Clash over rebirth of Mt. St. Helens

When Mount St. Helens erupted nearly 30 years ago, it flattened more than 150 square miles of forest, sent millions of tons of mud and debris, filled the sky with ash and left at least 57 people dead. In the process, it also created an unusual outdoor laboratory where researchers have worked ever since to answer an increasingly urgent question: How do landscapes recover after violent disturbance? It has long been "one of the most fundamental questions in ecology," said Charles M. Crisafulli, an ecologist at the Pacific Northwest Research Station, an agency of the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the mountain. And if, as seems likely, a warming world brings more storms, fires, droughts and floods, the research on the mountain will only grow in importance. "Mount St. Helens allows us to evaluate things we could not evaluate anywhere else," Crisafulli said. But now the work is caught up in a debate over management of the mountain, designated after the eruption as the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. Some say the 110,000-acre monument should be a national park. Some say the Forest Service should manage it differently. "There is a certain segment of the population who would say, 'It's been 30 years, and it's over,"' said Peter Frenzen, whose job title with the Forest Service is monument scientist. As one local resident put it in a letter to the Mount St. Helens Citizen Advisory Committee, appointed to make recommendations on the mountain's fate, "throw out the study zone and let people recreate."...PostBulletin