The long-term preservation of national park ecosystems requires scientific knowledge about populations, communities, and the ecological processes upon which sustainable ecosystems depend. Unfortunately, national parks in the United States have a well-documented history of indifference, if not hostility, to the support of basic research. Numerous external reviews have criticized the lack of institutional support for science, blaming it in large part on the traditional emphasis of the National Park Service (NPS) on scenery and tourism management. However, recent efforts to improve the support for science in the U.S. national parks have been most encouraging. These include a long-sought Congressional mandate to support research, a major [...]