National Park Service

Activities outside the boundaries of the national parks, including pollution generated by power plants and manufacturers, are threatening unique natural and cultural resources. The Park Service, however, is unaware of the extent to which these resources are being threatened because it does not maintain an inventory of the number, types, and sources of threats or the damage caused. The Park Service needs this information to pinpoint and counter the most urgent threats. The Park Service has a resource planning system to identify resource management problems but does not use it to identify and inventory threats. GAO surveyed park managers, who identified more than 600 threats that fell into the following categories: urban encroachment, water quantity and quality issues, air pollution, and human activities. Park managers claim that about two-thirds of the threats have already resulted in damage, including diminished scenic views, polluted streams, and destruction of wildlife and habitat. Furthermore, they expect that virtually all of the threats will inflict additional damage during the next five years. Although park managers say that action has been taken to counter more than half of the threats, this typically involved community outreach, which requires the cooperation of multiple parties and often is the first step toward minimizing damage to park resources.

GAO found that: (1) the Park Service has no complete inventory of existing external threats, their sources, or the actions being taken to mitigate such threats; (2) the Park Service cannot work effectively with parties outside the parks' borders to reduce or eliminate external threats without specific information on the numbers and types of external threats facing individual parks; (3) park managers classify external threats in four broad categories: urban encroachment, water quantity and quality issues, air pollution, and human activities; (4) although park managers can provide information on the types of external threats affecting park resources, they cannot fully identify the specific source of all external threats; (5) park managers estimate that damage has resulted from about two-thirds of the threats they have identified, and that additional damage will occur within the next 5 years from the remaining threats; (6) although park managers know what resources have been damaged by external threats, they are less knowledgeable about the extent of that damage; (7) the Park Service has taken action to mitigate 367 of the 632 identified external threats; and (8) as a result of missing and incomplete project statements, the Park Service has no means of monitoring the status of its progress in mitigating threats.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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