I&M Administrative History: Introduction

With more than 300 employees across 32 networks nationwide, the Inventory & Monitoring (I&M) Division is the National Park Service’s largest science organization. Created in 1992, then re-created eight years later, the division’s primary mission is to provide park managers with a steady stream of scientific information for decisionmaking that supports natural-resource conservation. That information comes from natural-resource inventories, which give managers baseline information about which resources are in the parks, and long-term ecological monitoring, which tracks their state over time.

The story of how the division came to be is deeply entwined with the story of the National Park Service’s historically fraught relationship with science, comprehensively documented in Richard Sellars’s Preserving Nature in the National Parks, published in 1997. The goal of this history is not to retread the ground trod by Sellars. Instead, it is to trace one specific aspect of that science story back through time: the idea that park managers should know (1) which resources are in the parks, and (2) how they may be changing.

In retrospect, it’s difficult to imagine how people whose primary duty was to conserve park resources, unimpaired, for future generations, could begin to accomplish that task without knowing what they were supposed to be conserving, and what state those resources were in. But it took almost a half-century of repeated suggestions, pleas, and promises from scientists, resource managers, and conservationists inside and outside the NPS before a systematic program intended to provide that information was created. Even then, the enthusiasm of NPS leaders was so lackluster that after a few short years, Congress decided to codify the program’s existence, to ensure it wouldn’t disappear. Only after Congress then agreed to fund the Natural Resource Challenge, in 2000, did a servicewide program of natural resources inventory and monitoring (I&M) start to become a reality.

Natural-resource inventories answer the most basic question place-based science can ask: What’s in this place? They offer a point-in-time snapshot of natural assemblages and drivers, and represented some of the first scientific work done in the national parks. Before I&M, some parks had inventories, but they were largely one-off efforts dedicated to resources of specific research or management interest, done when funding happened to allow it and not conducted in the same way from park to park. This left massive information gaps for species and locations within parks and made it difficult, if not impossible, to gain an understanding of what was happening across parks—even those in close proximity. The “I” in I&M aimed to change that by conducting the same set of 12 inventories across all parks with “significant natural resources.” These “12 basic inventories” ranged from vegetation mapping to vertebrate inventories to surveys of water resources, climate, air quality, and soils. They are frequently cited by park staff as being some of the most useful scientific information they have for management.

Long-term ecological monitoring answers more complicated questions. Using a model pioneered at Channel Islands National Park in the early 1980s, I&M networks aim to track status and trends in park resources by monitoring park “vital signs.” Like a physician maintains a long-term record of a patient’s health by tracking their blood pressure and heart rate, I&M ecologists compile long-term records of the status of key park resources, such as vegetation, water, and keystone species. Taken together, the status and trends of a park’s vital signs can be taken to indicate the “health” of the broader ecosystem and provide early warning of emergent problems.¹

Designing a program that does that—especially at a national scale—is challenging. Program leaders initially considered a standardized approach, in which each network would measure the same set of indicators across all parks, in a similar way. But that strategy was rejected due to the tremendous ecological variability across the National Park System, as well as the parks’ diverse “management capabilities . . . resource issues, information needs, and partnership opportunities.”²

As a result, I&M is an organization with a single mission that employs dozens of different approaches to meet it. The division is organized into 32 “networks,” each of which serves multiple National Park Service (NPS) units. The smallest networks in terms of numbers are the Greater Yellowstone and Mediterranean networks, with three parks each. The largest (Southeast Coast) includes 21. In sum, more than 280 parks are affiliated with a network. Encompassing more than 275,835 square miles, the Arctic Network has the largest boundary, while the Pacific Island Network has the smallest (6,917 mi²). On the mainland, the Rocky Mountain Network extends from Glacier National Park to Great Sand Dunes National Park—a distance of almost 1,200 miles. Travel is essential to I&M work; field staff reach their sampling sites by plane, motorboat, wheeled vehicle, raft, kayak, and, almost invariably, on foot.

Network staff sizes also vary widely. While some networks employ 14 or 15 permanent staff, others have perhaps only four. But staff size is not an indicator of a network’s workload, any more than boundary size is a measure of travel ease (both the Arctic and Pacific Island networks require air travel to accomplish their work). In many cases, it’s a reflection of the network’s unique organizational history. Several networks include what were originally known as “prototype parks:” parks included in the I&M program as it was originally configured in 1992. At that time, it was envisioned that eventually, each park would have its own I&M program, operated by park staff and paid for out of park funds. The park-based model was piloted at a handful of parks, on the premise that they would develop protocols that could then be shared with ecologically similar parks. By the time I&M was “re-created” on the network model in 2000, four of the original prototype parks already had fully operational I&M programs with base-funded staff assigned to them. When those parks were assigned to networks, the networks required fewer staff of their own. The Appalachian Highlands Network, which includes the Great Smoky Mountains National Park prototype, is an example of this. Others include the Mediterranean, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast Coast and Barrier networks.

If I&M sounds messy, disjunct, and divergent, it is—by design. Realizing there would never be enough money to fund an I&M program in each park, its leaders adopted the network model, established some universal standards and guidelines, and directed each network to develop its own organizational structure based on its own needs and ability to leverage partnerships. Network staffing and structure were established by a Board of Directors made up of park superintendents from each network. Thirty-two different network charters define the composition and responsibilities of the boards, and outline procedures for decisionmaking and oversight of network activities. Different boards assigned themselves different responsibilities and levels of control, and made vastly different decisions about network configuration and function. Over time, the role of I&M’s “central office” has evolved from one strictly of coordination to one of increased oversight—but that power is still shared by network boards and seven regional I&M coordinators, all but one of whom are funded by I&M but part of the NPS regional hierarchy.

Despite all this—or perhaps because of it—I&M has demonstrated greater longevity than similar programs in other agencies and organizations. The networks have not reached parity in terms of effectiveness and productivity, and each faces its own challenges. But it would be difficult to argue that the program has not helped to alleviate a lot of the problems it was created to address.

At the broadest scale, the program has meant that whether park managers have access to science for decisionmaking no longer depends on whether a superintendent wants it and is willing and able to find the funding for it. From the creation of the NPS and into the 1970s, it was rare for parks to have scientists on staff. But that began to change with the rise of the popular environmental movement and a postwar confidence that the objectivity of science could provide answers to rising global problems. Superintendents at a handful of prominent, well-funded parks, such as Yellowstone, Everglades, and Great Smoky Mountains, began to assemble teams of biologists to study and provide management recommendations on longstanding resource issues. In the NPS Western Region, under a program initiated by A. Starker Leopold (briefly the first chief scientist for the NPS), PhD researchers were stationed in parks like Sequoia/Kings Canyon and Channel Islands.³

In small parks, science was much harder to obtain. In addition to having fewer employees and tighter budgets, smaller parks were also less likely to benefit from independent study by academic researchers than the high-profile parks able to afford their own science staff. With its goal of providing a basic level of scientific information to all parks with significant natural resources—regardless of their size, their budget, or their leaders’ personal interest in science—the I&M program democratized access to resource information. It did not make that access equal, but it made it more equitable.

But the division’s messy evolution has also led to lingering questions about the liminal positioning of I&M relative to the parks it serves. As originally conceived, inventory and monitoring was intended to be fully integrated with park operations. The program’s founding document went so far as to posit that “The program cannot succeed over the long term—forever, in the context of the Park Service mandate—unless it is fully institutionalized at the level of park operations.”⁴ The shift from the prototype model to the network model made full integration far more difficult, if not impossible. For many networks, the path of I&M runs parallel to that of park management, with occasional points of convergence. This is true in all realms—field work, data management, analysis and reporting, science communication, and decisionmaking. The result is often a disconnect between networks and parks that both sides find frustrating.

The question of whether networks should function as a part of—or apart from—parks and park management has been endemic to science and scientists throughout NPS history. For decades, the NPS science program at the national level was defined for decades by a constant struggle between principle and practicality, objective work and subjective needs. Scientists were based out of Washington, DC, moved to the regions, placed in parks, and then removed from the bureau entirely (for a second time), in large part due to struggles over who and what science was supposed to be for in the parks, and what role scientists should—or shouldn’t—play in park management.

Until 1998, when Congress mandated its use in park management decisions, no one was ever certain the NPS should be doing science at all. In the same legislation (the National Parks Omnibus Management Act of 1998), Congress ordered the Secretary of the Interior to create a servicewide I&M program.⁵

This history traces NPS I&M from its conceptual origins—arguably, prior to the creation of the National Park Service, itself—to its establishment as a foundational program with an active presence in 280 units across the nation. Along much of the way, the idea—and fate—of I&M has paralleled that of science more generally in the NPS, rising up and being pushed back down as other priorities took precedence. In 1992, the Office of Inspector General found that over the previous nine years, 92% of the total NPS budget had been dedicated to “visitor-oriented programs,” with just the remaining 8% going to all efforts related to resource management, including science.⁶ The NPS had stated its commitment to I&M in its own Management Objectives in 1975, yet for almost two decades the practice was realized in only a few isolated pockets around the country, and then through sheer force of will by a dedicated few.

Over and over, this is the story of the difference that a dedicated few can make—with foundational support. Having the right people in the right place at the right time has unquestionably factored into the division’s eventual success. But it is also the story of how, in the absence of a broad-based coalition, previous top-down efforts failed to achieve longevity. Effective communication, strong cooperation, and clear benefit to parks have been instrumental to I&M’s creation and durability, and are the key to its future.

NEXT CHAPTER >>

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Research and writing by Alice Wondrak Biel, Writer-Editor, National Park Service Inventory & Monitoring Division

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¹In some cases, monitoring can also provide a window into future changes. See, for instance, Using Remote Sensing to Help Managers Plan for Climate Change at Colorado National Monument, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/ncpn_remote-sensing-and-climate-change-planning-at-colorado-monument.htm.

²Steven G. Fancy and Robert E. Bennetts, “Institutionalizing an Effective Long-Term Monitoring Program in the US National Park Service,” in Design and Analysis of Long-Term Ecological Monitoring Studies, ed. Gitzen (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 4.

³David J. Parsons, “The Early Years of Sequoia and Kings Canyon Science: Building a Research Program,” Parks Stewardship Forum 36, no. 2 (2020): 308.

⁴David Graber et al., “National Park Service Natural Resources Inventory and Monitoring Initiative” (National Park Service, May 1987), 3, http://npshistory.com/publications/interdisciplinary/im/im-initiative-1987.pdf.

⁵“National Parks Omnibus Management Act of 1998,” Pub. L. No. 105–391 (1998), https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/PLAW-105publ391.

⁶US Department of the Interior Office of Inspector General, “Audit Report: Protection of Natural Resources, National Park Service,” September 1992, 12. This was no anomaly; 30 years earlier, the National Academy of Sciences reported that the total amount of money allocated to research in the NPS in 1962 was commensurate with the cost of one campground restroom. National Academy of Sciences National Research Council, “A Report by the Advisory Committee to the National Park Service on Research,” August 1, 1963, 32, http://npshistory.com/publications/robbins.pdf.

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