NATIONAL PARKS TRAVELER • March 8, 2022
At a congressional hearing Tuesday there were examples where the Park Service was already working with native peoples. "There are a number of parks," National Park Service Director Chuck Sams said in response to a question about what parks could serve as pilot projects when it comes to co-management with native cultures. "Many times the tribes were able to preserve their rights to hunt fish and gather in those spaces. And they already do a lot of co-management, along with the states and the federal government on flora and fauna. In Acadia, they're doing [traditional gathering of] sweet grass. There's a great opportunity here to be able to bring not only that traditional ecological knowledge, but the reciprocity that tribes demonstrate when they're doing restoration and management of these different flora and fauna.”