Fitting the US National Park Service for Change

The US National Park Service (NPS), which manages over 85 million acres and over 400 units, contends with myriad external drivers of ecosystem change that threaten parks. Stressors such as invasive species, habitat fragmentation, warming climates and rising sea level, raise the potential that parks will not attain or sustain their congressionally designated missions. Using invasive animals as a focal example of such changes, we suggest the NPS consider increasing active management of resources, participating in cooperative ecoregional management, increasing the use of public participation, and using formal decision support tools. We illustrate how these management approaches are currently underused. Acknowledging that invasive species are but one of a suite of problems that are threatening to overwhelm park management capacity we believe that the approaches we outline generalize to myriad problems facing the NPS.