In 2004, NPS Director Fran Mainella asked the National Park System Advisory Board to look at the future of national heritage areas and their relationship to the National Park Service. The board, authorized by Congress to advise the director of the National Park Service on current conservation issues, asked the Partnership Committee to prepare a report based on a series of discussions and cases studies. The Conservation Study Institute has been working with NPS National Heritage Area Coordinator Brenda Barrett and the NPS Policy Office to support the work of the Partnership Committee.

Mayor Jerry N. Hruby of Brecksville, Ohio, Chair of the Partnership Committee, convened the first meeting in the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor (Massachusetts and Rhode Island) and the second in the Cane River National Heritage Area (Louisiana). The Institute’s sustainability study for the Blackstone National Heritage Corridor is serving as a case study for the committee’s deliberations. A report from the National Park System Advisory Board to the NPS director is anticipated in late spring 2005.