National Park Service Science in the 21st Century. A National Parks Science Committee Report to the National Park System Advisory Board

摘要

IN MAY 2002, the Director of the National Park Service asked the National Park System Advisory Board to review the Services Natural Resource Challenge program and offer recommendations concerning future directions for science and scientific resource management in the national parks. The Advisory Board tasked its National Parks Science Committee with developing those recommendations. The Science Committee considered the history of natural resource management in the National Park System and a wide range of issues relating to program operations; policies guiding the natural resource management function; and opportunities facing the National Park Service, an agency long revered by the American public, which is charged with pursuing the highest conservation and preservation purposes. Americas National Park System represents a profoundly egalitarian concept;landscapes of incomparable beauty and grandeur that are to be shared and enjoyed by all people. From the very beginning, the national park idea marked a dramatic, historic step in nature preservation, with its mandate that the parks be retained in their natural condition, thereby extending the sharing beyond the human species to all native flora and fauna within the national parks. The Science Committee believes that this broad, inclusive sharing of unique segments of the American landscape, with all of their native species, forms the vital core of the national park idea, endowing it with high idealism and purpose that have spread throughout the nation and around the world. The Committee views this high purpose as self-evident, and calls on the National Park Service to continue strengthening its dedication to these ideals as the most fundamental precepts of national park management.