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Feral horses at Cape Lookout National Seashore managed under a congressionally legislated partnership between the National Park Service and the Foundation for Shackleford Horses, Inc. Begun in 1999, the partnership is working well and has the goal of maintaining the herd size in the range of 100-110 animals.
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With about 270 units in the national park system featuring significant natural resources, the National Park Service faces an awesome, complex, and critical stewardship task. Preserving these resources and their associated values requires many things: knowledge of the resources and understanding of the natural functions that are crucial to preservation; setting priorities for action; applying technical expertise to solve problems; and basing management decisions on scientific information. However, just as discrete biological and geophysical resources interact with one another in park ecosystems, the Park Service does not act in isolation to protect them. As the following stories remind us, natural resource protection is a public responsibility and process. The Park Service is accountable for planning, environmental evaluation, and public involvement required by environmental protection legislation, and must improve in this area. It must also be prepared, when necessary, to meet legal challenges with persuasive and scientifically defensible arguments in court. When circumstances for desired outcomes are not in its control, the Park Service must be principled, assertive, influential, sometimes persistent, sometimes patient. Additionally, it needs to continually improve its collaboration with partners for the benefit of resource preservation. The following articles illustrate some of these challenging areas of natural resource protection.
Articles
Feral horses at Cape Lookout National Seashore
by Sue Stuska, Ed.D.
Lessons from NEPA lawsuits
by Jake Hoogland
What can the National Park Service do about air quality problems?
by Christine Shaver
National Park Service prevails in court; environmental impact statement on schedule
by John D. Varley with Ann Deutch
National Natural Landmarks Program: Up and running … and raring to go
by Steve Gibbons
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This material is from Natural Resource Year in Review--1999; published by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, August 2000 (publication D-1406)
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Last Updated: 09/26/00
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