• The Park Service should take a more proactive role in endangered species conservation and coordinate its actions with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and key state agencies.
  
  
• The Park Service should determine which species that were present historically—whether federally listed or not—are now missing from each national park site and identify the causes of their absence. The Service also should inventory nonvascular plants and invertebrates in parks across the nation to establish a baseline for species management.
  
  
• The Park Service should review and ensure that it has completed the recovery tasks previously assigned to it in existing recovery plans for threatened and endangered species.
  
  
• The Park Service specifically should be more proactive in restoration and recovery activities for top predators.

The Park Service should be the national leader in restoring the full suite of native animals and plants, both terrestrial and aquatic, on units it manages.  

   With 398 federally listed species living on national parks, which in many cases offer the species the best remaining natural habitat, the Park Service should play a larger and more aggressive role in implementing endangered species recovery plans.