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 Stream biomonitoring at North Cascades focuses on identifying changes in the number and distribution of aquatic invertebrates like the mayfly species Epeorus deceptivus.
Bruce Freet
Back to Chapter 7: Collaboration and Public Participation Articles Public involvement at Blue Ridge Parkway By Bambi Teague and Chris Ulrey Russian scientists help seek brucellosis solutions for Yellowstone By Glenn Plumb, Wayne Brewster, and Margaret Wild Long-term bison management plan for Yellowstone and Montana Park Flight Program protects migratory birds beyond the United States By Carol Beidleman Technology and collaboration improve interagency fire planning By Anne Birkholz and Pat Lineback Work group initiated by National Park Service gains permanent support from county government By Kathleen Kodish Reeder Partners in plant protection at Capitol Reef National Park By Tom O. Clark Other Developments A photographic mushroom survey Joint conservation plan for the Potomac Gorge Geologists-in-the-Parks program expands in scope Public participation and personal watercraft Award-winner Profile - Facility Manager Chris Case recognized with award Superfund cleanup at Grant Kohrs Ranch Progress developing the National Cave and Karst Research Institute International fisheries management plan for the Amistad Reservoir |
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 By Bruce L. Freet First-year funding (FY 2001) of the North Coast and Cascades Monitoring Network brought about several important enhancements to long-term ecological monitoring in North Cascades National Park and adjacent Ross Lake and Lake Chelan National Recreation Areas. Managed by the National Park Service as a group or complex, these areas were able to parlay $400,000 of monitoring funds into $890,000 to advance their park vital signs monitoring program. Collaboration within and outside the National Park Service was key to this success. First, the complex added $141,000 of its own base funding to allow its career employees to focus specifically on park and network monitoring needs. Second, inventory funds paid for surveys worth $88,000. The Northwest Forest Plan fund, the NPS Water Resources Division, and the NPS Air Resources Division applied $64,000 to a variety of park monitoring projects. The USGS Biological Resources Division contributed $150,000 for research and development of protocols for lakes and streams monitoring. Seattle City Light (SCL, a public utility), the USDA Forest Service (USFS), and Western Washington University also gave funds or in-kind services totaling $47,000. The first-year funding also paid for research, inventory, and monitoring assistance from 18 universities, agencies, businesses, and nongovernmental organizations. The North Coast and Cascades Monitoring Network consists of seven parks in the Pacific Northwest that collaborate in order to deliver inventory and monitoring capabilities efficiently to all member parks. The North Cascades complex is a leader in the network because it began focusing on long-term ecological monitoring around 10 years ago. At that time, North Cascades was selected as a prototype park, one of 11 in the National Park System, concentrating on lakes and streams. Since then, the scope of monitoring has broadened to include all natural resources, but the primary focus remains freshwater resources—the lifeblood of this ecosystem. The aquatic ecology emphasis is apparent in the development of inventory and monitoring protocols for the complex: glacial mass balance, surficial geology and land type assessment and mapping, watershed assessments, water quality monitoring, lake and stream biomonitoring, and stream habitat monitoring. These areas are relevant to NPS and USFS management issues, especially with the regional emphasis on salmon recovery. This focus on freshwater resources links the complex with potential partners in the Skagit Watershed Council, a collaborative group of 38 federal and state agencies, Native American tribes, companies, and nongovernmental organizations. It also facilitates leveraging of funds. Together these groups protect and restore salmon habitat on the Skagit River, a 3,300-square-mile watershed that includes much of the complex and extends into Canada. Working with the council, the complex persuaded Earthwatch Institute to designate the Skagit River watershed as its North American Conservation Research Center. The institute has a $5 million grant to establish five of these centers throughout the world. In a related cooperative effort, the park has worked with the Mount Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest and North Cascades Institute since 1997 to coordinate the Skagit River Stewards program, a citizen-based, water quality monitoring program on the Skagit Wild and Scenic River. The partnership has grown to include the Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group, a local nonprofit stream restoration organization and member of the Skagit Watershed Council. The stewards collect information on water quality and stream habitat variables at 42 watershed sites. Seattle City Light operates three hydroelectric dams on the upper Skagit River within the national park complex, providing Seattle with 25 percent of its electricity. Under its current license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the utility funds several mitigation projects that support natural resource inventory and monitoring. The public utility recently remodeled and furnished the North Cascades Research Station—a historic house in Newhalem—with a laboratory, office, library, and bunkhouse for eight people. (It is available to visiting researchers by reservation.) Construction will soon begin on the SCL-funded, $11 million North Cascades Environmental Learning Center, built on the site of a former NPS concession facility. Another park partner, the North Cascades Institute, will operate the center. Additionally, Seattle City Light provides $25,000 annually for wildlife inventory and monitoring in the national park complex. These funds have been used for surveys of aquatic macroinvertebrates, amphibians, bats, and harlequin ducks. The complex has also successfully competed for money from the SCL Wildlife Research Fund. Awarded $60,000, this is the single largest funding source for the complex’s research on breeding landbird abundance and distribution. Seattle City Light also conducts radio telemetry research on bull trout in Ross Lake in cooperation with Skagit Watershed Council members and their Canadian counterparts. These research projects will lead to the development of additional park monitoring protocols. The park staff is presently exploring a monitoring concept in which five of the seven network parks would partner with the Mount Baker–Snoqualmie and Olympic National Forests to provide the terrestrial and freshwater component for the Puget Sound Basin watershed. This landscape-level strategy connects over 3.4 million acres of national parks and forests or about 34% of the total land area draining into the Puget Sound. This collaborative approach will place federal land managers in a better position to use environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Wilderness Act in protecting the area’s mountain ranges. The watershed-basin concept crosses administrative boundaries in an ecosystem approach that connects the National Park Service and USFS to numerous federal and state agencies, Native American tribes, and nongovernmental organizations on the cooperative Puget Sound Water Quality Action Team. Additionally, British Columbia is applying this watershed-basin concept to their lands and waters surrounding the Georgia Straits, immediately north of the Puget Sound. |
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This material is from Natural Resource Year in Review--2001, published by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, in May 2001 (publication D-2255) /YearInReview/yir/yir2001/07_collaboration/07_7_freet_NOCA.HTML Last Updated: |
