From the Thursday, March 3, 2005 online edition of the Missoulian . . .
Leo Marnell stood stiff in his formal greens, flat-brimmed hat eclipsing the distant mountaintops, and looked long across the frozen and familiar waters of Lake McDonald.
Much of what is known about the lake - its food web, its water chemistry, its history as a fishery - is known because Marnell spent three decades reeling in answers from the silent depths. He seemed reluctant to leave its shores on this first gray day of March, the last day he would wear the broad brown hat of Glacier National Park's top scientist. . .
Marnell arrived in Glacier National Park 28 years ago, back in 1977, one of the first generation of professional research scientists to be recruited by the National Park Service.
A Canadian coal mine was knocking on Glacier's northern door; in response, management had created a new fisheries biologist post. And awarded it to Marnell.
"People were really worried about water quality relative to the mine," he said. "My job was to collect baseline data from the North Fork" of the Flathead River, a waterway that runs down from Canada to form Glacier's western boundary. . .
Read the entire article . . .
Posted by nfpa at March 3, 2005 10:08 AM