Western Dispatch September 2010

Grand Canyon National Park, and the Colorado River.
View from Arizona. Photo courtesy of Sarah Pitcher

Making America's 'Best Idea' Better

"There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of the giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children's children forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred." Theodore Roosevelt

Friends,

Picture these and other iconic images of the West and chances are you are thinking about a national park. It's one of our country's greatest strokes of good fortune and foresight - "our best idea" as Wallace Stegner famously said - that our leaders recognized early on that landscapes of such stunning beauty and cultural significance are national treasures to be protected and enjoyed. Established in 1916, the National Park Service (NPS) today manages almost 400 diverse park service units and welcomes close to 300 million visitors every year.

Park managers charged with preserving some of America's most ecologically and historically important places are faced with unenviable challenges: ever-increasing human activity around the parks, the spread of invasive plants and pests, and the effects of climate change, to name a few. As the number and complexity of their challenges have grown, the NPS has seen the need to rely more heavily on scientific information to inform their decisions about managing these resources. That's where we come in.

The Sonoran Institute is working with the NPS to help it better understand the status and trends of natural and cultural resources in and around park service units in the Greater Yellowstone and American Southwest regions. Our multifaceted collaboration includes designing resource inventory and monitoring techniques, interpreting and synthesizing scientific data, tracking land-use changes surrounding the park units, and leading the development of and running "virtual learning centers" websites (see related story) that communicate trends and conditions information about the parks in an easily digestible way to park managers, researchers, and the public.

"We're looking at plants, animals, soils, air, and water and seeing how those systems are doing within the national parks," says Cheryl McIntyre, our lead on this work. "We're also looking at landscapes both inside and outside the parks, how people (not including park visitors) are changing those landscapes, and what the potential influences of those changes are on the parks themselves."

The work involves mounds of data on multiple natural resource systems at a variety of scales. But a common thread running through all this research is the growing awareness that our national parks do not operate in a vacuum. Their ecosystems extend beyond their borders, and understanding influences outside the parks is critical to protecting the health and long-term viability of everything inside the parks. In the Yellowstone area, for example, elk, pronghorn, and grizzly bear are wide ranging and migrate back and forth across the park's boundaries. Understanding the habitats surrounding the park enables park managers to work more effectively with surrounding land owners to keep critical areas accessible to wildlife. At Saguaro National Park in Tucson, we're helping interpret housing projections for the greater Tucson area extending out to 2100. Looking ahead to the next century, the NPS can plan appropriately for more people living near the park and the associated issues of greater recreational pressures, the spread of invasive plants, and the interactions between domestic pets and wildlife.

Capulin Volcano National Monument in Des Moines, New Mexico, features an extinct volcano rising 1,300 feet above the surrounding plains. Its scenic vista is one of its main attractions, so Cheryl is helping Dr. Rob Bennetts, program manager for the NPS Southern Plains Network, gather and interpret information about socioeconomic forces outside the monument's borders to understand the impact of potential development such as roads, wind farms, and houses.

"Understanding what's happening throughout the landscape to influence the viewshed is something we very much have to take into account," Bennetts says. "It's really refreshing working with the Sonoran Institute, because it brings a different perspective to the table. We're focused in on our specific parks, whereas the Institute puts the parks in the context of the surrounding communities. We don't have the desire or ability to control land outside our boundaries, but we certainly have the desire and ability to work cooperatively with landowners, local governments and planning institutions to look at various alternatives."

Our national parks truly are treasures, but their boundaries do not make them timeless. If we treat them as natural resource islands distinct from outside influences, they won't survive "unmarred." By helping the NPS sharpen its eyes - on the ground, beyond its borders, and on the future - we're hoping to also help them answer the call to preserve our parks for our "children's children forever."

Sincerely,