December 19, 2013 – National Park Service Director, Jonathan Jarvis, welcomed the Nature Fund for National Parks as “an important partner in our efforts to preserve and protect natural resources.” Director Jarvis stated that he was “excited about the Nature Fund’s focus on scientific studies and development of management tools to assist parks in addressing unprecedented and complex landscape scale issues. He also remarked on the important role the Nature Fund will play in ” helping to bring a new generation of scientists and resource managers into parks.”
On June 27, 2013, the Nature Fund for National Parks became an official partner of the National Park Service when a Friends Group Agreement was executed. The Nature Fund is pleased that, with this formal step completed, it can fully enter into its mission and work with foundations, corporations, and private donors to identify common interests that can benefit National Parks.
The Friends Group Agreement between the Nature Fund and the National Park Service will help meet needs identified by the National Park System Advisory Board Science Committee. In a April 25, 2012, report entitled, Revisiting Leopold: Resource Stewardship in the National Parks, the Committee stated that “[t]he need for science — to understand how park ecosystems function, monitor impacts of change (even from afar), inform decision makers and their decisions, and enrich public appreciation of park values—has never been greater.”