City of Ann Arbor Natural Area Preservation

  • Environment

Who We Are

Mission: To protect and restore Ann Arbor’s natural areas and to foster an environmental ethic within the community.

Formed in 1993, Natural Area Preservation (NAP) is a division of the City of Ann Arbor’s Parks and Recreation Services, which oversees more than 160 parks, spanning over 2,200 acres of land. The NAP division is specifically responsible for the management and care of approximately 1,400 acres of natural areas, including woods, wetlands, prairies, and other natural communities.

One third of NAP’s field work is done by volunteers, so community involvement is vital to the success of its conservation efforts. NAP projects take volunteers well beyond the realm of litter clean-up into broader areas of concern, such as maintaining biodiversity and restoring damaged ecosystems. Through the combination of hands-on involvement and scientific understanding, NAP hopes to encourage and support a connection between individual volunteers and their surrounding natural environment. By sharing this experience with friends and neighbors, volunteers play a crucial role in fostering an environmental ethic in the community.

What We Do

NAP’s work is founded on the understanding that biodiverse natural systems are resilient natural systems. The division works to safeguard the biodiversity and ecological function of the natural communities in Ann Arbor’s parks, protecting and restoring diverse plant and animal communities, in order to promote overall resilience to current and future ecological changes that emerge locally or globally. NAP organizes its work into four key pillars:

  1. Stewardship and Restoration – NAP’s internal Conservation Crew and robust volunteer community work to remove invasive species in the parks, collect and seed native plants, build or maintain trails, and conduct controlled burns.
  2. Ecological Assessment and Inventory – NAP staff and volunteers inventory plant and animal species across the parks as a means of measuring biodiversity and changes in ecological  conditions. NAP also runs a photo monitoring program to benchmark changes in the landscape across time.
  3. Volunteerism – Community members engage in volunteer workdays, participating in activities such as clearing invasive plants or building and maintaining trails. NAP also coordinates a Park Steward program to support the ongoing stewardship needs of specific parks in collaboration with NAP staff. In addition to volunteer stewardship, community members help collect valuable data on plant and animal species and provide significant behind-the-scenes support in the NAP office.
  4. Education and Engagement – NAP offers opportunities to engage with nature in other ways—in addition to volunteer workdays and other stewardship activities—such as guided nature walks, guest speakers, nature craft programs for kids, and demonstration burns.

Details

Get Connected Icon (734) 794-6627
Get Connected Icon Tina Stephens
Get Connected Icon Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator
https://www.a2gov.org/parks-and-recreation/natural-area-preservation/