Shenandoah: park on the brink.

EVEN TO FREQUENT VISITORS Shenandoah National Park looks pretty much like it always has, with its dense canopy of forest, its craggy peaks, its tumbling waterfalls, and its breathtaking overlooks. As fall moves over the Virginia mountains, the leaves metamorphose into a splendid tableu of brilliant colors: ribbons of yellow poplar running through stands of deep green hemlock and pine, red oak and scarlet sugar maple blazing against blue sky, flame orange hickory glistening in the sun.

But despite outward appearances, Shenandoah is sick. Superintendent Bill Wade compares it to an AIDS victim. Weakened by severe air pollution, insect infestations, and the corrosive effects of acid rain, the park's defenses are down, And the symptoms are getting harder to ignore.

Wade now says categorically that Shenandoah is one of America's most threatened national parks. "We have the worst air quality of any national park," he says. "And it's our job as protectors of the resources to do something about that."

Many Problems, Little Money

Shenandoah is 300 square miles of mountain forest soaring to elevations over 4,000 feet. Straddling the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains for 80 miles, it often majestic views of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. A prime example of southern Appalachian hardwood forest, the 58-year-old national park is home to hundreds of miles of hiking trails, 80 varieties of flowering plants, 5,000 deer, and at least 300 black bears. Its major attraction: 105-mile Skyline Drive, the gently curving road that traces the backbone of the mountains and links the park to the Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park beyond.

The park is under severe environmental stress. Acid rain from power plants and factories as far away as Illinois slowly poisons its streams with high concentrations of sulfates. Ozone and other airborne pollutants stress trees, weakening their natural defenses against disease, drought, and insect blights. Panoramic views are often obscured by a blanket of haze. The air is so bad on some summer days that health advisories are posted at entrances.

Ballooning federal deficits also are taking their toll. Buildings and equipment are showing their age. Roofs leak, radios don't work, and broken vehicles go unrepaired. Inadequate budgets have contributed to a $12 million maintenance backlog and a $2.5 million deficit in equipment replacement funds, and many seasonal and full-time positions remain unfilled. Employee morale is low and visitors complain about reduced services. One large campground has been closed indefinitely to save money. Ranger-led hikes and interpretive talks have been cut, and efforts to catch poachers have been scaled back.

Inadequate funding forces Wade to make difficult choices, and though they have earned him many friends in the environmental movement, they have also made him powerful enemies. A tough, outspoken careerist who sees his primary responsibility as protecting Shenandoah's besieged natural resources, the 53-year-old superintendent has run afoul of politicians, businessmen, and Virginia's electric-power industry.

What Wade is up against is best illustrated by the storm of protest that greeted his proposal to close portions of Skyline Drive during the first half of 1993. He intended to redirect the money to his natural resources, visitor services, and law-enforcement divisions. But businessmen in Front Royal, a gateway community at the park's northern end, protested to their congressional representatives, who persuaded Wade's Park Service superiors to overturn his decision and keep the road open.

Though the tourist industry tends to take a short-term view, Wade says he is obligated to take the longer view. If the park's natural features aren't protected, there won't be much left for tourists to come and see, he says. The controversy "really called attention to the problems here and in other parks. Some people still don't like the choices we have to make, but there have to be tradeoffs, and they're starting to understand that."

Dirty Air

Almost all the park's two million annual visitors travel Skyline Drive; 90 percent rarely wander far from their cars. They stop at the overlooks, idling their engines as they read signs describing Shenandoah's ruggedly scenic terrain: Hogback, Little Devil Stairs, Old Rag, Hawksbill, Panorama. Jammed along the narrow road, the cars and motorhomes add to the miasmic summer haze that cloaks the hills.

Skyline Drive makes the park wonderfully accessible. Even the most out-of-shape Sunday driver is rewarded with spectacular views of pasture-quilted valleys and endless ridgelines of mountains rolling off toward the far horizon. But tiny particles of sulfates and nitrates, produced primarily by coal-burning power plants, hang in the air, transforming the age-old bluish hue that gave these mountains their name (a tint caused by organic transpiration in the heavy forest cover) into an unnatural white and gray haze. Nitrous oxides from motor exhaust add a brownish-yellow tinge to the smog, and high summer humidity exacerbates the problem.

"Probably the exclusive reason the Skyline Drive was built was as an elevated viewing platform," Wade says. "That's why they put it right down the backbone of the ridge--so people could pull off and look off either side and get those magnificent views, at that time sometimes as far as 100 miles."

The days of such panoramic views are gone, probably irretrievably. Visitors to the park often go home feeling cheated because they can't see what they came to see. Poor visibility is the No. 1 complaint rangers hear from tourists now, according to Julie Thomas, manager of Shenandoah's air-quality program. Since 1948, when the Federal Aviation Administration began keeping records for pilots, overall visibility has declined by 60 percent 80 percent in the hot summer months. Even winter visibility is down 40 percent.

Rangers at Shenandoah have been monitoring air quality since 1983, and the steady stream of data has been discouraging. Some years are better than others because of climatic variation, but the general trend is clear: The view from Skyline Drive is getting worse. In 1991 the average visibility was a mere 12 miles. During the summer of 1993, the air was so soupy and thick with pollutants that views of 30 miles or more--once common-place--were possible just one day in 10. "On bad days you're lucky to see the valley at all," Thomas says.

A 10-year study by the University of California at Davis released last spring confirms that air quality in Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains national parks continues to decline. Since 1980 sulfate deposition in Shenandoah has increased an average of 4 percent a year. Summer visibility in Shenandoah and the Smoky Mountains today is worse than in Los Angeles, the study concluded.

Ozone levels are also rising. Harmful ozone (unlike the beneficial ozone in the upper atmosphere that shields the sun's ultraviolet light) is produced mainly by car exhaust mixing with sunlight in the lower atmosphere. High concentrations muddy the air, damage trees and other plants, and can be harmful to breathe. Shenandoah's ozone readings are frequently above 80 parts per billion, a level dangerous to people with heart and respiratory problems. Thomas says the park has averaged 20 high-ozone days each summer for the past 10 years.

The situation is particularly galling to Wade, who grew up in America's desert Southwest, where views of 100 miles or more are normal. Accordingly, he started posting visibility and air-quality signs at the park's four entrance stations in 1991. Local businessmen grumbled that the signs would drive visitors away. But Wade persisted, and the signs still stand.

Acid Rain

Rick Webb and Art Bulger, research scientists at the University of Virginia, have been studying acid rain deposition in Shenandoah National Park since 1979. Bulger, a fish biologist, knows the etiology all too well: He's worked in Norway and seen the end result. As lakes and rivers become more acidic, fish begin to die. Because it is downwind of heavily industrialized Britain, Germany, and Poland, Norway is probably 50 years ahead of Shenandoah. Hundreds of lakes in southern Norway have no fish, and two-thirds of its lakes have lost all their fish over the last century.

The same scenario could play out in the U.S. Fish in hundreds of Adirondacks streams have already died of acid exposure, and fish will begin to die in Virginia's mountains if tougher measures aren't taken to reduce air pollutants, Bulger says. He adds that provisions to reduce sulfate and nitrate emissions under the 1990 Clean Air Act aren't adequate to reverse the damage to the park's soils and streams.

Shenandoah and the Great Smokies have the worst acid rain problem of any of America's 48 national parks. The effects park visitors can see--severely impaired visibility--are bad enough. But what they can't see is slowly but inexorably destroying vital elements of Shenandoah's fragile ecosystem.

Three factors make Shenandoah particularly vulnerable to acidity: geography, geology, and topography. The park's location in northwestern Virginia puts it directly downwind of the prevailing westerlies that carry in dirty air from the heavily industrialized Ohio Valley. High mountains trap that air and wring the moisture out of it. Shenandoah's soils and streams are especially susceptible because of the park's bedrock geology. Webb points out that the park's three predominant rock strata--silici-clastic (quartzite, sandstone, and shale), basaltic, and granitic--have only poor-to-moderate acid-neutralization capacity. Because the rock cannot neutralize acid effectively, acids build up in the soils and wash into the park's streams, endangering fish and other aquatic life.

Topography also plays a role. The park's steep slopes and narrow watersheds promote flash flooding and rapid soil erosion. Hard rains and heavy snow melts have a "toxic shock" effect on fish by suddenly flushing high concentrations of sulfates, nitrates, and aluminum out of the soil and into streams.

The situation is likely to get worse. In March 1993, after a heavy snowfall, the first conclusive acid-related fish kill in Virginia was documented at two small streams in nearby George Washington National Forest. Lethal quantities of dissolved aluminum washed into the streams, killing a number of rainbow trout. In its normal solid form, aluminum is harmless; when dissolved by acids, it becomes poisonous to aquatic life. On the dead fish's gills, Bulger and other researchers discovered traces of toxic aluminum, which destroyed the gill membranes.

There is no hard evidence that mature fish have died yet in Shenandoah, but acids and aluminum have so saturated some areas that fish exhibit stunted growth. Preliminary field tests show high mortality in brook-trout embryos. Several closely monitored Shenandoah streams have already reached a level of acidity well within the biologically critical range for fish.

Wade has been sounding the alarm ever since the park staff learned in 1990 that up to 30 new power plants were being planned in Virginia. The Clean Air Act allows park superintendents to review permit applications for new power plants. In light of his responsibility to protect air quality in Shenandoah, Wade fried a notice of adverse impact in the Federal Register in September 1990 seeking to block the new plants. It cited 15 that would pump out a total of 20,089 tons of sulfur dioxide and 36,304 tons of nitrogen oxide each year.

He failed to stop construction of the plants, but Wade rallied the

environmental movement, pricked public consciousness, and helped define a more activist role for federal land managers. His efforts led to the creation of the Southern Appalachian Mountain Initiative, a coalition of environmental groups and representatives from the Park Service, Forest Service, EPA, Fish & Wildlife Service, and eight state governments in the Southeast. The group has taken a first step toward a truly regional dialogue on air pollution.

If politicians don't seriously address the problem by enacting tougher emissions standards and calling for more efficient energy use, says Julie Thomas, the prospects down the road are bleak for Shenandoah. "I don't think we'll ever have a desert here," she says. "We'll still have something green, but we won't have near the diversity of species we have now."

Gypsy Moths and Dying Hemlocks

Webb recently discovered another factor that is accelerating acidification in the park: the gypsy moth. Gypsy moth caterpillars have defoliated thousands of acres of park forest during the last seven years, killing many older and less disease-resistant trees. In the process, they have littered the forest floor with organic debris that decomposes into nitric acid.

Meanwhile, an explosive new infestation is threatening the park. The hemlock woolly adelgid--a tiny insect that feeds on hemlock sap--has multiplied rapidly since the mid-1980s, with catastrophic effect. The adelgid defoliates hemlocks by injecting toxins into the needles where it feeds, preventing the trees from producing new growth. Successive defoliations over several years kill the trees.

Keith Watson, an entomologist with the park's division of natural resources, says the destruction has been remarkably rapid. In 1990, 78 percent of the park's hemlocks were still considered healthy. Random surveys of tree plots in 1993 showed the adelgids had killed almost 4 percent of the hemlocks and seriously damaged an additional 43 percent. "If that trend continues, we won't have any hemlocks left in this park," Watson says.

Late last year Watson applied to the National Park Service for $287,000 in special funding to start a research and management program to control the pests, but the request was turned down. Because spraying is difficult and expensive Shenandoah has severely limited the number of hemlocks it treats. Among threatened stands are a magnificent old-growth hemlock forest in the Limberlost area near Skyland, where many trees are more than 400 years old. Another stand under assault is near Camp Hoover at Big Meadows, where President Herbert Hoover built a fishing cabin in the 1920s.

The damage won't be limited to hemlocks, Watson adds. Because they grow along riparian watersheds, providing cool shade, hemlocks play a vital role in fostering unique microsystems teeming with aquatic plants, animals, and insects. "When the hemlocks are gone, where are those species going to go?" Watson asks.

Ecology makes strange bedfellows. Watson theorizes that continuing gypsy moth defoliation is directly contributing to an explosion in hemlock adelgid numbers. He believes the nitrates the moths are producing create an ideal climate for adelgids, which thrive on nitrogen. Compounding the problem is increasing sulfate fallout from acid rain, which alters the nutrient cycle in trees and causes them to produce nitrogen.

Although they can't prove it yet, Wade, Thomas, and Watson are convinced acid rain is directly contributing to the deteriorating natural defenses of Shenandoah's trees, stripping them of their normal immunities and reducing the availability of nutrients in the soil. "The concern is the trees can't take up nutrients the way they normally would," says Julie Thomas. "That makes them more susceptible to disease and insect infestation."

Taken together, the gypsy moth and adelgid infestations and acid rain underscore the delicate thread of interrelationships that keep an ecosystem healthy. Shenandoah today is experiencing "a continuous unraveling" of that vital thread, Webb says.

What Is the Answer?

Shenandoah is a microcosm for the Park Service as whole. The other national parks face many of the same problems, and beleaguered superintendents everywhere are struggling to cope with environmental hazards, truncated budgets, and reductions in staff and services that leave employees angry and the public grumbling.

Although the park has seen some significant increases in funding over the past few years, park officials say rising costs have quickly eaten them up. And as part of the government's overall deficit-reduction program, budgets at Shenandoah and other parks are expected to remain essentially flat for the next five years, Wade says. That means more hard choices ahead.

"How do you keep doing more with less?" asks Watson, alluding to the new ranger motto, 'Do More With Less.' "We're at the point where we can't do what we need to do to protect the resources, and that's very sad."

The situation is serious, but not hopeless. Some see a more environmentally friendly administration under Interior Secretary Brace Babbitt as a distinct sign of improvement. Environmental groups are pinning their hopes on the Southern Appalachian Mountain Initiative. Congress is addressing flaws in the Park Service's fee and concessions structure in order to bolster park revenues. Most people don't realize it, but much of the money Shenandoah and other parks collect at campgrounds and entrance stations doesn't come back to the individual parks or even the Park Service but instead is diverted into the federal treasury.

Concession fees are another culprit. Private companies with long-term contracts to operate park hotels, restaurants, and gift shops have a virtual monopoly over a captive audience of tourists, yet return an average of only 3 percent of their profits to the Park Service. And much of that money doesn't go back to the individual parks.

Boosting admission and concessions fees will help, but not enough, Wade believes. "If we're going to continue to have a premier park system, it's going to have to be paid for some other way," he says. National parks increasingly will have to rely on outside partnerships, private funding, and volunteers if they are to continue offering the services the public expects, he adds.

Wade recently took a step in that direction, announcing the creation of a Friends of Shenandoah National Park to coordinate volunteer efforts and raise money for special projects (see "Be a Friend"). He hopes the group will also help heal some lingering resentment felt by park neighbors who remember the early 1930s, when mountain folk were evicted from their homes to make way for the park.

No matter what happens on those fronts, Wade has an ace in the hole that he hasn't been timid to play. Whatever else the public may think of the federal government, it loves its national parks and isn't likely to sit by and watch them die. That's why Wade continues to bang the drum for public support. He is characteristically blunt about it. "I don't see any short-term solutions," he says. "The key is to increase public knowledge. If we don't do that, nothing much will happen. In the meantime, we're going to continue to lose resources."

BE A FRIEND

The mounting federal deficit and ongoing reductions in government services have taken their toll on America's national parks. Last spring Shenandoah National Park Superintendent Bill Wade announced a campaign to form a new citizen's group to help the park cope with tighter budgets: The Friends of Shenandoah National Park.

Wade says the Friends organization will give park supporters a "focused way to assist" the park by acting as a citizen's advocacy group and spearheading fund raising efforts for special projects, as well as providing a pool of volunteers to help out in the park. Many other national parks have created Friends organizations over the years, and these private groups have raised millions of dollars and provided trained volunteers that allow financially strapped parks to offer a broader range of services to visitors.

Anyone interested in joining the Friends of Shenandoah National Park should write to Superintendent J.W. Wade, Shenandoah National Park, Route 4, Box 348, Luray, VA 22835, or call park headquarters at 703/999-3400.

THE WOOLLY ADELGID

LIFE CYCLE

* From early March through June, adult female adelgids lay eggs on the underside of hemlock twigs. The insect's name and white, cottony appearance come from the woolly sac that envelops the bug and her eggs.

* From April to June the eggs hatch into nymphs that crawl for 1-2 days before settling to feed at the base of the hemlock's needles. During the crawling phase in early spring, adelgids can be suffocated by applying a heavy coating of dormant oil or insecticidal soap to the bottoms and tops of hemlock branches.

* Some of the nymphs remain wingless. Attached to the hemlock, they lay eggs and produce a new generation of adelgids in summer and fall.

* Other nymphs grow wings and, according to research, feed on an undetermined species of spruce tree. Researchers say the adelgid has apparently not been able to reproduce successfully on any species of North American spruce.

NED BURKS--is a freelance writer and former journalist who has covered park, political, and environmental issues for 10 years. He lives and works in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.