I&M Administrative History: A New Start

With the promise of finally—suddenly—having enough funding to take I&M servicewide, and the entire Natural Resource Challenge strategy based on creating “networks of parks linked by geography and shared natural resource characteristics to facilitate collaboration, information sharing, and economies of scale in natural resource management,” NRSS leaders wasted no time in building the organizational structure the NRC needed: the inventory and monitoring networks. Associate Director Soukup assigned his deputy, Abigail “Abby” Miller, to lead the process.

Miller was uniquely qualified for the job. She had been hired by Gene Hester shortly after his arrival as Associate Director in 1987. In her previous position with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Miller had gained experience with the kind of strategic, programmatic management Hester wanted to implement. From the start, she was intimately involved with the development of the I&M program, and would become one of its greatest champions. She had been part of the task force that hammered out the operational details of the 1987 Evison Report, and maintained a seat on the IMAC ever since, as the prototype parks were selected and the program’s basic structure was defined. Miller helped develop I&M’s initial budget requests. Then she played a key role in bringing the Natural Resource Challenge from concept to reality. In short, at every pivotal point along the way, Abby Miller had been there, helping to steer the ship. Through the transition from a handful of prototype parks to a 32-network, servicewide program, she would remain I&M’s most important ally in the Washington office, especially when it came to ensuring the program had the financial resources it needed to succeed. As Gary Williams would put it, “Abby hit the home run and the rest of us, we just ran the bases. She was in there arguing with OMB about budget increases and how we needed the money. And she was, she was really good. . . . I don’t think we’d ever have gotten to where we did if it hadn’t been for Abby.”¹

Miller was also well-known and highly respected by NPS field staff, which is somewhat unusual for career administrative employees assigned to central offices. Her reputation was atypical because she did something atypical. Soon after arriving at Eye Street, she headed out—to find out how things worked in the parks. One of her first trips was to a meeting of the Western Region scientists. In Tucson, she not only learned about some of the most advanced science happening servicewide (including I&M), but also listened to park managers describe their management challenges. After the meeting, she spent two days at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, where the resource manager showed her around and explained how park programs worked. Later on and closer to home, she sought out Prince William Forest Park superintendent Phil Brueck, who spent an afternoon walking her through the park budget process.² Making the effort to understand how things worked on the ground made Miller more effective at her own job and a valuable resource for park staff. It also enabled her to advocate for them in ways she never could have otherwise.

But perhaps most significantly, back in the mid-1990s, Miller had co-led a massive number-crunching exercise aimed at quantitatively determining the amount of workload the NPS should be dedicating to resource-management activities in order to fully meet its resource-preservation mandate. Similar in concept to FIREPRO—a budgetary process the bureau used to systematically analyze and quantify appropriate levels of personnel, training, equipment, and supplies for fire-management needs—the Natural Resource Management Assessment Program (“R-MAP”) process began with the compilation of a profile for each park (269 in all) that catalogued information about its natural resources and management setting.³ Each profile included more than 164 different elements, including the number of neighboring political jurisdictions and landholders; miles of waterways; park configuration, size, and degree of remoteness; types of and extent of terrestrial and aquatic habitats; air quality and Clean Air Act status; numbers of native, exotic, threatened and endangered plant and animal species; consumptive resource uses; and visitor use. Then, workload indices were developed for each of 15 major program areas (e.g., wildlife management, exotic plant management, planning). The results were subjected to rigorous analysis, review, and refinement by some of the more than 900 NPS managers and natural resource professionals who participated in the four-year effort.⁴

In short, R-MAP was a gap analysis of how much natural-resource support the NPS needed vs. how much it had access to. The gap turned out to be more of a yawning maw. The data indicated that when the R-MAP report was published in 1995, the NPS had about 25% of the staffing necessary to operate a comprehensive natural resources management program. In 1994, there were slightly fewer than 500 permanent and temporary natural-resource management specialists across the NPS—an average of a bit more than one per park. In actuality, a handful of parks had a few specialists, while many had none.⁵ In response, bureau leaders established a first-phase goal of reducing the unmet gap from 75% to 50%—which would meet only half the need but still represent a doubling of capacity. The initiative, known as “Stewardship Today for Parks Tomorrow,” sought to reach this 50% goal by the year 2000.⁶

That didn’t happen. But R-MAP did prove to be an invaluable data source as the I&M program created its vital signs networks and their budgets. Miller asked Gary Davis to take a first pass at figuring out which parks should be grouped together for monitoring. She then sent Davis’s ideas to her NRSS colleague, Gary Mason. Mason did a GIS analysis overlaying a map of all 269 parks with Bailey’s ecoregions, which had previously been used to improve the efficiency of the vegetation-mapping effort. Under this scheme, the parks ended up clustered in 32 different groups. Then Miller made her own changes based the workload data collected for R-MAP that were relevant to I&M activities, and on her own knowledge of park-management pragmatics. To the extent possible, parks managed by the same superintendent, or that already had close working relationships, were placed in the same network. Miller also tried not to put too many big parks into the same group, or to create networks that crossed NPS regional boundaries. Finally, she gave a lot of thought to how park proximity and size would impact a network’s workload. A group whose parks were spread far apart would require more time and resources, for instance, than one whose parks were closer together. A group of eight small parks would likely have a smaller workload than a group of eight mid-sized parks.⁷

Miller sent her revised groupings on to the head of the NPS Water Resources Division, to see if they were sound from a watershed perspective, and to Gary Williams and Steve Fancy in the I&M office. Fancy had been hired in fall 1998, as the program’s monitoring specialist.⁸ He was a research scientist with the USGS before coming to I&M and was initially asked to review inventory proposals from parks and develop ways to improve that process. But the infusion of NRC funding to the I&M program would vastly change the scope and direction of his work.

After a few more tweaks, the proposed list of 32 networks (Table 4) was sent to the seven NPS regional directors and current I&M coordinators via a memo from Associate Director Soukup. They were invited to refine the composition of networks in their region by moving parks between networks or even defining new ones, with a couple of caveats: they should not add any brand-new parks to the lists and, when shuffling parks around, they should be mindful to keep the workload (as derived from R-MAP) relatively comparable across networks. Soukup also welcomed ideas for re-naming the networks, to increase a local sense of ownership and also because the Bailey’s-derived names tended to be linguistically cumbersome (see Appendix E).⁹

Table 4. Original Bailey’s groupings and eventual network names.

Initial Group #	Region	Bailey’s network name	Final network name(s)1
1	AK	Alaska Tundra & Mountains (1)	Southwest Alaska
2	AK	Alaska Tundra & Mountains (2)	Arctic
3	AK	Alaska Subarctic	Central Alaska (Arctic)
4	AK	Alaska Marine Mountains	Southeast Alaska (Central Alaska, Southwest Alaska)
5	MW	Great Lakes Proper	Great Lakes
6	MW	Heartland Continental	Heartland (Northern Great Plains, Southern Plains)
7	MW	Northern Great Plains/Temperate Steppe	Northern Great Plains
8	NE	Mid-Atlantic Coast & Plain	Mid-Atlantic (Northeast Coastal and Barrier)
9	NE	Inland Mid-Atlantic	Eastern Rivers and Mountains (Mid-Atlantic)
10	NE	Northeast Coast	Northeast Coastal and Barrier (Northeast Temperate)
11	NE	New York/New England	Northeast Temperate (Northeast Coastal and Barrier)
12	NC	Capital Region	National Capital Region
13	SE	Appalachian & Gulf Coastal Plains	Cumberland/Piedmont
14	SE	Southeast Coast	Southeast Coast
15	SE	Gulf Coastal	Gulf Coast
16	SE	Blue Ridge/Great Smoky Mountains	Appalachian Highlands
17	SE	Tropics	South Florida/Caribbean
18	IM	Northern Colorado Plateau Temperate Desert	Northern Colorado Plateau
19	IM	Northern Rockies	Rocky Mountain (Northern Colorado Plateau, Northern Great Plains, Upper Columbia Basin)
20	IM	Rocky Mountain Steppe	Rocky Mountain/Northern Colorado Plateau (Southern Colorado Plateau, Southern Plains)
21	IM	Greater Yellowstone	Greater Yellowstone
22	IM	Four Corners Area Steppe	Southern Colorado Plateau (Northern Colorado Plateau)
23	IM	Lower Southwest Steppe	Southern Colorado Plateau (Southern Plains, Sonoran Desert)
24	IM	Southern Desert West	Sonoran Desert (Chihuahuan Desert)
25	IM	Southern Desert East	Chihuahuan Desert
26	PW	Humid Temperate Marine & Marine Mountains	North Coast and Cascades (Klamath)
27		Northern Semi-Arid	Upper Columbia Basin
28	PW	San Francisco Bay Area	San Francisco Bay Area (Klamath)
29	PW	Mojave Desert	Mojave Desert
30	PW	Mediterranean Coast	Mediterranean Coast (San Francisco Bay Area)
31	PW	Sierra	Sierra Nevada (Klamath, Mojave Desert)
32	PW	Pacific lslands	Pacific lslands

¹When more than one network is shown, the first network listed is the one with the most parks from the original Bailey’s group.

Responses varied widely. Two regions (Southeast and National Capital) approved the lists with no changes (though the Southeast Region did propose four additional parks for inclusion in the I&M program). The Northeast, Midwest, Pacific West, and Alaska regions all made multiple suggestions for changes that moved parks from network to network. All were incorporated into the next version of the network lists.¹⁰ For the Pacific West region, these changes included the creation of an entirely new group (today’s Klamath Network). This gave Pacific West a total of eight networks instead of seven, and brought the overall workload for each network more in line with the servicewide average.

The Intermountain Region (IMR) went in the other direction, requesting that its eight assigned groups be reduced to seven. The IMR also called for significantly more reconfiguration than any other region, leaving just the Greater Yellowstone Network (Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area) unchanged.¹¹ Across the other seven groups, the IMR divided two among four others, and another two among three others. One group gained nine parks, and White Sands National Monument was moved from Southern Desert West to Southern Desert East.¹² In his comments, acting IMR director Ronald Everhart additionally speculated that it might be ecologically wise to create a mountain-park super-network of Glacier, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, and Yellowstone national parks, or to build networks around certain vital signs, such as cave monitoring, rather than biogeography. Although most of the region’s requests adopted, these last two suggestions were not.

Subsequent network lists reflect minor shuffling and evolving names. Most network names were established by December 1999, but a handful of networks took a bit longer to settle on a suitable moniker. Some just added or dropped a word or two. Others underwent wholesale change. “Southern Desert West” and “Southern Desert East” became the Sonoran Desert and Chihuahuan Desert networks, respectively. “Tropics” became South Florida/Caribbean, “Blue Ridge/Great Smoky Mountains” became Appalachian Highlands, and “Appalachian & Gulf Coastal Plains” became Cumberland Piedmont. The original “Alaska Tundra & Mountains Group” tried out “Brooks Range, Arctic Ocean Influence” and “Northwest Alaska” before settling on Arctic Network. And it wasn’t until 2004 that the “Northern Semi-Arid” group became the Upper Columbia Basin Network (see Appendix E).

Starting in December 1999, the lists started to hint at how funding would be allocated for each network. This process also started with R-MAP. From the R-MAP results, Steve Fancy calculated the minimum number of FTE a park would need to manage both plants and wildlife. The sum of those numbers was then adjusted according to two multipliers: Time/Travel and Cost of Living. Networks whose parks were spread far apart, or whose fieldwork would require travel by boat or plane, were assigned higher numbers for Time/Travel than those whose parks could all be reached in a reasonable amount of time by driving. The calculations were precise, rooted in a spreadsheet Fancy had listing the longitude and latitude of each park’s geographic center. “Cost of Living” accounted for differences in how much employees were paid in accordance with where they lived. Staff in Alaska, for instance, received a 25% cost of living adjustment (COLA) in their salaries compared to staff doing the same work in the Gulf Coast region. The R-MAP total, multiplied by Time/Travel and COLA, gave each network an overall score. That score, divided by the sum of all 32 network scores, with consideration given to the geographic separation of parks within networks, determined the percentage of funding each network would receive (Table 5).¹³

Table 5. Original budget ranking for Bailey’s groups as calculated from RMAP scores and modifiers.

RMAP budget rank	RMAP Total	RMAP Group	Current network (approximate)1
1	120.56	Brooks Range, Arctic Ocean Influence Group / No. 2	Arctic
2	112.64	Alaska Central Coastal Group / No.1	Southwest Alaska
3	112.00	Pacific Island Group / No. 31	Pacific Islands
4	108.62	Tropics Group / No. 17	South Florida Caribbean
5	97.57	Great Lakes Group / No. 5	Great Lakes
6	96.64	Southeast Coast Group / No. 14	Southeast Coast
7	93.41	Southern Colorado Plateau Temperate Desert / No. 21	Southern Colorado Plateau
8	88.53	Northern Colorado Plateau Temperate Desert / No. 18	Northern Colorado Plateau
9	78.07	Alaska Range, Interior-Continental Group / No.3	Central Alaska
10	73.66	Northeast Coastal and Barrier Group / No. 10	Northeast Coastal and Barrier
11	69.65	Gulf Coastal Group / No. 15	Gulf Coast
12	66.78	North Coast and Cascades Group / No. 25	North Coast and Cascades
13	65.18	Mojave Desert Group / No. 28	Mojave Desert
14	64.49	Northern Great Plains Group / No.7	Northern Great Plains
15	62.29	Mediterranean Coast Group / No. 29	Mediterranean
16	61.76	Northern California & Southern Oregon / No. 32	Klamath
17	59.72	Southern Desert East Group / No. 24	Chihuahuan Desert
18	58.87	Mid-Continent Group/ No. 6	Heartland
19	58.58	National Capitol Group / No. 12	National Capital Region
20	58.28	San Francisco Bay Group / No. 27	San Francisco Area
21	57.32	Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains Grp / No. 16	Appalachian Highlands
22	56.58	Greater Yellowstone Group / No. 20	Greater Yellowstone
23	54.37	Mid Atlantic Group / No. 8	Mid-Atlantic
24	51.72	Southern Desert West Group / No. 23	Sonoran Desert
25	51.27	Sierra Group / No. 30	Sierra Nevada
26	50.74	Eastern River and Mountains Group / No. 9	Eastern Rivers and Mountains
27	48.73	Northeast Temperate Group / No. 11	Northeast Temperate
28	48.43	Rocky Mountain Group / No. 19	Rocky Mountain
29	47.26	Appalachian and Gulf Coastal Plains Group / No. 13	Cumberland Piedmont
30	39.80	Northern Semi-Arid Group / No. 26	Upper Columbia Basin
31	34.50	Southeast Alaska Coastal Group / No. 4	Southeast Alaska
32	29.07	Southern Plains Dry Steppe Group / No. 22	Southern Plains

A RMAP total scores are based on original park groupings (col C). These groupings are comparable to the networks shown but not an exact match. This means the totals shown are close to being accurate for networks, but not a 1:1 match.

These funding criteria had been agreed upon at an IMAC meeting on November 30–December 2, 1999. At that meeting, the council began to discuss which networks should be funded first. Through the Natural Resource Challenge, a total of $26.5 million had been requested for vital signs monitoring between FY2001 and FY2004, with the intention of phasing in the 32 monitoring networks over four years’ time. As with the prototype parks, the networks chosen to go first were largely those thought to be in the best position to succeed. Of the six chosen for FY2001, four were associated with existing prototypes, and one with two unfunded prototypes (Table 6).¹⁴

Table 6. Networks chosen for initial funding under the Natural Resource Challenge, as identified by IMAC in December 1999.

#	Network	Prototype association
1	North Coast and Cascades	North Cascades National Park (unfunded) Olympic National Park (unfunded)
2	Northeast Coast and Barrier	Cape Cod National Seashore (1996)
3	Heartland	Prairie Cluster (1994)
4	Southern Desert West	none
5	Blue Ridge/Great Smoky Mountains	Great Smoky Mountains National Park (1992)
6	Alaska Range	Denali National Park (1992)

The sole network not associated with a prototype program, Southern Desert West (today’s Sonoran Desert Network) had something else: an established history of interpark cooperation, and a leader dedicated to improving natural resource management in smaller parks traditionally considered “cultural” in nature. The NPS units of Arizona are served by the Southern Arizona Office (SOAR), a subregional organizational entity that provides program support and an overall superintendent for the parks under its purview.¹⁵ The situation dates back to the bureau’s early days. After passage of the Antiquities Act in 1906, the number of national monuments in the NPS grew quickly—but the bureau’s ability to fund their management did not. The sparsely settled Southwest was home to many remote monuments created to preserve archeological resources particularly vulnerable to vandalism, and NPS custodians often needed far more assistance than they could possibly get from the Washington office. Director Mather’s solution was to create the Southwestern National Monuments, a kind of regional office, based in Phoenix, with a single superintendent responsible for providing the custodians with leadership and support. That man was Frank “Boss” Pinkley, who had made a name for himself as a highly effective custodian at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument over the course of 20 years. In 1923, he was placed in charge of the national monuments in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. Pinkley’s charisma, dedication, and ability to achieve success on a shoestring budget were such that in 1924, Assistant Director Arthur Demaray floated the idea of putting him in charge of all national monuments—two thirds of the areas administered by the NPS.¹⁶

The bureau backed away from that idea, but the tradition of southwestern cooperation lived on. In 1994, under the same restructuring plan that allowed Gary Williams to move the I&M program to Fort Collins, the NPS created 16 regional support offices, including SOAR, as part of an effort to reduce the size of the NPS headquarters staff in DC. In large part, the IMAC decided to include the “Southern Desert West” network among the first funded because its parks—seven of which had been part of the Southwestern National Monuments group since the 1930s—were already “thinking like a network,” working together and sharing professional staff.¹⁷ In a bureau where parks were accustomed to competing with each other for scarce resources, the network concept was going to take some getting used to, and the Sonoran Desert parks could set an example.

At the time, SOAR’s chief of resource management was Kathy Davis, a past winner of the Director’s Award for Natural Resource Management, who maintained a close professional relationship with William Halvorson—Gary Davis’s colleague on the Channel Islands I&M program, now with the USGS in Tucson.¹⁸ Kathy Davis had seen her staff grow from 3 to 25 since joining SOAR, but still had trouble getting reliable funding for resource management activities in Arizona parks. Her efforts to get things done by applying for individual project funds year after year—$5,000 here, another $5,000 there—were well known to Steve Fancy. When Congress passed the FY2001 budget that included funding for the Southern Desert West network, Fancy called Davis to personally communicate the news: from now on, there would be $600,000 available for natural resource monitoring in the ten Southern Desert West parks each year, plus additional funds for natural resource inventories. The line went briefly silent, then Davis responded with excitement and gratitude. “We have worked so hard and for so many years for this . . . this is amazing!”¹⁹

At a local level, the magnitude of potential positive change brought by the Natural Resource Challenge was staggering.

By February 2000, it was determined that the “Blue Ridge/Great Smoky Mountains” group should be replaced in the initial network funding order by the “Appalachian & Gulf Coastal Plains” group. As one of the first prototypes funded, the I&M program at Great Smoky Mountains National Park (anchor of the “Blue Ridge/Great Smoky Mountains” group) was already well-established. Because it had completed the research and development phase, its funding was now included in park base monies. The same was true for the Channel Islands, Shenandoah, and Virgin Islands prototypes, and like the “Blue Ridge/Great Smoky Mountains” group, their networks would come later in the funding order. The Appalachian & Gulf Coastal group was a higher priority because it contained Mammoth Cave National Park, another prototype selected in 1993 but never funded. Including this group in the initial round of funding ensured that all the yet-unfunded prototypes selected back in 1993 (North Cascades, Olympic, and Mammoth Cave), and those not yet finished with the research and development phase (Denali, Cape Cod, and the Prairie Cluster) would have companion networks, except one. Further behind the others in its preparatory efforts, the Northern Colorado Plateau Cluster would have to wait until the next round.²⁰

Ultimately, only the first five networks (North Coast and Cascades through Appalachian & Gulf Coastal Plains; see Table 5) received operational funding in the first round. The Alaska Range Network was pushed to FY2002, along with the National Capital Region Network. At that point, each of the seven regions had a network funded. The Northern Colorado Plateau Network was next. Beyond that, the I&M program again asked the regional staff for suggestions. Each year, each regional director was asked to submit a list of networks they preferred to have funded next. The final funding order was determined by plugging the regional selections into the following scenario, which attempted to achieve equity by balancing the number of “early” starts with the number of “late” starts for each region:

Each region would receive one of the first seven positions. The scenario balances this headstart by sharing the last positions to be funded among all the regions as well . . . The Midwest Region would be assigned the last position, since they have the greatest percentage (33 percent) of their networks scheduled early; Intermountain Region would be next at 29 percent and so on. Each region’s remaining slots would then be balanced between earlier and later positions to provide as equal of a distribution as possible.²¹

In accordance with this plan, the I&M networks were funded in the following order:

Table 7. Network funding order.

#	Network	Region A	Initial (planning) funding awarded (FY)
1	North Coast and Cascades	PW	2001B
2	Northeast Coastal and Barrier	NE	2001B
3	Heartland	MW	2001B
4	Sonoran Desert	IM	2001B
5	Cumberland/Piedmont	SE	2001B
6	Central Alaska	AK	2001
7	National Capital Region	NC	2001
8	Northern Colorado Plateau	IM	2001
9	San Francisco Bay Area	PW	2001
10	Greater Yellowstone	IM	2001
11	Appalachian Highlands	SE	2001
12	Mediterranean Coast	PW	2001
13	Southwest Alaska	AK	2002
14	Northeast Temperate	NE	2002
15	Southern Colorado Plateau	IM	2002
16	Pacific Island	PW	2002
17	Great Lakes	MW	2002
18	Gulf Coast	SE	2003
19	Rocky Mountain	IM	2003
20	Sierra Nevada	PW	2003
21	Eastern Rivers and Mountains	NE	2003
22	Klamath	PW	2003
23	Arctic	AK	2003
24	Southeast Coast	SE	2003
25	Upper Columbia Basin	PW	2003
26	Southern Plains	IM	2003
27	Mojave Desert	PW	2003
28	Southeast Alaska	AK	2003
29	South Florida/Caribbean	SE	2003
30	Mid-Atlantic	NE	2003
31	Chihuahuan Desert	IM	2003
32	Northern Great Plains	MW	2003

^A AK=Alaska, IM=Intermountain, MW=Midwest, NC=National Capital, NE=Northeast, PW=Pacific West, SE=Southeast
^B These represent partial operational funds, rather than planning funds.

The first five networks received partial operational funding in FY2001. In addition, seven networks received $150,000 in planning funds. In part, this $1,050,000 was carved out of the operational funds of the first five networks; in FY2001, each received their full operational funding, minus $150,000.²² Starting with networks 6–12, monies were awarded according to a three-year phase-in plan. In year one, a network was given $150,000 to hire two staff: a network coordinator and data manager. These “planning funds” were also intended for gathering information and conducting workshops and scoping sessions associated with program design and implementation. In the second year, a network would receive partial operational funding: the full amount of its target funding, minus the $150,000 allocated the previous year. In the third year, a network would be fully funded, and receive 100% of its target funding.²³ The plan was to give five networks planning funds in FY2001, about seven each in FY2002 and 2003, and the rest in FY2004.²⁴

Predictably, things didn’t go entirely as planned. In FY2002, a lack of anticipated funding prevented the Gulf Coast and Rocky Mountain networks from receiving their scheduled planning funds; they were moved to the top of the list for FY2003.²⁵ In FY2003, Congress approved the budget so late in the year that IMAC members worried the five networks scheduled to receive partial operational funding (Southwest Alaska, Northeast Temperate, Southern Colorado Plateau, Pacific Island, and Great Lakes) would be unable to effectively use the money for its intended purposes.²⁶ To avoid that kind of waste, the council recommended that enough money be re-directed from those five networks to fund first-year planning for the 10 networks originally scheduled to receive planning funds in FY2004. Accordingly, $475,000 was re-allocated from each of the four networks scheduled to receive more than $1.2 million in FY2003, and the last 10 networks got to proceed a year ahead of schedule.²⁷

As the I&M program expanded under the more economical network model, questions arose about the continued role of the prototype LTEM programs. Should they—and their funding—be rolled into the networks? Or were the objectives of the two programs different enough to justify keeping them separate? Perhaps most importantly, what about the four prototypes chosen back in 1993 but never funded? Did it make sense to keep growing a program whose model was known to be financially untenable?

After considering these questions at their New Orleans meeting, the IMAC decided that I&M should follow through on the promises made to the last four prototypes, three of which had invested “considerable amounts” of their own base funding and staff effort to develop their prototype programs in anticipation of eventually receiving I&M funding.²⁸ In February 2000, Associate Director Soukup concluded there was value in seeing the original prototype concept through to its initial goal: a well-developed monitoring program in each representative biome. The $3 million in existing base funding would remain with the seven prototypes currently sharing it. The Olympic, North Cascades, and Mammoth Cave prototypes would each receive $400,000 from the $26.5 million in NRC funds requested for “vital signs monitoring” (i.e., the network-based version of I&M). The Northern Colorado Plateau Cluster would be considered for funding in FY2002, if it met certain criteria for progress.²⁹

Soukup acknowledged that $400,000 was less than (actually, about half) what the new prototypes had planned for. But he was confident they could streamline their proposals and find efficiencies by working with the new vital signs networks. He also outlined a new role for the prototypes: mentoring. The prototypes and networks would benefit each other in multiple ways, he asserted, and the results would be stronger than either could produce on their own:

I believe I can ask prototype parks for[,] and that they will respond [with], improvements in cost control where necessary and active leadership and mentoring roles for non-prototype parks as we shift to the new model of network-based monitoring. I further believe that by rolling up the extensive efforts of the prototypes, we will be able to report to Congress on the general health of the National Park System, and even more so as the complementary networks are in place.³⁰

As vital-signs networks developed, the seven previously funded prototypes would serve as “centers of excellence” that did more in-depth monitoring than the networks could, and continued work that would benefit other parks.³¹ In keeping with their original intent, the prototypes nested in six of the first eight networks were expected to produce protocols that could be adopted by their other network parks.

After struggling to meet the needs of its prototype monitoring programs since 1992, the I&M program had suddenly grown from seven underfunded prototypes to 43 networks and prototypes in three short years. In addition, the program had acquired seven regional I&M coordinators responsible for coordinating biological inventories and vital signs monitoring for the networks within their respective regions. The regional coordinators were expected to work closely with the national I&M program staff, but were supervised by regional office staff.³² This was in keeping with precedent: from the start, the role of I&M’s Fort Collins office had been to coordinate, rather than direct, or supervise, I&M activities. The intentionally decentralized program didn’t hire its own staff and send them out to parks to do I&M in accordance with program directives; it provided funding for parks to hire people to perform I&M activities in accordance with what park staff had determined were the most critical resources to monitor for park management. When the I&M program was initiated in 1992, Gary Williams had coordinated its activities through the regional chief scientists. But as the workload increased, some regions had asked Williams to provide salary for a full-time regional I&M coordinator. These requests were met, to build support for the program and also to promote the kind of field integration I&M was trying to achieve.³³ In this way, and because park staff were subject to regional oversight, an organizational relationship was established in which regional directors exercised a substantial amount of discretion over I&M activities and funds. This arrangement worked well for the most part but in one case would eventually lead to irreconcilable differences and a “friendly divorce.”

At this point, the network structure, order, and target funding amounts were all in place. A Vision and Implementation Plan for vital signs monitoring, developed by Steve Fancy and distributed to the regional directors, outlined what would happen next. The plan described, in detail, a seven-step approach for developing a network monitoring program. The first step? “Form a network Board of Directors and a Science Advisory committee.”

The move from a park-based to network-based monitoring model was going to require a degree of inter-park cooperation and resource-sharing to which few park managers were accustomed. If any single park was allowed to dominate the network’s objectives, activities, or funds—because it was bigger, or better-funded, or had a more powerful superintendent—then the effort would fail to result in the servicewide parity it was intended to achieve. To avoid reinforcing the status quo, I&M networks were predicated on power-sharing agreements. Major decisionmaking would be done not by the servicewide I&M Coordinator, network coordinators, or individual superintendents. Instead, networks would be governed by a consortium of park representatives (typically superintendents) and I&M staff. A board of directors would be the bedrock of each network, considered ultimately responsible for its success.³⁴ This approach also reflected the intent of I&M to be a completely different kind of effort than past NPS science programs that were criticized for being either too removed from or too closely entangled with localized management concerns.

The first order of business for a board was to write, sign, and deliver a network charter to the Fort Collins I&M office. The charter defined the composition and responsibilities of the board of directors and outlined procedures for decisionmaking and oversight of network activities. An example charter was sent to the regional directors in December 2000, but after the first actual network charter was approved (for the North Coast and Cascades Network), that was also provided as a more concrete example. The NCCN charter laid out a set of responsibilities for the board that would be commonly—though not universally—adopted by the rest of the networks.

• Promote accountability and effectiveness by reviewing progress and quality control for the network and overseeing spending of network funds.
• Provide guidance in the design and implementation of vital signs monitoring.
• Decide on strategies and procedures for leveraging network funds and personnel to best accomplish I&M, including seeking additional funding.
• Consult on hiring of new personnel.
• Solicit professional guidance from and partnerships with other individuals and organizations.

This first step was considered so crucial to the overall process that no funding for vital signs monitoring would be released to any network without having a network charter in place.³⁵ The superintendents had to establish and agree to be bound by a set of ground rules before anything else could happen.

Each network also had a Science Advisory committee to provide technical assistance and advice to the board of directors. The science (or “technical”) committee comprised park resource managers and scientists from inside and outside the NPS with expertise in park issues. The science committee was responsible for compiling and summarizing existing information about park resources, developing the materials needed at the scoping workshop, and drafting the workshop report and monitoring strategy for approval by the board of directors.

As for the networks themselves, the plan identified the “minimum critical staff each network should include: a network coordinator, data manager, 3–4 scientists, and “several technicians.” The job series, grade, duty station, and supervision of those personnel were left up to the networks. Employees duty-stationed in parks could be supervised by park superintendents, while staff located at a network-specific office (typically at a university or town site) would be ultimately responsible to the regional office.

This kind of administrative flexibility was an intentional feature of network development. The shift from prototype parks to vital-signs networks had been largely precipitated by fiscal pragmatism. As such, I&M leaders wanted individual networks to be able to leverage partnerships and take advantage of whatever other local opportunities they could to make the networks as effective and efficient as possible. Leaving the specific network configuration and other decisions up to its board of directors also helped cement the support of the parks the program was intended to serve. As Steve Fancy and network coordinator Robert Bennetts would later put it, “in order to gain acceptance at the park level, some sacrifice of national consistency was necessary.”³⁶

Consistency may have been a necessary sacrifice, but accountability was not. If anything, the high degree of local control over network operations increased the need for program-level control over I&M funds. In an agency where parks and programs are locked in perpetual competition over ever-shrinking pots of money, preventing funds intended for one purpose from being diverted to another at some point along the way is a constant struggle. Under the prototype model, the funding for I&M activities had become part of a park’s base funding for resource management, and it was not unheard of for those monies to end up paying for other park needs. So when the network model was introduced, along with the annual Report to Congress, which documented how Natural Resource Challenge funds were spent, I&M leaders wanted to try something new. Instead of being disbursed directly into park base funds, monies earmarked for I&M would be held in base by the I&M program and transferred to parks and networks each year. This new “NR-PRO” funding model made NRC spending easier to track, especially after each network was assigned its own organizational code in 2002.³⁷ It also introduced the possibility that funds could be held back if I&M leaders determined they had been misspent in the past. Under this scenario, parks and regions were expected to hire and supervise permanent employees whose funding they did not fully control. Needless to say, not everyone was immediately enthusiastic—and as he travelled the country to meet with park superintendents and staff to explain how the network approach and funding would work, Steve Fancy heard a lot about it.

As the network model was implemented—and I&M went from serving a handful of prototype parks to trying to meet the monitoring needs of 270 network parks—Fancy, as I&M’s monitoring coordinator, saw his work life change dramatically. His early trips were equal parts listening and lobbying, because part of what Fancy was trying to do was figure out how to help networks help parks. As Stephen Mather and Horace Albright had understood in the early days of the NPS, but Bruce Babbitt had not when he single-handedly created the National Biological Survey (and George Wright never had a chance to do for the Wildlife Division), I&M would need to build a grassroots constituency of support in order to succeed. And so Fancy became the program’s champion, meeting with everyone he could to learn about their science needs and explain how I&M could help meet them.³⁸

He also talked with superintendents about the unique funding process, employing a combination of gentle persuasion and peer pressure to help make people comfortable with the idea of money coming from annual transfers instead of into park base:

Basically the superintendents said, “Hell no. We are not doing this; it's not going to happen.” So I had to go on a nationwide selling expedition. Early on, I had two superintendents tell me that they liked having the money separate, coming annually, because it allowed them to keep that money for that purpose. I then met with some superintendents who were skeptical and I said, “Well, I’ve talked to other superintendents who like this,” and I’d explain why, and a few additional superintendents would tell me that they liked the idea too. As I talked with more and more superintendents, soon I was able to say, “Most of the superintendents I’ve talked to like the idea!”³⁹

There were legitimate reasons for superintendents to like the idea. For one thing, having the money locked up for a specific purpose meant there was one less pot of money for park divisions to argue over. It may also have given the program an aura of permanence other efforts hadn’t enjoyed. Fancy recalls “dozens—if not hundreds—of people” telling him in the early years, “This is never going to happen. This will never work. This money is going to be gone in five years.” Gary Williams recounts that in 1992, Denny Fenn told him, “When WASO gets a pile of money, we throw it over the fence, each region grabs its fair share, does as it pleases, and we’re stuck with what comes back.” Keeping a tighter hold on the money, and holding people accountable for every cent, helped assuage people’s fears and skepticism.⁴⁰

Fancy took his role in maintaining that accountability seriously, earning a reputation for it both outside and inside I&M. “So one time I was at a regional meeting back in Boston,” Fancy recalled, “and I was out in the hallway during a break, getting a drink of water. And these two superintendents were standing there mentoring a new superintendent, these two older guys talking to this new guy. And they didn’t know who I was. And I heard one of them say, ‘Yep,’ he says, ‘Once you got the money in your park base, you can do anything you want with it. You just tell them whatever they need to hear so you’ve got the money and then you can divert it and do what you want.’ Then he paused. “‘Except for the I&M program. You can’t touch that money. Somebody is watching it.’”⁴¹

They knew someone was watching because Fancy made a point of letting them know. At the end of each fiscal year, each network was required to submit a report explaining what the network had accomplished that year, identifying its goals for the next fiscal year, and displaying how its funds had been spent. Fancy developed a habit of opening to a report’s financial statement, closing his eyes, and putting his finger down on a random expenditure. No matter what the item or dollar value, he’d then call the person responsible for the report and inquire about it: “‘What is this purchase here for $26.42?’ And then I’d randomly pick another one and I’d call that network [and] say, ‘What is this purchase here for $645.22? Tell me about that.’ And I would do like 20 of those and the word traveled around the country—‘This guy is looking at every single line item. They are watching this funding like a hawk.’”⁴²

Fancy cemented his reputation by being as good as his word. When the host park for one prototype was found to be diverting I&M funds for other purposes, Fancy visited with park managers to inform them I&M would be pulling the funding from the park budget and giving it to the network, instead. After a heated exchange involving several people, Fancy invited the park’s Chief of Natural Resources to join him at a picnic table outside the office, where he would explain the situation more privately. I&M ended up taking the money away, “and that sent a real powerful message that we do hold people accountable, and we’re serious, and that if you divert the money from what it’s supposed to be used for, then it’s going to be taken away and given to somebody else.”⁴³ Within I&M, it also provided fodder for years of waggish warnings about the potentially dire ramifications of being invited to a picnic by Steve Fancy.

It would be difficult to overstate Steve Fancy’s influence on the development and maturation of NPS vital signs monitoring. When Fancy retired from the NPS in 2014, former Associate Director Soukup wrote him, “Upon joining NPS I was amazed at how little the Service understood or appreciated the need for science to underpin everything else, but I was also amazed at what impact single individuals could have. Your achievement ranks among the highest in terms of establishing the operational use and long term value of science in the care and proper management of national parks.”⁴⁴ Fancy’s “achievement” was having “brought order out of chaos” as the 32-network system was implemented and matured. By the time he retired in early 2014, Fancy had received the NPS Director’s Award for Professional Excellence in Natural Resources, and the Department of the Interior’s Meritorious Service and Distinguished Service awards for his work in establishing the I&M program as “the flagship national science program of the National Park Service” and “a model throughout the world.” He had overseen network formulation, developed the plan that would guide the implementation process, and led the development of all the program’s major policies, guidance, and standards, as well as its information systems. Publicly, Soukup credited Fancy’s success to his ability to combine “technical prowess with organizational and people savvy.” Privately, he observed that Fancy’s “unorthodox approach to bureaucracy,” in an organization where the chain of command—and respect for routine and past practice—were practically sacrosanct, made his achievements all the more remarkable.⁴⁵

<< PREVIOUS CHAPTER

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

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¹Williams, interview by Biel and Beer, November 20, 2019.

²Miller, interview by Biel and Beer.

³Hal K. Rothman, “A Test of Adversity and Strength: Wildland Fire in the National Park System” (National Park Service Wildland Fire Program, 2006), 164.

⁴Krumenaker and Miller, “The NR-MAP Report,” 6.

⁵Krumenaker and Miller, “The NR-MAP Report,” 5.

⁶Robert J. Krumenaker, “Report on the Ad Hoc Task Force on the Future of Natural Resource Management in the National Park Service,” Park Science: A Resource Management Bulletin 15, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 8, 15.

⁷Abby Miller to Dan Kimball, “Monitoring Networks,” June 25, 1999; Steve Fancy to Alice Wondrak Biel, “Re: A Couple Questions on Network Formulation,” July 23, 2021.

⁸National Park Service, “Inventory and Monitoring Program Annual Report: Fiscal Year 1998,” 3.

⁹Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science to Regional Directors; attn. I&M Coordinators, “Park Networks for Vital Signs Monitoring,” Memorandum, August 1999, Folder, 32 Park Networks, Inventory & Monitoring Division, Ft. Collins, Colorado.

¹⁰Jerry Belson Regional Director, Southeast Region to Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science, “Response to Park Networks for Vital Signs Monitoring,” Memorandum, September 1999, Folder, 32 Park Networks, Inventory & Monitoring Division, Ft. Collins, Colorado; Gentry Davis Deputy Regional Director, National Capital Region to Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science, “Park Networks for Vital Signs Monitoring,” Memorandum, September 15, 1999, Folder, 32 Park Networks, Inventory & Monitoring Division, Ft. Collins, Colorado; Catherine Damon Acting Regional Director to Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science, “Park Networks for Vital Signs Monitoring,” Memorandum, October 14, 1999, Folder, 32 Park Networks, Inventory & Monitoring Division, Ft. Collins, Colorado; Regional Director, Pacific West Region, “Park Networks for Vital Signs Monitoring,” Memorandum, September 3, 1999, Folder, 32 Park Networks, Inventory & Monitoring Division, Ft. Collins, Colorado; Bob Barbee Regional Director, Alaska Region to Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science, “Park Networks for Vital Signs Monitoring,” Memorandum, September 10, 1999, Folder, 32 Park Networks, Inventory & Monitoring Division, Ft. Collins, Colorado.

¹¹In its comments, the IMR requested that Bighorn Canyon NRA be moved into today’s Rocky Mountain Network, but in its attached list of proposed networks, IMR left this park in the Greater Yellowstone Network.

¹²Ronald Everhart Acting Director, Intermountain Region to Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science, “Park Networks for Vital Signs Monitoring,” Memorandum, September 14, 1999, Folder, 32 Park Networks, Inventory & Monitoring Division, Ft. Collins, Colorado.

¹³Fancy to Biel, “Re: A Couple Questions on Network Formulation,” July 23, 2021; “Summary, NPS National I&M Advisory Committee Meeting” (New Orleans, Louisiana, 1999). For most networks, Fancy’s adjusted RMAP rank tracks pretty closely with the current budget rank. In 2021, 72% of the networks were within three places of their RMAP rank.

¹⁴Gary Williams, “Handwritten Notes, I&M Advisory Committee Meeting,” Folder, I&M Steering Comte Mtg, Nov 1999, Inventory & Monitoring Division, Ft. Collins, Colorado; “Summary, NPS National I&M Advisory Committee Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana.”

¹⁵The Arizona parks also have their own superintendents, though some manage multiple parks.

¹⁶Hal K. Rothman, America’s National Monuments: The Politics of Preservation (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1994), https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/rothman/chap7.htm.

¹⁷Fancy, interview by Biel and Beer, June 12, 2019.

¹⁸“Kathy Davis Honored for Contributions to Resources Careers,” in Natural Resource Year in Review—1999 (Lakewood, Colorado: National Park Service, 2000), 7.

¹⁹Kathy Davis to Alice Wondrak Biel, “Re: Fact Check on a Story,” October 31, 2022.

²⁰“Summary, NPS National I&M Advisory Committee Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana”; Soukup to Regional Directors, Pacific West, Southeast, Intermountain Regions, “Decisions on the Allocation of Prototype Monitoring Funds,” February 7, 2000.

²¹Inventory and Monitoring Program Manager to Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science, “Strategy for Funding Vital Signs Monitoring Networks,” Memorandum (Draft), 2000, Folder, Order of Funding Networks 2000-2004, Inventory & Monitoring Division, Ft. Collins, Colorado.

²²Abigail B. Miller Acting Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science, “Fiscal 2001 Funding for Prototype and Core Park Vital Signs Monitoring,” December 21, 2000, Folder, 32 Park Networks, Inventory & Monitoring Division, Ft. Collins, Colorado.

²³Michael Soukup, “Fiscal 2003 Funding for Ecological Monitoring,” Memorandum, March 25, 2003, Folder, Funding Memos, Inventory & Monitoring Division, Ft. Collins, Colorado.

²⁴Miller, “Fiscal 2001 Funding for Prototype and Core Park Vital Signs Monitoring,” December 21, 2000.

²⁵Gary Williams to Mike Britten, “Re: VSM Network Sequence for FY 02 (Planning) and FY 03,” May 3, 2001.

²⁶Late appropriations would be a common problem, frequently complicating efforts to use money efficiently and complete planned work on schedule.

²⁷The Northeast Temperate Network, with a smaller budget, was not made to share. Soukup, “Fiscal 2003 Funding for Ecological Monitoring,” March 25, 2003.

²⁸“Summary, NPS National I&M Advisory Committee Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana.”

²⁹Soukup to Regional Directors, Pacific West, Southeast, Intermountain Regions, “Decisions on the Allocation of Prototype Monitoring Funds,” February 7, 2000. The Northern Colorado Plateau Prototype ultimately received $100,000 in planning funds in FY2001. Michael Soukup Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science, “Transfer of Inventory and Monitoring Funding,” Memorandum, February 13, 2001, Folder, Funding Memos, Inventory & Monitoring Division, Ft. Collins, Colorado.

³⁰Soukup to Regional Directors, Pacific West, Southeast, Intermountain Regions, “Decisions on the Allocation of Prototype Monitoring Funds,” February 7, 2000.

³¹Miller, “Fiscal 2001 Funding for Prototype and Core Park Vital Signs Monitoring,” December 21, 2000.

³²Abigail B. Miller Acting Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science to Chief, Budget Office, “Transfer of FTE’s for Inventory and Monitoring,” Memorandum, September 19, 2000, Folder, Funding Memos, Inventory & Monitoring Division, Ft. Collins, Colorado; Abigail B. Miller Acting Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science, “Regional Coordinator Positions for Biological Inventories and Monitoring,” Memorandum, September 20, 1999, Folder, Funding Memos, Inventory & Monitoring Division, Ft. Collins, Colorado.

³³Gary Williams to Alice Wondrak Biel, “Re: Question about I&M Regional PM Supervision,” August 28, 2021.

³⁴Michael Soukup to Regional Directors, “New Park/Network Monitoring Program: Vision and Implementation Plan,” Memorandum, October 13, 2000, Folder, 32 Park Networks.

³⁵Miller, “Fiscal 2001 Funding for Prototype and Core Park Vital Signs Monitoring,” December 21, 2000. This edict was tested on the day it was issued; Gary Williams stood firm. (Gary Williams to Kathy Davis and Michael Soukup, “Re: Sonoran Desert Monitoring Funds,” December 21, 2000.)

³⁶Fancy and Bennetts, “Institutionalizing an Effective Long-Term Monitoring Program in the US National Park Service.”

³⁷Soukup to Regional Directors, “New Park/Network Monitoring Program: Vision and Implementation Plan,” October 13, 2000. Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science, “Administration of Field-Based Natural Resource Challenge Funding and Positions: New Organization Codes,” Memorandum, February 21, 2002. The use of special organization codes also underscored the concept of shared personnel and fiscal resources, rather than single park ownership of those resources.

³⁸Fancy, interview by Biel, April 14, 2021.

³⁹Fancy, interview by Biel and Beer, June 12, 2019.

⁴⁰Fancy; Gary Williams, “A Few of the Major Ways in Which the WASO Office ‘Directed’ Inventory and Monitoring Efforts by Regions and Parks,” September 8, 2021.

⁴¹Fancy, interview by Biel and Beer, June 12, 2019; Fancy, interview by Biel, April 14, 2021.

⁴¹Fancy, interview by Biel and Beer, June 12, 2019; Fancy, interview by Biel, April 14, 2021.

⁴³Fancy, interview by Biel and Beer, June 12, 2019.

⁴⁴Michael Soukup to Steve Fancy, January 10, 2014.

⁴⁵J. Michael Scott, August 22, 2013; US Department of the Interior, “Citation for Distinguished Service, Steven G. Fancy,” n.d.; Michael Soukup, “Dr. Steven G. Fancy - Nomination for U.S. Department of Interior for the Distinguished Service Award,” n.d.; William L. Jackson, “Dr. Steven G. Fancy – Nomination for USDI Distinguished Service Award,” n.d.; Soukup to Fancy, January 10, 2014.

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