1998: Don Reeser
Superintendent of Haleakala National Park

Don Reeser has been an aggressive leader inventing and demonstrating hands-on resource management techniques to preserve and restore native ecosystems in Pacific islands for more than three decades. In the late 60s and early 70s, as a young ranger/naturalist at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Don was dissatisfied that the annual elimination of thousands of goats had no effect upon the park’s goat populations. He began small fenced exclosure experiments to determine how to control goat populations. At the time, this was a novel concept. Don discovered that it was possible to construct barrier fences to prevent ‘outside’ goats from re-entering areas where he had removed entire goat populations. Initially he kept marauding goats (and later pigs) from only a few acres—but the concept was born. From what then were merely a few goat-free acres--now are 50,000 or more such ungulate-free acres at both Hawaii Volcanoes and Haleakala National Parks.

Don not only invented the ‘barrier-fence’ technique of keeping goats/pigs out of areas to protect native ecosystems, but he also changed the National Park Service measure of success from the number of alien animals killed in a park to the number of acres free of alien animal populations in a park. The restoration of native ecosystems and the protection of the park’s native biodiversity is the true worthy goal of resource management in these parks.

Don’s innovative philosophy is now the standard in the National Park Service nation wide. Professional resource management units within national parks, pioneered by Don, are now standard throughout the nation’s parks. Don’s inventive resource management techniques and philosophy have been widely copied world-wide.