Keeping It Wild in the National Park Service, a User Guide to Integrating
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Wilderness Stewardship Division National Park Service Wilderness Stewardship Program U.S. Department of the Interior Keeping It Wild in the National Park Service A USER GUIDE TO INTEGRATING WILDERNESS CHARACTER INTO PARK PLANNING, MANAGEMENT, AND MONITORING January 2014 Cover photos: (Top) NPS/Suzy Stutzman, Great Sand Dunes Wilderness, Great Sand Dunes National Park (Left) NPS/Peter Landres, recommended wilderness, Canyonlands National Park (Right) NPS/Peter Landres, recommended wilderness, Cedar Breaks National Monument KEEPING IT WILD IN THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE A USER GUIDE TO INTEGRATING WILDERNESS CHARACTER INTO PARK PLANNING, MANAGEMENT, AND MONITORING Developed by the National Park Service Wilderness Character Integration Team with funding and support from the NPS Office of Park Planning and Special Studies and the Wilderness Stewardship Division A Companion Document to the 2014 Wilderness Stewardship Plan Handbook: Planning to Preserve Wilderness Character WASO 909/121797; January 2014 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This User Guide was developed to help National Park Service (NPS) staff effectively and efficiently fulfill the mandate from the 1964 Wilderness Act and NPS policy to “preserve wilderness character” now and into the future. This mandate applies to all congressionally designated wilderness and other park lands that are, by policy, managed as wilderness, including eligible, potential, proposed, or recommended wilderness. This User Guide builds on the ideas in Keeping It Wild: An Interagency Strategy to Monitor Trends in Wilderness Character Across the National Wilderness Preservation System (Landres and others 2008). The User Guide offers practical guidance and tools to integrate wilderness character into park planning, management, and monitoring, and is divided into six chapters and a companion document: • Chapter 1, Introduction to the User Guide and Wilderness Character—Describes the context for why wilderness and wilderness character are important and the special role of the National Park Service in its preservation; defines the concept of wilderness character and the general benefits of its integration into planning, management, and monitoring. • Chapter 2, Building Blocks for Integrating Wilderness Character—Describes the fundamental information needed to effectively integrate wilderness character into park planning, management, and monitoring. • Chapter 3, Integrating Wilderness Character into Planning—Describes how to address wilderness character in a park foundation document and selected park planning products, which can serve as examples for other types of planning efforts. • Chapter 4, Integrating Wilderness Character into Management and Operations— Describes how wilderness character relates to NPS Director’s Order 41: Wilderness Stewardship, staff training, minimum requirements analysis, scientific activities, environmental compliance, emergency services, and natural and cultural resources. • Chapter 5, Monitoring Change in Wilderness Character—Describes how to identify and prioritize measures to assess current conditions and track change in wilderness character over time in a park in a way that is nationally consistent and locally relevant. • Chapter 6, Emerging Tools to Integrate Wilderness Character—Describes several new tools that are still being developed, including: wilderness character mapping, the wilderness character monitoring database, and evaluating the “extent necessary” for commercial services. Other tools will be added as they are developed. • Wilderness Stewardship Plan Handbook 2014—Describes the development and components of a wilderness stewardship plan driven by the concept of wilderness character. The Handbook is a standalone document not included within the User Guide, but directly associated with it. The User Guide is not prescriptive but instead offers a wide range of guidance and tools for incorporating wilderness character into park planning, management, and monitoring. Each chapter may be used in any order that makes the most sense. On page xii, the table “Where Can I Find What I Need?” enables quick reference to topics of interest. In addition, worksheets and examples are included in the User Guide and are also on the NPS Wilderness Character tab under the Wilderness Stewardship Program Sharepoint site at http://share.inside.nps.gov/sites/WASO/WSD/WC. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Developing Keeping It Wild in the National Park Service: A User Guide to Integrating Wilderness Character into Park Planning, Management, and Monitoring and the accompanying Wilderness Stewardship Plan Handbook: Planning to Preserve Wilderness Character would not have been possible without the vision, funding, and support of Patrick Gregerson, NPS Office of Park Planning and Special Studies, and Garry Oye, NPS Wilderness Stewardship Division. The User Guide was developed by the Wilderness Character Integration Team. All the members of this Team generously gave their time and effort to openly and civilly discuss and debate, argue, consider other viewpoints, and finally reach consensus on literally hundreds of issues. All the members of this Team contributed their vision, passion, and 234 years of combined on-the-ground experience to write the User Guide. These team members, in alphabetical order, are Michael Bilecki, Carol Cook, Sarah Craighead, Jeremy Curtis, Tim Devine, Sandee Dingman, Michael Haynie, Chris Holbeck, Chip Jenkins, Peter Landres, Adrienne Lindholm, Melissa Memory, Christina Mills, Ray O’Neil, Ruth Scott, Miki Stuebe, Suzy Stutzman, Karen Trevino, Frank Turina, and Wade Vagias. Dozens of other people were instrumental in producing the User Guide. Of particular note, Mary Lucid used her accounting acumen to make it all happen, Erin Drake was the consummate professional helping in enumerable ways to ensure that the User Guide was successfully completed, and Ángel López made the User Guide look so good. The Team is extremely grateful to several people who helped write various sections in the User Guide: Dave Vana-Miller helped write the “Resource Stewardship Strategy” section in chapter 3, Don Weeks helped with the climate change section in chapter 3, and Jeff Manley helped write the initial draft of the fire management plan section in chapter 4. Several people helped with their insight, expertise, and patience to integrate wilderness character with cultural resources (Jill Cowley, Michele Jesperson, Sande McDermott, and Jeff Rasic), and foundation documents (Sarah Conlin and Tokey Boswell). In addition, the first group of NPS Wilderness Fellows in 2010 (Monica Patel, Emily Biesecker, Christina Mills, Lisanne Petracca, Katie Hawks, Alicia Burtner, and Brian Tarpinian) helped lay the foundation for several of the tools offered in the User Guide with their passion, insight, and creativity. The Team sincerely appreciates all the time and effort of the reviewers who provided comments on the April 2012 version of the User Guide and the Handbook that was released for comment on the Planning, Environment, and Public Comment (PEPC) planning tool: Kenneth Biddle, Susan Dolan, Michael Edwards, Mark Husbands, Michael Rees, Bruce Rogers, Danny Rosencrans, Sam Tamburo, Dave Trevino, Dave Vana-Miller. In addition to these individuals, the Intermountain Regional Wilderness Executive Committee and the Alaska Regional Cultural Resources Team provided many substantial and helpful review comments. iv The Team also greatly appreciates all the comments from the staff at all the units that were formal pilot test sites for the User Guide: the Denver Service Center, Death Valley National Park, Fire Island National Seashore, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Olympic National Park, Pinnacles National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, and Mojave National Preserve. Many of the ideas presented in the User Guide were informally piloted tested and honed by many parks that participated early-on in different workshops. The Team is extremely grateful to all of the superintendents and staff at these parks for their willingness to be early adopters and engage in a little experimentation to figure out what works and what doesn’t. These parks, in rough chronological order, were: Haleakala National Park, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Everglades National Park, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Buffalo National River, El Malpais National Monument, Fire Island National Seashore, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Death Valley National Park, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, Zion National Park, Olympic National Park, North Cascades National Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Noatak National Preserve, Rocky Mountain National Park, Saguaro National Park, and Denali National Park and Preserve. Russ Cash from Zion National Park graciously provided material for appendix 4.1 on the cabin restoration. Dave Craig was of crucial help in honing the writing of the User Guide and the Handbook. And Danette Paige was always in the background helping to keep track of budgets and travel for this large team. v BRIEF TABLE OF CONTENTS Where Can I Find What I Need?. xii. Chapter 1—Introduction to the User Guide and Wilderness Character . .3 . Chapter 2—Building Blocks for Integrating Wilderness Character . .19 . Chapter 3—Integrating Wilderness Character into Planning. .31 . Chapter 4—Integrating Wilderness Character into Management and Operations . 65 Chapter 5—Monitoring