NPCA's State of the Parks program assesses the overall health of the national parks by analyzing scientific data on the condition of a park's natural and historic resources. The goal is to provide information to policy-makers and the National Park Service that will help improve conditions.
By Kim A. O'Connell
If you were standing at the crest of a windswept dune at Point Reyes National Seashore in California or hiking past its rocky outcroppings or thick stands of conifers, chances are you would not notice that this is a heavily altered and fragile landscape. With a rich variety of birds flying overhead and small mammals rustling in the brush, you, like most visitors, might not believe that the national seashore's native biodiversity is threatened. And if you had come only to witness the seashore's natural wonders, you might not realize that the park has a rich human history that dates back thousands of years or that 35 of its historic structures are in poor condition.
For many years, national park advocates have not been able to get their hands on this level of information on a larger scale, although not for lack of trying.
Even though much has been said about the threats facing the national parks, such statements are often based on anecdotal evidence and rarely on science.
Consistently inadequate funding and staff levels have precluded the National Park Service (NPS) from a full-scale scientific evaluation of the National Park System. | |
| Picking wildflowers by the Point Reyes seashore. Point Reyes protects 80 miles of natural coastline northwest of San Francisco. | |
Today, however, NPCA's State of the Parks program is poised to educate the public about some of the comprehensive issues challenging the Park Service and to identify some of the agency's priority projects by providing scientific assessments of national parks across the country. In cooperation with NPS, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Yale University, and Colorado State University, along with other entities, the State of the Parks program will objectively and holistically quantify resource conditions and threats in selected national park units, with a focus on cultural and natural resources and "conservation capacity"—how well equipped the Park Service is to protect these resources. The program will do this by incorporating existing data and inventories into a user-friendly database created specifically for it. (Eventually, a resource information center will be established to collect the information.) In addition, these assessments will serve as the basis for recommendations for the future.
Once park resources have been assessed and screened through a scientific, peer-reviewed process, the findings will be transmitted to the public, park managers, and Congress. The goal is to provide information to policy-makers and NPS that will help improve conditions in the parks.
So far, four parks have been chosen as the first test cases: Point Reyes National Seashore, whose assessment was released this spring; Adams National Historical Park, whose assessment was released last October; Rocky Mountain National Park, whose assessment will likely be out this summer; and Glacier National Park, whose assessment should be completed later this year. Dozens of additional parks are expected to follow within the next few years.
Sifting through the sands at Point Reyes. The State of the Parks program is attempting to determine the overall health of the park. |
"We don't use numbers very well to tell a story about what's happening at a park; we talk anecdotally about problems," says Mark Peterson, director of the State of the Parks program. "We haven't stepped back and looked at the big picture. And as we look at more and more parks, we can start to get a sense of the problems facing the system. We really haven't connected those dots."
As the program progresses, Peterson says, patterns will naturally emerge. Eventually, thematic assessments will be performed, studying the state of California desert parks, for example, or Civil War battlefields. | |
Point Reyes was chosen to be among the first parks studied because of its rich diversity of habitats and its relatively recent addition to the park system. Established 40 years ago, Point Reyes National Seashore protects 80 miles of natural coastline northwest of San Francisco. The park serves as a sanctuary for 15 percent of California's native plant species, nearly 30 percent of the world's marine mammal species, 45 percent of North American bird species, and 23 federally listed endangered and threatened species. Cultural resources abound here as well, including lighthouses, historic structures, and archaeological sites. The Nature Conservancy has listed Point Reyes and surrounding lands as one of the six most biologically significant areas in the United States. Conservation International describes Point Reyes and other lands within the Central California Coast Biosphere Reserve as one of the top 25 hotspots-the most threatened of all biologically rich terrestrial regions-in the world.
Yet, the Point Reyes story has been one of exploitation, fragmentation, and encroachment. "We've had 40 years of park stewardship to turn around 200 years of exploitation," Peterson says. "We have a park that is 40 miles from San Francisco, gets 2.5 million visitors a year, and is a biodiversity hotspot. This was not the reason the seashore was set aside 40 years ago; back then, they wanted to protect the national seashore for its scenic values. But there is so much more to the story."
At Point Reyes, the State of the Parks assessment is serving as a much-needed guidepost for identifying stewardship needs.
Based on scientific research, each State of the Parks assessment rates critical resource indicators on a scale of one to 100, which then point to an overall resource rating. Point Reyes achieved an overall score of 60 for natural resources and 62 for cultural resources. But a deeper study of each indicator shows what a complicated management challenge exists at Point Reyes. The park scored a relatively good 78 rating for biodiversity, for example, but the ten-year forecast in this category suggests a downward trend because of the presence of nonnative species and changes in the natural fire and flooding cycles. Each of the 13 indicators chosen for assessment includes a ten-year forecast.
Similarly, protection of historic resources garnered a 79 rating, reflecting their overall good condition, but management of collections and archival materials from historic photographs and a herbarium to natural historic specimens rated only a 62. The park has 498,848 objects in its collection, only 35,291 of which are catalogued. The remaining items, most of which are recently acquired, are still being processed. The backlog increased considerably in 1997, when the Park Service acquired historic RCA receiving and transmitting stations from recording company MCI.
At Point Reyes, the State of the Parks assessment is serving as a much-needed guidepost for identifying stewardship needs. The assessment's recommendations include completing inventories of the marine species, as well as a comprehensive study of archaeological resources. "The assessment consolidated a lot of our thinking about the status of the resource," says Point Reyes Superintendent Don Neubacher. "It is good to take a few breaths, review your status, and have that foundation to move forward. Then you can target your priorities."
At Adams National Historical Park in Quincy, Massachusetts, progress has already been made on a couple of fronts since its assessment was released last fall. The park preserves the birthplace and estate of two U.S. presidents—John Adams and John Quincy Adams—as well as other historic structures. Yet the assessment found that the park's collections and archives will likely deteriorate over the next decade if current management practices continue and funding remains static. The park received a 72 rating for cultural resources and a 64 rating for natural resources. Although visitation is soaring, a leased commercial storefront, some distance from the historic sites, serves as the visitor center, and more than 22,000 archival items are uncatalogued. |
THREE-PRONGED APPROACH
NPCA's State of the Parks program is just one piece of an ambitious three-part plan that combines good science with good business and advocacy to preserve the national parks. In the same way that the State of the Parks program examines baseline scientific data about the resources of the National Park System, the pioneering National Parks Business Plan Initiative (BPI), begun four years ago by NPCA and the National Park Service, revealed just how deeply the decades of funding shortfalls had eroded the National Park Service's capacity to protect the parks.
NPCA's analysis of the collected results has shown that, on average, each participating national park receives 32 percent less funding than the amount needed. BPI is also identifying ways of improving management efficiencies in the parks and of garnering financial support from sources other than Congress.
For more than two decades, national parks have not received the support they deserve, creating a nearly $5-billion backlog that has delayed natural and cultural resource protection projects, stalled restoration and infrastructure repair programs, and put on hold efforts to update and improve educational displays.
To address the backlog and the diverse needs of the National Park System, NPCA and a coalition of other groups launched the Americans for National Parks campaign. The campaign seeks to secure full funding for the park system within the next five years and aims to educate the public and key decision-makers about the importance of allocating money to support park conservation, resource protection, and visitor education—including $600 million of annual, recurring needs. | |
However, Fleet Bank has now offered to sell a historic building to the Park Service for use as a visitor center. And the Park Service has allocated $200,000 toward curatorial activities at the park. But perhaps most important, the assessment has shed light on threats in a way that might never have happened otherwise. "Outside of any budgeting process or compliance process, there is now this in-depth discussion about the parks' needs in a very integrated and holistic way," says Eileen Woodford, NPCA's Northeast regional director.
Farther west, the draft State of the Park assessments at Rocky Mountain and Glacier national parks are showing that they face similar threats from invasive species and external pressures. Rocky Mountain's most obvious threats are soaring visitation and the destruction of native vegetation by elk and wildfires. At Glacier, a nonnative disease is threatening to decimate the park's white bark pine population. Global warming is also causing the park's signature glaciers to disappear. When the park was established in 1910, it had about 175 glaciers; today it has only 54. Finally, although Glacier is part of the Glacier-Waterton International Peace Park, the United States and Canada could do more to manage their common resources holistically.
"The park's not an island, so we're focusing on the larger ecosystem, which will help maintain the overall integrity of wildlife, fish, and water quality," says Steve Thompson, NPCA's Glacier field representative. "It's highly dependent on what happens outside the park's borders."
Underlying the problem at all these parks is the lack of funding to hire staff and adequately protect park resources. "Lack of funding is manifested in resource health in several ways," Peterson says. "We see it in invasive species on the loose, we see it in terms of natural processes that have been altered, and we find cultural resources that are forced lower down on the priority list."
Another challenge will be to perform follow-up assessments in the years ahead. The State of the Parks program is designed to evaluate information as it currently exists. Only recently has the Park Service begun to systematically collect scientific information, a labor-intensive and time-consuming process. Some of this work is made possible through the congressionally funded Natural Resource Challenge—a science-based research program.
"If you want trend data, you need to collect information for ten to 20 years," says Don Neubacher. "For example, the coho salmon has a three-year cycle. We need the long-term data sets to conduct science-based management. The challenge is providing us with the financial aid and staffing and methodology to attract researchers into the park."
The State of the Parks program has already proven to be an important tool in pointing out the necessity of a methodical approach to park science. "This program will hopefully shine a light on the potential promise and the potential pitfalls of these parks," says Courtney Cuff, NPCA's Pacific regional director. "If we are able to invest more dollars efficiently and effectively, we can find out even more. We hope the federal government recognizes the opportunities to make a positive difference for the future."
Learn more about the State of the Parks program.
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