Phoenix's Resident Conservationist Speaks Out

BY SUSAN VOIGT Every year, more than 200 million people visit the 335 public reserves within the custody of America's National Park Service.

For an hour, a day, or a week, these guests drink in the beauty and uniqueness of our nation's grandest creations. In personal ways, these visitors absorb the diverse wonders protected and interpreted all across America. A moment at the brink of a canyon or at the base of a redwood may become the catalyst for a more rewarding outlook on life, or the spark that leads to a higher awareness of the land.

What is easy to forget-or fail to realize -the parks, though already there, had to be preserved. Actively protected. Save trees. Minimize roads. Support declining plant and animal species. Safeguard land forms. All that and much more is the duty of a conservationist.

And that has been the lifework of George L. Collins. Now of Phoenix, he is an energetic retiree of the National Park Service and vice president of Phoenix-based Conservation Associates.

To this eloquent and influential man America owes thanks for years of assistance in saving parks and other open spaces. A Minnesotan early transplanted to California, Collins was schooled in fine and applied art. He intended to become an artist.

But his summer duties as laborer, fireguard, and relief lookout for the U.S. Forest Service enhanced his love of the land. This led in the mid-1920s to seasonal employment with the National Park Service and graduation to park ranger. The Park Service was authorized by Congress in 1916 and organized during the ensuing years. During this time America's land-use philosophies were excitingly evolutionary.

Until the end of 1960, Collins helped form some of those philosophies and select and establish some of the most distinctive parks on Earth.

The survey of recreational resources of the Colorado River Basin under the immediate direction of Collins had a profound effect protecting existing and adding new national parks, monuments, and recreational areas in the Colorado River Basin.

And he instituted studies through which ways were organized for citizens to usewithout detriment-the first national recreation area, that of Lake Mead. The list goes on.

Two other of Collins' far-reaching interests were the West Coast Recreational Survey-which yielded the Point Reyes National Seashore, the improvement of Channel Island National Monument, and the state park systems of the Pacific Coast and inland. The Alaska Recreation Survey of the 1950s, out of which came the expansive Arctic Wildlife Range, were among his assignments.

Today more than seventy-nine million acres of land and water are administered by the National Park System. No doubt George Collins played a role in the selection, acquisition, and preservation of those splendid places.

In 1960, Collins retired from government service, realizing he might better establish park lands through private efforts. His vehicle was Conservation Associates (CA), a nonprofit, self-financed, independent consulting group devoted to helping public bodies acquire lands for parks and open space. Partners of CA include Collins and fellow conservationists Doris F. Leonard and Dorothy Varian.

George Collins is an honorary life member of the Sierra Club, and of The Nature Conservancy (of which he is a past president). Under the sponsorship of the International Union of Preservation of Nature and Natural Resources, he served in 1962 as secretary-general of the First World Conference on National Parks, with CA assistance.

A past contributor to Arizona Highways Magazine, Collins enthusiastically joined in a conversation: Q: Theodore Roosevelt defined America's early parks as "Essential Democracy-preservation of the scenery, the forests, of the wilderness life, and the wilderness game for the people as a whole."

A: And he was correct, if not original. The idea came from the people, just as everything good I ever did came out of those around me. The whole idea of national parks began in 1870 when a bunch of explorers sat around a campfire in the Yellowstone talking about the beauty surrounding them. Instead of claiming it for themselves they decided to share it "as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people."

Q: Do you think a continuing influx of people into Arizona poses any threat to the natural wonders here?

A: Arizona is fragile, slow to recover from physical wounding of her deserts particularly. Any blemish is highly visible. Our forests, like most forests, are slow to reproduce in kind from logging at a commercially generous rate, man-caused wildfire, and any concentrated recreation overuse. Population is proliferating, has been since World War II, exponentially. I would have preferred a more conservative growth for Arizona, a more traditionally entrenched social and economic equilibrium. Frankly, Arizona is in no way, or any longer, isolated, and that worries me.

Q: What is the most difficult problem facing Arizona parks caretakers today?

A: The most difficult problem, but by no means the only one, is lack of money. Uses and costs for parks in our expanding and more and more sophisticated population always seem to outrun the money to meet them. In a very few rare instances, parks pay their way by direct monetary return. Generally, they do not and were never intended to. They are cultural assets for the benefit of all the people and provide advantages and enjoyment sufficient to warrant their perpetuation at public expense. In Arizona we have many unique parks. If they couldn't be maintained adequately, or had to be closed for lack of funding, the state would become a pretty sterile and unhappy place.

Q: What are some of the other challenges you alluded to?

A: Air pollution is one. The air can carry very corrosive and toxic chemicals that destroy vegetation and water, fish, game, and people. The chemicals can and do insidiously weaken, impair, and vastly increase corrosion and erosion in the Southwest, even of the rocks themselves. I am not speaking of just a few places, or just our Arizona situation. We are still better off than most states. Another serious form of pollution is noise in some of our open space. Arizona is full of perfectly nice, young, energetic youngsters and adults who have taken to boats, dune buggies, two-wheelers, and now three-wheelers like ducks go after june bugs. Where peace and tranquility once reigned the air now resounds. One thing more: there are just too many people. Small families might be encouraged through tax incentive. Do that, and in three or four generations the population-ulation might be far less out of hand, and the economy as well. If we're smart, we'll embrace more self-discipline.

Q: Has humanity as a whole become more aware of conservation?

A: Our forefathers, unknowingly, were despoilers. They practiced an economy of waste. They lived by the gun, the ax, the saw, the plough. They used and wasted the Great Plains, the forest, the wildlife, the waters. We're still doing that, but in the last seventy-five years conscience and conservation have risen to education against waste and destruction. Conservation is big business today, and good business. No individual, no corporate body, no business institution can escape it. But can we learn conservation of resources in time? People didn't in many parts of the world and whole civilizations perished. There is a growing awareness today in America, especially Arizona. We have a good record in Arizona, but the question is, can we hold to it?

Q: What are we doing wrong?

A: It's not exactly doing wrong. It's that we're overdoing everything that's pretty good. We could slow down, become more moderate so the Joneses won't have so much to keep up with. For example, we ought to invest more in public transportation to avoid the overuse of private cars. I rode to work on a bus for thirteen years and enjoyed it. Yet I had neighbors who were proud of not having been on a bus in all that time.

Conservationist

Q: Must we give up our cars and quit cooling our homes?

A: Of course not. We'll have to learn economy, however, much better domestic planning, and some frugality in our living. I'm sure of that. Accompanying the array of comforts and laborsavers we enjoy is a certain loss of concern about where it all comes from the land basically. An equilibrium must occur between people and their land, and nature, if we are to avoid impoverishment and degradation.

Q: What adjustment in public attitude would you recommend?

A: I believe that modern America will support leadership it trusts, in conservation as in other matters. Without discriminating and forceful leadership we become so preoccupied with all manner of interests we simply assume that the Park Service, Forest Service, Fish and Game people, the land people, and other of our land-use bureaucracies are checking the good health of our land, our habitat, our basic source of life. Well, that isn't necessarily the case. In terms of natural resources husbandry, much is out of balance, the imbalance having developed slowly and insidiously. As we grew bigger, we assumed a proliferation of global and domestic responsibilities which affect our homeland. I say, wake up America, and look at your land for what it really is culturally. That is indispensable!

Q: Were some of our past conservation choices wise?

A: For the causes of conservation of the land and the people, some of them weren't worth a damn! We didn't know enough. Suppose that tomorrow you had to go back to the sixty-hour week at four-bits an hour. I recall those days very well, and there wasn't all that much time for fun and games. Here's where some modern advantages come in-good roads and trails, campers, trailers, better transportation, and communication. Some of the technology aids in conservation. Our youngest son has been a biologist in industry, and I know that he and his colleagues used computers, satellite mapping, helicopters, boats, and the entire assemblage of technical aids. They do a better job than I ever could. The old days were okay for me, but these are better times, more stirring, stronger intellectually.

Q: Recent federal legislation proposed placing thousands of acres of forest and canyon lands in the Arizona Strip under protective wilderness status and releasing hundreds of thousands of acres of federal

70/Arizona Highways Magazine

lands now frozen in wilderness study areas to mining and other land developments. Is there room for that kind of give and take? A: I believe it is unwise to enact this type of legislation without specific review of its contents by Congress. That's what we have Congress there for-to take the long hard view. The rest of us, the people, should help educate Congress. Historically, when enough people speak out from all over the country, the Congress, and only Congress, will adopt the right policies for the Strip, for all of us. Otherwise there will be the usual nibbling away, frittering away, at the edges and perhaps all over the Strip by all types of entrepreneurs to the point that we could see that natural empire invaded, scarred, depleted of its ennobling character.

Q: Do you feel there can be a healthy balance between conservation and economic progress?

A: Yes. There are hundreds of examples from the Arctic to the Gulf. One fine example is Avery Island, down in the Southland near the Gulf of Mexico, where an oil com-pany extracts a lot of oil. But you don't see derricks and other machinery. The wells are pumped quietly, or relatively so, and all the logistical stuff is nicely screened. The island is a verdant area attractive to birds and other wildlife. People can go to see and enjoy it. When the oil has all been taken out, to the point that it is no longer economically feasible to pump, it will, no doubt, remain attractive to wildlife, to research biologists, and will have the same, perhaps even more cultural value than it has now. The whole thing is a working example of conservation and economic progress, all at the expense of industry for the time being. But in the long run, we'll have to be the ones to look out for such places. Bureaucracy in industry, in government, will only do what the people require!

Q: In retrospect, is there anything you would have done differently when planning for the use of the Colorado River Basin?

A: It was a great opportunity and challenge to get into that whole basin survey in the late '30s and early '40s. But yes, probably if I were doing it, or had some plenary say, there are a few things I would have done, not so much differently, but more adequately. For example, I would have had that admirable engineering organization, the Bureau of Reclamation, broadened in its responsibilities to think and act on its own with more concern for cultural resources and values. I'd have them stop stream piracy, and never allow another dam directly affecting the Grand Canyon.

Q: The huge amount of water from the early 1983 snowmelt in the upper Rockies forced the Bureau of Reclamation to release an unprecedented amount of run-off from dams on the Colorado River. Many people along the river lost property, or suffered extensive damage to homes and businesses. What is your opinion of the situation? Could it have been avoided? A: From the beginning, with the Reclama-tion Act of 1902, the Bureau cautioned far and wide that none of the lands within the projected conceivable highest flood bound-aries of a river should ever be occupied with "fixed" installations incapable of quick shifting away from flood dangers. Of course it could all have been avoided. My conviction is that anyone who makes a substantial investment in anything of a fixed nature within a floodplain that he can't pull out, or walk away from with-out undue loss, is a gambler.

Q: In your calling, you've worked closely with distinguished attorneys in the conservationvation movement. Do you think we need more laws? A: Under any laws, including those for conservation, it is incumbent upon us to interpret and function in ways that safeguard the land. I recognize that the government, with its proliferation of laws, rules, and regulations, in some situations gets so balled up that everything grinds to a maddening halt. Now I think we have about enough laws. Compounding them becomes the game of reactionary minorities and their mercenaries. The need is for sensible application of existing law that fits the needs.

Q: What prompted you to leave the National Park Service after thirty-three years to co-found Conservation Associates? A: I love the National Park Service and always will. But it was time to move on. I was fifty-seven. Our children were pretty well grown and headed in the right direction. My wife has always indulged me. I felt safe in leaving the government, and there were so many things that needed to be done that I wanted to get into but couldn't under Big Brother's restrictions, like helping to save places around the country that wouldn't be in the purview of my service. A number of the Park projects I became interested in were pretty small and local, but at the same time very precious. Through private means, I could work to save those areas, and did.

Q: In your years of conservation effort, have you ever come up against a proposal in which there was no interest?

A: I can think of some situations in which interest was difficult to arouse, and I guess a few of them failed. There were a number ber of situations in which not much went my way. Getting back into National Park status the whole eastern half of what was, until 1905, one splendid physiographic unity at Yosemite has been a goal of some of us for years. That is only half a park. The Redwood National Park in northern California was and is a compromise. It could be a lot better. You can't let yourself get discouraged, of course. Competent parkmen never lose humor, or quit when the cards go against them.

Q: Have you ever regretted a decision you made concerning areas to be preserved?

A: Not really regretted any. But I've made mistakes, and been a party to some. The main thing is you must make decisions. You can't sit around on your hands forever. You just have to live with your decisions and try to make them pay off. To take a position no one else has taken-at least publicly is difficult, no job for the weakkneed. You are fair game for everybody in a controversial situation. You have to prove yourself and your point over and over again. If you can do this honestly without getting mad at anybody, and try To go out of your way to pick the person to whom you seem to be the most offensive, and find some way to get together with him or her, you usually find yourself improving on your decision.

Q: Is there an area you are most proud of having had a hand in preserving?

A: I guess it would have to be the Arctic International Wildlife Range. When achieved as it is planned, it could be the most splendid park ever established in North America, in my opinion. I am proud of having helped with it for thirty years or more. I do not expect to live to see it fully established in Alaska and the Yukon, but the important point is that it is one great physiographic unity based upon the needs of the inhabiting wildlife. It is about half established today the United States' half-and Canada is moving progressively forward. It could take another fifty years of effort, a couple or more generations.

Q: After your years of experience with the Grand Canyon, do you ever grow tired of it?

A: No, but there are times when it is so overwhelming to me in its beauty and significance that I can't stand looking at it. The Grand Canyon is a presence to me. It turns me inside out emotionally sometimes. I haven't been down in the Canyon for a long while and probably never will again, at my age. But in the high order of emotional and spiritual values that one finds within himself occasionally, I'd say that almost always I am eager to go take another look. It is exciting, stimulating, moving, an overwhelming voice for everything grand in life.

Additional Reading:

Elmore, James W., Editor. A Guide to the Architecture of Metro Phoenix. Central Arizona Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, Phoenix Publishing, Inc., 1983, 201 pages. Significant architecture in the Metro Phoenix area is documented in this guide. This is a picture book, organized to facilitate tours of many of the award-winning, historical, or unique buildings in the area. Included are works by Frank Lloyd Wright and Paolo Soleri, which are located all over Arizona.

Inside Phoenix: 1984. The Arizona Republic/The Phoenix Gazette, Phoenix, 1984, 100 pages. Inside Phoenix is an annual publication which takes a close look at the parts that make up Phoenix. It presents quantitative data on Phoenix's population, tourism, education, economics, employment, industry, housing, transportation, recreation, media, and more.

Jeffery, David. "Arizona's Suburbs of the Sun." National Geographic, October, 1977, pages 487-517. Jeffery provides an in-depth, multi-faceted view of Phoenix and its environs and looks at the city's past, present, and future. Subjects discussed include climate, people, environment, political issues, water, and business.

Johnson, G. Wesley, Jr., Phoenix: Valley of the Sun. Continental Heritage Press, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1982, 240 pages. Johnson traces the development of Phoenix from the ancient times of the Hohokam to present-day metropolis in this thorough and informative text. Many excellent historic and contemporary photographs are included, illustrating the life and times of Phoenicians, past and present.

Johnson, Rich. The Central Arizona Project: 1918-1968. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1977, 231 pages. The political history of the Central Arizona Project is chronicled by the Project's executive director. This behind-the-scenes narrative provides valuable insight into the controversial battle for Congressional authorization of the CAP.

The Journal of Arizona History. (Phoenix Issue), Volume 18, Number 3, Arizona Historical Society, Autumn 1977, pages 237-366. A quarterly journal published by the Arizona Historical Society. This volume contains a collection of essays which explores various facets of Phoenix, including some of the city's ethnic groups, its future, water, journalism, and two prominent citizens: Carl Hayden and Dwight Heard.

McLaughlin, Herb and Dorothy. Phoenix: 1870-1970, in Photographs. Arizona Photographic Associates, Phoenix, 1970, 208 pages. This photographic documentary depicts the first century of Phoenix's history. Included are essays about early settlement in the Salt River Valley, Spanish contact, the founding of Phoenix, its early growth, and the impact of World War I.

Myers, John Myers. I, Jack Swilling: Founder of Phoenix, Arizona. Hastings House Publishers, New York, 1961, 308 pages. This first-person narrative reconstructs the reckless adventures of Jack Swilling, the man responsible for rebuilding Phoenix's prehistoric irrigation-canal system, thereby allowing agricultural development in the area. This book is colorful and entertaining as well as informative.

Our Town-Mesa, Arizona. Mesa Public Schools, Mesa, 1978, 190 pages. This highly readable social studies text, written for Mesa public school students, offers a well-rounded look at the city of Mesa: its history, government, culture, and life-style.

"Phoenix: One Hundred Years Young, 1870-1970." Arizona Highways, April, 1970, 50 pages. This issue of Arizona Highways, published in the year of Phoenix's centennial, tells "the story of Phoenix, which grew from a hay farm on a river bottom into the queen city of the Southwest." In addition to presenting the city's history, this issue explores Phoenix's culture and life-style.

Compiled by Allison Hodges FOR FASTER SERVICE Want to send a gift subscription to Cousin Gus? Changing your address? Got a question about your bill? Want to buy a book or a calendar? Arizona Highways Magazine has established a new, direct telephone number: CUSTOMER SERVICE 258-1000