NPS Mission - National Park Service

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National Park Service FY 2013 Budget Justifications Program Overview The NPS actively manages natural resources in the national park system to meet its statutory responsibility to preserve these resources unimpaired for future generations. The Natural Resource Stewardship program is the principal means through which the NPS maintains and improves the health of watersheds, landscapes, and marine and coastal resources, protects plants and animals on the lands and waters in parks, and actively endeavors to improve the resiliency of these natural resources and help them adapt to the effects of climate change. The NPS conducts natural resource stewardship largely at the park level, utilizing park personnel and contractor or cooperative support. Centralized or team-based subject-matter specialists also provide park managers with cost-effective scientific support, specialized expertise, and technical assistance on a wide range of air, sound, water, geologic, and biological park resource management needs, including science-based decision-making support and problem resolution. Park managers continue to prepare a new science and scholarship-based park program plan, the Resource ONPS-11 At A Glance… Preservation Activities Parks contain many examples of watersheds, landscapes, and marine resources disturbed by past human activity or other adverse influences that require: • Restoring disturbed lands associated with abandoned roads and mines. • Protecting wildlife habitat threatened by changes in water flow or quality such as prairies and wetlands. • Controlling exotic plant species that impact native vegetation and wildlife habitat. • Restoring fire effects to fire-dependent vegetation and wildlife habitat where natural fire regimes have been disrupted. • Providing special protection of threatened and endangered plant and animal populations at risk. • Perpetuating karst, cave, geologic processes and features by protecting groundwater quality. • Managing marine fisheries to protect coral reefs and reef fish populations. Stewardship Strategy (RSS), to provide long-range approaches to achieving and maintaining the desired resource conditions established through park general management planning. Addressing both natural resource conditions and resource condition-dependent visitor experiences, the strategies included in park RSSs inform park strategic planning, financial and human resource allocations, and long-term investment in natural resource stewardship. The RSS also includes the anticipated effects of climate change, from both park-specific and Servicewide contexts. As an RSS is completed, it supersedes the park’s previous resource management plan (RMP). Natural resource activities and programs include: Air Resource Management and Research: Established in response to the 1977 Clean Air Act amendments to protect clean air, especially in national parks and wilderness areas, the NPS maintains an extensive monitoring network. Visibility in parks is one of three key performance indicators the NPS uses to assess progress towards one of its long-term strategic goals. The NPS, EPA, and States maintain a network of over 165 fine particle samplers, 57 of which monitor visibility in parks. The NPS also operates a network of more than 65 ambient air quality monitoring sites in units of the national park system to determine other key air quality performance indicators, namely ozone and deposition of mercury, sulfur, nitrate and ammonia. Air quality monitoring is done in cooperation with other Federal and State agencies as part of national networks, including the Clean Air Status and Trends Network (CASTNET), the National Atmospheric Deposition Program/National Trends Network (NADP/NTN), and Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) program. Through the depth of knowledge the NPS has acquired about the causes and effects of air pollution in parks, the NPS has developed collaborative relationships with regulatory agencies and stakeholders to develop and implement air quality management programs for challenges presented by pollution sources located outside park boundaries. States actively consult with the NPS when developing air quality management plans that might affect parks, especially Class I areas. A potential external threat to park natural resources is the construction of new sources of air pollution; particularly those that might affect NPS units designated as Class I areas. The NPS • Clean Air Act Class I Area Criteria National Parks over 6,000 acres • Wilderness acres Areas over 5,000 • National Memorial Parks and International Parks existing on August 7, 1977
National Park Service FY 2013 Budget Justifications At a Glance… A Call to Action On August 25, 2011, the National Park Service issued A Call to Action, a five-year strategic plan that contains 36 action items targeted at national parks and their partners. It is a call to all NPS employees and partners to commit to actions that advance the Service toward a shared vision for 2016 and our second century. Natural Resource Stewardship is a critical component of the Call. Multiple goals and action items relate to this program component. Two to highlight are Actions 20 and 25: • Action 20, Scholarly Pursuits, states the NPS will “sponsor excellence in science and scholarship, gain knowledge about park resources, and create the next generation of conservation scientists. To do so we will establish, through partner funding, an NPS Science Scholars program enabling 24 Ph.D. students from biological, physical, social, and cultural disciplines to conduct research in national parks each year.” • Action 27, Starry, Starry Night, states that the NPS will “lead the way in protecting natural darkness as a precious resource and create a model for dark sky protection by establishing America’s first Dark Sky Cooperative on the Colorado Plateau in collaboration with other federal agencies, partners, and local communities.” ONPS-12 reviews permit applications for new sources of air pollution, actively works with applicants, and assists States during the permitting process to reduce levels of air pollution from these sources and mitigate potential adverse effects on park resources. This includes working with other Federal land managers (i.e., USFS, FWS) to provide consistent guidance to permit applicants and to identify pollutant levels of concern. Air quality applied research directly supports the NPS’s statutory responsibilities under the Clean Air Act to protect important scenic resources and other air quality related values in parks from impairment due to air pollution. It provides understanding of the effects of air pollution on the condition of park resources and ecosystems, and air quality related values integral to visitor experience and enjoyment of parks not available through the USGS/Biological Resources Discipline or other Federal agencies. A significant portion of this effort is the acquisition of research information in national parks, especially Class I parks defined by the Clean Air Act, and information on the composition of particulates in the air that cause visibility impairment. EPA regional haze regulations require States to make reasonable progress towards restoration of Class I area visibility to natural conditions over a sixty-year timeframe. Combined with research on the transport and transformation of air pollutants, these data help identify the regions and sources of the pollutants that cause visibility impairment in parks. Additional investigations into the ecological effects of atmospheric pollutants on park resources supplement these lines of research, including ecological indicators for the effects of air pollution on air quality related values under the Clean Air Act. Find more information about the results of air quality management at http://www.nature.nps.gov/air/ Find more information about the results of air quality applied research at http://www2.nature.nps.gov/air/Permits/ARIS/index.cfm Biological Resource Management: The NPS assists parks with an extensive range of activities to preserve native species and their habitats and contribute to the overall health of the ecosystem services performed by parks. Assistance is provided to park managers and staff to address technically complex native species management needs that require the application of scientific knowledge and involve legal or policy-related guidance. Emerging wildlife and plant health and disease issues are becoming increasingly prevalent. Exotic and invasive species occur in nearly all parks and adversely affect their native species, including threatened or endangered species, and compromise or disrupt normal ecological functions. Exotic Plant Management Teams (EPMTs) serve more than 220 parks over a broad geographic area and work to identify, develop, conduct, and evaluate invasive exotic species removal projects. The NPS is using various approaches to control invasive exotic species populations in parks and to protect sensitive resources from destruction by invasive exotic species, including integrated pest management supported by current scientific information and best management practices. The NPS will use this model to address exotic and invasive animal species such as Burmese pythons, feral pigs, nutria, brown tree snakes and other species present in parks and compromising the health of native ecosystems. The NPS is an active participant with other DOI bureaus in interagency performance budget approaches to high priority invasive exotic species, coordinated by the National Invasive Species Council (NISC). These performance budgets link spending levels with levels of performance to ensure cost-efficiency and effectiveness. The interagency nature of the performance budget means that agencies have agreed to
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NPS Mission - National Park Service

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