison
    • 1) The League supported the creation of National Park Preserves in Alaska, the California Desert, Florida’s Big Cypress, and at other sites where it is desirable to protect the resource base as a unit of the National Park System. The League supports the permitting of traditional uses of the area—such as hunting, fishing, and, in some cases, motorized off-road access—to continue. Park preserve areas should be managed on the basis of sound biological data and established wildlife management principles. Traditional uses should be discontinued if not in harmond:
      • a) Give bison priority over domestic cattle on national forestland adjacent to the park.
      • b) Encourage private landowners to accommodate bison, but allow for hazing of bison off private property when necessary.
      • c) Permit limited sport hunting to control bison outside the park.
      • d) Include winter road grooming by the National Park Service to limit easy migration out of the park for the bison.
  • E) National Historic Areas
    • 1) These units are established and managed by the National Park Service to preserve and interpret scenes important in the history of the United States. The League believes low-intensity recreational uses should be allowed in such areas, as long as they are compatible with historical values.
  • F) National Recreation Areas
    • 1) National recreation areas are established where outdoor recreation values of lands or waters are of national or broad regional significance. These areas are managed to provide public recreation opportunities with protection of scenic and other natural values. Limited commodity uses may be permitted under careful regulation, as long as they are compatible with the primary purpose of public recreation and protection of resource values. Hunting and fishing should be permitted except when public safety requires otherwise.
  • G) National Wildlife Refuges
    • 1) Administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, national wildlife refuges are established to preserve and manage habitat for the protection and propagation of migratory waterfowl and other wildlife species.
    • 2) The League believes certain refuges are adjacent to land and water resources of unique national significance and should be expanded and managed to protect those values in perpetuity. Further, the League believes there are critical riverine and wetland ecosystems that contain unique fish and wildlife values that warrant protection by designating them as new units of the National Wildlife Refuge System. The League believes such areas should be available to carefully controlled hunting, fishing, and other compatible recreational uses to the extent they do not intrude upon environmental values or primary management purposes. Subject to proper regulation, timber harvest, agricultural production, and other commodity uses may be permitted on a case-by-case basis.
    • 3) The League calls specifically for full wilderness protection for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
    • 4) The original 500,000-acre Grand Kankakee Marsh in Indiana and Illinois has been largely drained and the river channelized to facilitate agriculture and food control. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has a proposed a portion of the area as a national wildlife refuge. The League supports the establishment of the Grand Kankakee Marsh National Wildlife Refuge.
    • 5) TheLeague supports full funding for the Refuge Revenue Sharing Fund by increasing annual appropriations to balance declining receipts from commodity uses of refuge lands as needed to meet the federal government’s full in-lieu-of-tax obligations to local governments.
  • H) Wild and Scenic Rivers
    • 1) Administered by federal land management agencies or by the states, wild and scenic rivers are designated to preserve selected waterways in free-flowing and natural or pastoral condition, and to ensure continued public access and recreational opportunities. Because land ownership and use patterns vary greatly from river to river, management approaches must be flexible and individually tailored. Generally, the League believes that where designated rivers flow primarily through public lands, those lands should be managed insofar as possible to maintain a wilderness landscape. Where river corridors are privately owned, the League generally believes attempts should be made to protect riverbanks and main- tain pastoral surroundings by use of easements and similar agreements with landowners as a desirable alternative to large-scale public acquisition.
    • 2) Consistent with our long support for the Wild and Scenic River System, the League urges Congress to designate the 148 miles of the South Platte River and North Fork of the South Platte River as outlined in the U.S. Forest Service proposal as a national wild and scenic river.
    • 3) Many waterways across the United States have gained special status, including national recognition for their natural, scenic, and recreational value. The League urges local, state, and national governments to protect as highest quality “outstanding resource waters” waterways under the Clean Water Act. These waterways should be guarded in the public interest without degradation and should be named as such in states’ water-quality standards.
  • I) National Wilderness System
    • 1) Since its inception, the League has supported actions to ensure that significant and representative portions of national forests, national parks, national wildlife refuges, and other federal lands are forever set aside in their natural, wild condition for the enjoyment and education of people and for scientific purposes. No developments, such as roads, tourist facilities, mining, and timber harvesting, should be permitted in such areas (although mining is permitted under the Wilderness Act). Consumptive uses (primarily grazing) should be allowed only when established prior to designation and compatible with the wilderness concept. Primarily, wilderness is a place for hiking, climbing, camping, hunting, fishing, and aesthetic enjoyment. The League supports management of wilderness for controlling recreational use, overcrowding, and damage to environmental values. The League further recognizes the essential role of fire in the replenishment of certain ecosystems and calls for:
      • a) Better definition of the objectives of the role of fire management in wilderness.
      • b) Definite guidelines under which natural fire can be allowed to burn.
      • c) Implementation of planned ignition of fire as a management tool for meeting wilderness objectives and protecting wilderness values.
    • 2) The Leaguebelieves carefully selected areas that show some evidence of human impact, as in the Eastern United States, should be designated as wilderness and managed so that wilderness conditions are restored by the forces of nature.
  • J) Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW)
    • 1) The League has been intimately involved with the BWCAW since its formation, and we assert our opposition to any attempt that would encourage and allow increased development of or motor access to the BWCAW or any other wilderness area.
  • K) Alaska
    • 1) Since World War II, and particularly during the 1970s, the League worked diligently with other conservation organizations to assure optimum long-term planning for and management of federal lands in Alaska. The League believes Alaska offers unparalleled opportunity to protect entire ecosystem units, abundant wilderness for dispersed recreation, and ecological baselines against which to measure environmental change.
    • 2) The League supported passage of the final Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980, but found it to fall short of the League’s goals, particularly in acreage for national wildlife refuges, protection for southeastern Alaska forests, and protection for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The League also opposed the inclusion of subsistence provisions in the act.
  • L) California Desert
    • 1) Although much of the California Desert has been managed for multiple use, the League has found that the protection and preservation of the desert’s fragile natural resources should be the foremost management consideration. The League has called for much of the California Desert to be managed as wilderness and as national park preserves, where hunting and wildlife management would continue to be permitted.
    • 2) The U.S. Army currently controls some 643,000 acres at Ft. Irwin in California’s Mojave Desert and seeks to expand that by an additional 331,000 acres. The expansion area is largely under the management of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and borders the Death Valley National Park and the Mojave National Preserve. The operations at Ft. Irwin cause massive and potentially permanent damage to those areas used for tank training. The League urges the U.S. Secretary of Defense to withdraw the request to acquire this land and for Congress to reject approval of funds for this expansion.