collaboratories:
parks collaboratory

Parks Collaboratory carries on the legacy of the Institute for Parks, People, and Biodiversity

For nearly a decade, the UC Berkeley Institute for Parks, People, and Biodiversity (the Institute) was devoted to the investigation, dissemination, and application of science to critical issues facing national, state, and local parks. Jump to a history of the Institute.

Now, the Stone Center for Environmental Stewardship is building on this legacy. The Institute is the foundation of our Parks Collaboratory and supports our ongoing community-based research on public lands and protected areas with partners.  

Enhancing our Focus on Parks and Protected Areas

Protecting public lands and waters as state and national parks and wilderness areas has preserved beloved places like Yellowstone and Yosemite across the U.S. and around the world. However, successful management of these places requires working across a larger, interconnected landscape (including bordering private and Tribal lands) since animals migrate across multiple jurisdictions. For example, work by Stone Center Faculty Co-Director Arthur Middleton and partners shows that Yellowstone’s migratory herds—whose productivity helps sustain many other species, such as the grizzly bear and gray wolf—rely on state, Tribal, and privately owned lands for much of the year (Middleton et al. 2020). 

Our Parks Collaboratory convenes researchers, agencies, and local communities and applies science to collaboratively solve problems on public lands and protected areas. Some of our ongoing research includes:

• Examining fee systems in national parks: Visiting Scholar Sharon Zou, Assistant Professor at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, is studying how entrance fees from Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks (particularly from international visitors) could support conservation efforts outside of the park, in partnership with Middleton and Senior Research Scientist Hilary Flint from the University of Wyoming. 
• Recent publications: The above project builds on a recent paper, co-authored by Flint and Arthur Middleton, that found contributing entrance fees to local conservation efforts has widespread support among park visitors. 
• Understanding park resilience: Zou is also exploring how recent changes to funding and staffing at NPS are affecting conservation. Through case studies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, California’s coastal redwoods, and the Appalachian Trail, she aims to identify partner-based strategies that land managers can use to navigate and build resilience to resource limitations.

Publication Spotlight: Parks Stewardship Forum

The Parks Stewardship Forum delivers interdisciplinary information and problem-solving techniques across a variety of topics relevant to the world’s parks, protected areas, cultural sites, and other forms of place-based conservation. The journal represents all areas of inquiry relevant to understanding and management of parks, protected areas, cultural sites, and other forms of place-based conservation, including but not limited to the natural sciences, cultural resources-related disciplines, social sciences, and interdisciplinary perspectives.

Recent publications include: Now and Here: Public Humanities and National Parks in Tumultuous Times (Volume 42, Number 1 | 2026)

Read previous publications on the eScholarship platform.

History of the Institute

A key component of our Parks Collaboratory, the Institute’s history dates back to 1916 with the establishment of the National Park Service (NPS). The agency’s close partnership with UC Berkeley continues to this day. The first two NPS directors were UC Berkeley alum: Stephen T. Mather (class of 1887) and Horace M. Albright (BS 1912 Economics). From 1931 to 1935, alumnus George Meléndez Wright (BS 1927 Forestry) and his colleagues oversaw the NPS Wildlife Division in Hilgard Hall, in what is now UC Berkeley’s Rausser College of Natural Resources.

Professor A. Starker Leopold (son of the eminent conservationist Aldo Leopold) served as the Chief Scientist of NPS in 1967. Four years prior, Starker published a report asserting the scientific importance of managing national parks.

Since 2003, UC Berkeley has served as the host for the Californian Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit to provide research, technical assistance, and education to address natural and cultural resource management in California.

UC Berkeley welcomed the NPS Principal Climate Change Scientist and alum Patrick Gonzalez to Mulford Hall in 2015 (where the Stone Center is located). Gonzalez received his PhD in 1993 from UC Berkeley in Energy and Resources. This was part of a collaborative effort to provide robust science on climate change impacts and solutions to national parks.

In 2017, with generous support from Resources Legacy Fund, the Nathan M. Ohrbach Foundation, and a number of individual donors UC Berkeley established the Parks Institute. The Institute aimed to build on this legacy and provide scientific support for national parks and protected areas. Jonathan B. Jarvis, who served as director of NPS from 2009 to 2017, was the Institute’s inaugural executive director. Jarvis now serves on the Stone Center’s Advisory Group. Berkeley Law Professor Holly Doremus (a close collaborator with the Stone Center) and Environmental Science, Policy, and Management Professor Albert Ruhi were the Institute’s most recent faculty co-directors.

From left to right: Jon Jarvis, Professor Doremus, Professor Ruhi.

Present Day: Parks Institute Becomes Parks Collaboratory

In 2025 the Institute for Parks, People and Biodiversity transitioned into a new phase. Now, it is fully integrated with the Stone Center for Environmental Stewardship as our new Parks Collaboratory. 

This move reflects a shared vision and deep programmatic alignment—particularly around parks, conservation, and large landscape stewardship—and allows us to amplify this work through a more unified platform.The transition preserves the core mission and legacy of the Institute, while situating it within a broader ecosystem of research and practice focused on conservation and resilience, and leverages resources for greater impact.  This alignment ensures continued momentum and expanded reach for this critical work moving forward.