Any dream of national park status for Mt. St. Helens took a serious blow today.
A special committee created to study the future of Mt. St. Helens is wrapping up after a year of work. Its main recommendation? That the volcano should stay under the management of the U.S. Forest Service, and not become a national park.
That doesn’t mean the Mt. St. Helens Advisory Committee is okay with the status quo. Co-Chair Paul Pearce tells us the group also wants the volcano to become a stand alone unit within the Forest Service. Currently it’s managed by the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
Courtesy: U.S. Geological Survey
How would that help? By creating a new unit, Pearce says Mt. St. Helens would become a line item in the budget, making it more visible to Congress and hopefully lead to increased funding. “The issue wasn’t how it was managed,” says Pearce, “but how it was funded.”
Spending on the Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument fell dramatically from 1998 to 2007. Late that year, the Forest Service closed the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center because it didn’t have enough money for maintenance. That event was a wake up call for members of Washington’s Congressional Delegation and a few months later the Advisory Committee was formed.
National park supporters hoped that by turning over Mt. St. Helens to the Park Service, it would be better funded, become a destination travel spot, and grow the local economy.
But Pearce, who’s also a Skamania County Commissioner, says citizens wanted to continue fishing, hunting and snowmobiling near the Volcano. They could lose those activities if Mt. St. Helens became a national park.
Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center. Courtesy USDA Forest Service, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument
The tipping point may have come when the Forest Service and Park Service made competing presentations to the Committee. “We saw much more passion on part of the Forest Service,” says Pearce. “We didn’t see that at all with the Park Service.”
Once the Committee releases the list of recommendations, it will schedule a series of public hearings to take in more comment. Look for a new story Monday on what’s next for Mt. St. Helens.
