PARC, the Palmyra Atoll Research Consortium, is a group of cooperating institutions that undertakes collaborative research to understand terrestrial, marine, and climate systems of Palmyra Atoll and the central Pacific that advances the conservation of island and coastal systems worldwide. Palmyra offers an extraordinary opportunity for scientific studies aimed at protecting both Palmyra and other island ecosystems in the Pacific and around the world. In 2004, The Nature Conservancy helped launch the PARC as a partnership of academic, governmental, and non-profit conservation institutions. Palmyra is managed as a National Wildlife Refuge by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which works in collaboration with TNC and PARC institutions to permit research that builds understanding about conservation of fragile atoll ecosystems. Each institution contributes its own scientific expertise, and together, PARC scientists bring a broad suite of tools that can be used to unlock the valuable scientific information Palmyra holds.
Affiliated Institutions
These institutions conduct research at Palmyra Atoll:
- American Museum of Natural History
- Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences
- Island Conservation
- Scripps Institute of Oceanography
- Stanford University
- The Nature Conservancy
- United States Fish and Wildlife Service
- United States Geological Survey
- University of California, Santa Barbara
- University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
- Victoria University of Wellington
