Military Overflight Management and Education Program— Immersion and Communication Gregg D. Fauth, Wilderness Coordinator, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, 47050 Generals Highway, Three Rivers, CA 93271;
[email protected] Park background Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (SKCNPs) are in the southern Sierra Nevada of California and contain some 865,000 acres of land ranging from foothill to alpine environ- ments. Twelve of the fifteen 14,000-foot-high (4267m) peaks in California are contained within these High Sierra parks, including the highest peak in the lower 49 states, Mt. Whitney at 14,495 ft. (4418m) elevation. The parks are very popular for backpacking and recreational stock use, hosting some 30,000 annual wilderness visitors spending some 100,000 nights camping in the parks’ wilderness. Sequoia and General Grant national parks (NPs) were established in 1890. These parks were: “set apart as a public park, or pleasure ground, for the benefit and enjoyment of the people” and to “provide for the preservation from injury of all timber, mineral deposits, nat- ural curiosities or wonders within said park, and their retention in their natural state.” Gen- eral Grant NP later evolved and expanded to become Kings Canyon NP in 1940 when its purpose was stated as: “That in order to insure the permanent preservation of the wilderness character of the Kings Canyon National Park, the Secretary of the Interior may limit the char- acter and number of privileges that he may grant within the Kings Canyon National Park.” The passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964 included a directive to the Secretary of In- terior to survey park land for wilderness designation.