Status of biotic inventories in US national parks Original Research Article

It is the policy and obligation of the National Park Service to conduct baseline inventories of natural resources preserved in its 32 million hectare National Park System. We evaluated the status of natural resources information in 252 national parks and monuments: those park units that contain significant natural resources. Results show that few parks contain relatively complete systematic inventories for any major plant or animal group. Better information on species occurrence is available for vascular plants, mammals and birds than for other taxa (reptiles, amphibians and fish). Although most parks have compiled species lists for at least some taxa, the majority (> 80%) of the lists are reported to be less than 80% complete in their species, geographic, and ecological (community type) coverage. An earlier study of 40 parks in California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii found that information on terrestrial invertebrates, aquatic invertebrates, and non-vascular plants was generally poor or non-existent. Thus, the National Park Service presently knows little about the biological diversity in national parks. Spatially explicit data on park resources are also limited. While 43, 28 and 24% of the 252 parks surveyed had maps of vegetation, soils and geology, respectively, none of these maps appears to have been systematically checked for accuracy after their creation. If parks are to serve as baselines to measure environmental change, there is an urgent need (1) to develop strategic plans to rank inventory needs in the National Park System; and (2) to design and conduct biological inventory programs to bring all parks to an acceptable level of resource awareness.