National Park Service announces Natural Resources Action Plan; shift to science-based park management

For most of its eight decades, the National Park Service has been criticized for putting too much emphasis on one part of its mission - to conserve the scenery of the parks - and not enough on the other part - to conserve the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein.  In 1963, reports by A. Starker Leopold and the National Academy of Sciences both recommended that scientific research form the basis for all management programs.  Alston Chase's Playing God in Yellowstone (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986) skewered the Park Service's management of nearly every aspect of Yellowstone, with particular emphasis on the grizzly bear saga.  A more scholarly assessment, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, by Park Service historian Richard Sellars (Yale University Press, 1997), makes a convincing case that science has always taken a back seat - if that - in management of the natural resources in the parks.

Prompted in large part by Sellars' book, the National Park Service has finally taken action to make science the basis of natural resource management in the parks.  As part of its strategic plan (required by the Government Performance and Results Act), the National Park Service published the Natural Resources Action Plan on 12 August 1999.  Known in its working form as the "Natural Resources Initiative," the plan can be found at  http://www.nature.nps.gov/challengedoc/ .

The Natural Resource Action Plan Goals are:
    1. National parks are preserved so that this generation and future generations can enjoy, benefit, and learn from them.
    2. Management of the national parks is improved through a greater reliance on scientific knowledge.
    3. Techniques are developed and employed that protect the inherent qualities of national parks and restore natural systems that
        have been degraded; collaboration with the public and private sectors minimizes degrading influences.
    4. Knowledge gained in national parks through scientific research is promulgated broadly by the National Park Service and
        others for the benefit of society.

One of the challenges established in the Natural Resource Action Plan is "Parks for Science:"

                      The long-term preservation of park natural resources
                      makes parks reservoirs of information of great value to humanity. Thus, in
                      addition to the use of science as a means to improve park management,
                      parks can and should be centers for broad scientific research and inquiry.
                      Research should be facilitated in parks where it can be done without
                      impairing other park values. Grants, logistical support, cooperative
                      studies, and other means of facilitating this wider role should be instituted
                      within, or near, a network of parks broadly representative of regional
                      systems. These programs should be developed and operated in
                      collaboration with universities and other science organizations.

Key actions of interest to scientists include improvement of the career ladders for professional resource managers, inclusion of resource managers in senior leadership, and aggressively recruitment of natural resource managers; establishment of a "Sabbatical-in-Parks" for visiting scientists; and the development of a new and uniform scientific research and collecting process (including applications for research permits on the internet).

Making good on its promise, the National Park Service has already announced its intent to consolidate and streamline the permit process.  Your comments are sought through 25 October 1999.  Click here for more information...
 

Return to Ornithology & Society Main Page

Return to BIRDNET Home Page