The National Park Service, purportedly under orders from the Interior Department, has scuttled a Director's Order pertaining to protection of natural resources/NPS

Among the last tasks National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis took before retiring this year was signing Director's Order 100, which updated the agency’s guidelines for stewardship and reaffirmed its “predominant” duty to protect natural and cultural resources. Last week, acting-National Park Service Director Michael Reynolds rescinded that order, reportedly at the Interior Department's direction.

The action was just the latest by the Trump administration to mold the Park Service in its perspective of how natural resources should be managed. Earlier, the administration had the Park Service abandon its ban on the sale of disposable water bottles in the National Park System.

On August 17, Mr. Reynolds quietly signed a four-sentence memo to the Park Service's National Leadership Council stating simply that DO 100 had been rescinded. He gave no explanation.

"It was ordered to be rescinded by (the Department of Interior). It is hoped that parks will continue to manage their resources in accordance with the principles laid out in the (Director's Order), management policies, regulations and law," Maureen Finnerty, chair of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, said Thursday in an email.

In Washington, Park Service spokesman Jeremy Barnum provided a somewhat cryptic message when asked why the Director's Order was tossed.

"The National Park Service rescinded Director’s Order #100 on August 16, 2017, to eliminate confusion among the public and NPS employees regarding current NPS policy in light of the Department of the Interior’s new vision for the long-term protection of the America’s unparalleled national parks," he said.

Mr. Barnum would not, however, explain what confusion had been created or what the "new vision" was. He did say that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke "is leading a new, comprehensive initiative to identify departmental priorities and reorganize the agency for the next 100 years."

The order, signed December 20 by Director Jarvis, provided internal guidance for making decisions about how parks are managed. Three criteria – best available science, adherence to the law, and long-term public interest – were to drive a bureau-wide shift toward interdisciplinary collaboration, increased scientific literacy, and more training.

“Our overarching goal of resource stewardship is to manage the resources under our care in an environment that is undergoing continuous change that is not yet fully understood,” Director Jarvis said at the time. “With this guidance, NPS employees will be better able to protect the extraordinary resources of the National Park System, provide visitors with transformative experiences, and ensure parks are a core of a national conservation land- and seascape.”

In particular, the order adopted two policies: the precautionary principle and adaptive management. The precautionary principle requires Park Service managers to err on the side of caution to prevent resource impairment when there is uncertainty about a decision’s impact. Adaptive management encourages adjustments to these decisions as outcomes become clearer through monitoring and better scientific understanding.

The scuttling of the order is not expected to have any great impact on management of the parks, according to one superintendent, who said it was little more than a compilation of past natural resource policies adopted by the Park Service.

"It's a blow to morale. It's a shot across the bow, but doesn't change anything," said the superintendent, who asked for anonymity in discussing guidance from the Interior Department. "The administration is micro-managing, trying to make a statement."