Parks for Science

“The parks are invaluable for unraveling the mysteries of natural and human history, evolutionary adaptation, ecosystem dynamics, and other natural processes.”
—National Research Council
Source: National Research Council. 1992. Science and the National Parks. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

As home to relatively intact natural systems and significant cultural treasures, the National Park System offers enormously important opportunities for investigating scientific questions. The designation of 38 national park units as biosphere reserves and world heritage sites largely reflects the international scientific significance of these resources. As stewards of many of the world’s premier natural and historical sites, the National Park Service is working to encourage parks-for-science research because the potential contribution to society is tremendous. The articles that follow highlight some of the fascinating discoveries, interesting research findings, and other research-related events in 2004, focusing on the myriad ways national parks contribute to scientific understanding of our world. Articles include a discussion of the activities of research learning centers to facilitate research, the use of elk and deer brain tissues from Rocky Mountain National Park to advance insights into chronic wasting disease, and recent discoveries of fossils and species new to science in national parks. From these articles we can see that the value of national parks as scientific laboratories will continue to grow in the face of accelerating local, regional, and global causes of environmental change and declining biological diversity, for the national parks contain precious information-gathering potentials that are not available anywhere else.

The National Park Service issued 2,774 permits in 2004 for scientific research and collecting activities conducted throughout the National Park System.* Since 2001, when such permits were first tracked, the numbers have continually risen, beginning with 2,231 that year, followed by 2,367 in 2002 and 2,501 in 2003.

*Permits are required for scientific research activities that involve natural resource or social science fieldwork and specimen collecting of biological, geological, or paleontological resources. Activities such as birding and noncommercial photography are not regulated by permit; some official research and collecting conducted by NPS staff requires a permit. Other permit procedures apply to scientific activities pertaining solely to cultural resources.

Parks for Science Introduction

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