The Department of Interior plays an integral role in conserving America’s natural resources and heritage, honoring our cultures and tribal communities, and supplying the energy to power our future. In doing so, DOI’s people, programs, responsibilities, and missions support Americans across all 50 States and territories. Interior grants access to public lands and offshore areas for renewable and conventional energy development — covering roughly a quarter of the Nation’s domestic supplies of oil and natural gas — while ensuring safety, environmental protection, and revenue collection for the American public. DOI oversees the protection and restoration of surface mined lands and is the largest supplier and manager of water in the 17 Western States. It also is the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the United States. To fulfill these responsibilities, and to best inform the resource management decisions, the DOI is also a government leader in cutting edge multiple fields of scientific research.
Furthermore, the Department serves as Trustee to American Indians and Alaska Natives, fulfilling essential trust responsibilities to tribal communities. The Department also carries out many responsibilities for U.S.-affiliated Insular Areas, which include the territories of Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and three sovereign freely associated states.
A better understanding of how the services and functions of natural systems and processes help support the welfare and security of our citizens and communities will allow the DOI to better execute the important and diverse work of its many missions and goals. The Work Plan addressed three key topics:
- Key examples of how ecosystem services are currently being used by the DOI’s bureaus and offices;
- Areas where the ecosystem service approach could be explicitly integrated into the major decision processes used by the DOI’s bureaus and offices; and,
- Concrete short- and long-term steps describing how the Department will improve the incorporation of ecosystem services into decision making.
The following six concrete steps were identified in the Workplan:
- Establish a DOI Ecosystem Service Community of Practice
- Conduct a gap analysis of ecosystem service data and tools for use in the DOI
- Draft a DOI Ecosystem Service Research Agenda
- Conduct an Analysis of existing analytic tools
- Create a Capacity Building and Outreach Strategy
- Department-level Ecosystem Services Guidance; and Department-level NEPA?
