Daniel Taylor (environmentalist)

He started to work in Yosemite National Park (1968) in the Resources Management Department.

His job was to restore natural conditions to the forest and in the Yosemite. It included bringing fires in the forest. The forest was overgrown and full of pests and weeds and little trees couldn’t grow because there was no fire in 150 years. So they developed a prescription for burning which allowed us to burn the undergrowth without killing the mature trees periodically and that program is still evolving, but he and his colleagues started that program in Yosemite which then spread to other national parks on the west and then he transferred to the Sequoia National Park to develop a fire program even further there.

He worked with a researcher Bruce M. Kilgore[1] and they continued the burning research programs in some other national parks such as Yosemite, Sequoia, Grand Canyon, North Cascades in Washington state, where he was in charge of the back country program. Then he transferred to the Glaciers National Park. Daniel and his colleagues had to pay close attention to the condition of the fuel, so it would only burn dead wood, small trees, the grasses and all things which were there and shouldn’t have been. He was studying how flammable they were and looked at the conditions of the weather before burning so that if they start a fire, they could control it and the fire would burn only what they want it to burn, so they had to fit a very tight prescription at first. They found that as soon as the fuels were safely removed they could go there a few years later and not pay so much attention. For example: they take a slope for several square miles and burn spots in that slope so that the heavy fuels were reduced and they would have several safer spots to burn in. They burnt spots, they burnt areas where the fuel was especially dangerous. They controlled fire and let the fire burn down because the flames moved downhill much slower, then they could come several years later and repeat this. During a couple of years they were able to burn out all of the meadows in Yosemite Valley and open up the views again, so the tourists could see the cliffs and the waterfalls more clearly and to get rid of the undergrowth that will come in over the years and restore the native grasses to Yosemite valley.

They learned that in the ancient times Indians did exactly the same thing, but their fuels were already reduced so they didn’t have to worry about these weather conditions and slope and all of it, they just started fires for thousands of years. They were essentially copying what they did but with the help of more modern fuels. This restored natural processes in the National parks.

His photo published in National Geographic

Dan Taylor, 1989

Don Reeser had transferred to Redwoods National Park, Dan Taylor succeeded him as Resources Management Division Chief in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in fall 1979.[2] He was put in charge of the natural resources management program, but it had nothing to do with fire. The main problem was controlling feral pigs, goats and other wild cattle and invasive plants. He spent the next 28 years working in this program, hoping to remove the goats and pigs which came in and helping to put back native plants which have practically disappeared from the system and also putting back some of the rare animals.

He was a head of Resources Management Department, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. He managed to solve environmental problems with interaction and cooperation between the park, state agencies, other federal agencies, private organizations, and the general public. There were problems such as endangered species and habitat protection, feral ungulate and exotic plant control, geothermal development, air quality, cave management and others in the National parks.

He and Larry Katahira (Wildlife Specialist) developed new method of monitoring feral goats using radio-collared devices. They use it to tracking feral goats for purposes of removing remnant groups.[3]

He managed international research programs as part of the National Park Service "Volunteers in a Park" program.[4]

Retired in 1996 and continued nature protection activities in Asia, Africa, then on the island of Hawaii, mostly around the community of Volcano.