NPS Mission - National Park Service

National Park Service FY 2013 Budget Justifications
Wilderness Stewardship: Over 50 percent of the National Park System acreage, mostly in Alaska, is
congressionally designated wilderness, and thus must be uniquely protected and managed so as to
preserve its natural condition. The wilderness stewardship program ensures that these areas are
sufficiently protected and held to the highest standard of natural, untrammeled, and undeveloped
conditions while helping parks with formal stewardship and implementation of the 1964 Wilderness Act.
Parks maintain wilderness character through tactics including: patrolling of the area to provide
backcountry protection, enforcement of regulations, and education to visitors in addition to ensuring their
safety; monitoring for human impacts; conducting campsite restoration; and employing other condition
monitoring techniques, to ensure consistent wilderness resource protection and conservation.
At A Glance…
50 th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act
The 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act will take place in 2014. As part of this milestone, NPS
Wilderness Stewardship will emphasize completing Wilderness Stewardship Plans, Wilderness Character
baseline assessments and revisiting historic proposals for new Wilderness. This celebration gives the
NPS an excellent platform to communicate with the
American public about the National Wilderness
Preservation System. In addition to highlighting this
historic moment, the Wilderness program will continue to
serve as a mentor for lesser developed countries that
would like to create protected area programs. These
countries are highly interested in our Wilderness
Stewardship approach for guidance and shaping of their
own landscape preservation efforts, and this collaboration
creates a medium for sharing knowledge and
experiences. Furthermore, the Wilderness program will
continue to focus on youth programs and on recruiting the
Wilderness Area: Denali NP & PRES
next generation of Wilderness stewards.
FY 2013 Program Performance
Law Enforcement and Protection programs would:
• Continue to ensure the safety and security of visitors to our national parks.
• Continue to maintain and build capability for response to a wide range of emergencies both within
park boundaries and in response to significant national incidents.
• Continue efforts on the southwestern border and in California parks to address pervasive drug
trafficking, illegal immigration, human trafficking, and large scale marijuana cultivation in the
backcountry by working with state and Federal agencies such as the United States Border Patrol.
• Maintain law enforcement capacity through provision of training in areas such as defensive
tactics, firearms proficiency, critical incident response, and courtroom testimony; ensuring that
resources, visitors, and park employees are protected and law enforcement personnel can
respond as necessary to incidents.
• Continue to provide the lifesaving services of search and rescue and emergency medical services
to staff and visitors.
• Protect cultural and natural resources and continue to monitor archaeological sites such as Civil
War Battlefields.
• Continue to contribute to visitor satisfaction through investigative efforts and routine patrol
activities.
• Continue development of the NPS Security and Intelligence program - ensuring the integrity of
the Park Service's Icon sites, and confronting the security challenges germane to the Caribbean,
southwest border, and marijuana eradication.
ONPS-64