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Biodiversity in the National Parks: Looming Threats to America's Most Valued Plants and Animals
BY DAVE SIMON*
The National Park System protects some of America's most complete ecosystems and many of the nation's areas of greatest natural biodiversity, making the park system critically important to species survival. Habitat preserved within parks offers thousands of species an oasis of survival in a developing world, including almost 400 endangered or threatened species. But biodiversity is jeopardized even within our national parks.
Major threats include:
- habitat loss or degradation,
- invasive species,
- pressure to drill for oil or build along park boundaries,
- fragmented habitats too small to support a variety of species, and
- lack of funds for scientific research and resource protection.
In this report, the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) offers seven recommendations to protect, enhance, and restore biodiversity in the national parks.
Recommendations:
- Improve and expand National Park Service science and management programs;
- Halt and reverse habitat destruction, fragmentation, and degradation;
- Put a higher priority on combating threats from invasive species;
- Implement the Endangered Species Act more proactively;
- Create new national parks, expand existing parks, and protect land and water connections critical to wildlife;
- Provide the operating funds necessary to support badly needed research, resources management, and protection efforts; and
- Inspire support for biodiversity protection in national parks by educating and informing the public about threats to park biodiversity.
National parks face a biodiversity crisis. Confronting and resolving this crisis must become a national priority for the National Park Service, or America will risk losing fundamental, irreplaceable parts of its national heritage and will pass on to future generations a biologically impoverished National Park System that offers fewer options for providing critical materials and products that could improve human life and health.
| DEFINING BIODIVERSITY
Biological diversity, often shortened to biodiversity, is the living wealth of our planet, encompassing not only the variety of distinct species and the genetic variability within them but also the many, varied ecosystems they inhabit.
Species Diversity
The variety of species that inhabit a given area is the most visible form of biodiversity, including large and conspicuous plants, birds, fishes, and mammals, but also less conspicuous species such as insects, moss, algae, fungi, and bacteria.
Genetic Diversity
Genetic variation among individuals and across populations of a single species, as well as the variations that distinguish different taxonomic groups from one another, is a second form of biodiversity. Genetic variability is the foundation of species adaptability to shifting environments.
Ecosystem Diversity
Ecological systems—usually shortened to ecosystems—such as dry deserts, tundra, and prairies, are distinct combinations of living and non-living components. Preserving the Earth's diversity of ecosystems preserves also its genetic and species diversity. |
*Dave Simon is a former director of NPCA's Southwest Regional Office. |
