Petrified Forest Enters Into First Phase Of A New General Management Plan

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By Linda Kor
    Members of the Petrified Forest National Park General Management Plan Amendment Team held an open house in Holbrook Monday to present the first phase of the new management plan, which requires input from the public as to what are believed to be key issues surrounding the management of a 125,000-acre expansion approved, but not funded, in 2004.
    The Petrified Forest National Park Expansion Act of 2004 expansion of the park from its original 93,500 acres to 218,500 acres. This addition will include 16 miles of the 22-mile Chinle escarpment, an east-west trending services of bluffs and badlands that contain one of the world’s most significant records of Late Triassic period fossils. Other important additions included in this acreage are the Wallace Tank Ruins, Rainbow Forest Badlands and Canyon Butte Ruins, the west rim of the Painted Desert, the Dead Wash petroglyphs and 25 miles of the Puerco River riparian area.
    Just over half of the added 125,000 acres is privately owned land, with the remainder under state and federal ownership that will be transferred to the National Park Service or managed under an  agreement if an acquisition plan cannot be negotiated. As of May of 2007, 15,228 acres of these lands that were previously under management by the Bureau of Land Management were transferred to the National Park Service.
    Even though a majority of the land is under private ownership, the 2004 Expansion Act directed the National Park Service to include these lands in the plan so that they may be implemented once the land has been acquired.
    When the park was originally proclaimed a national monument in 1906, then a national park in 1962, the intention was to preserve the concentrations of rainbow-hued petrified wood, scenic landscapes of the Painted Desert, rare short grass prairie, and more than 500 archeological and historical sites that reflect a 10,000-year continuum of human history.
    With the addition of these new lands, a new general management plan is needed that will establish the overall management direction of the park for the next 15 to 20 years.
    According to the new park superintendent, Cliff Spencer, the open house brought a lot of valuable input that will be included in the plans.
    “During this phase of planning we are looking for public opinions. This information will be compiled with a series of alternatives included. The information will then be brought back to the public for viewing. The entire process is quite lengthy. The overall defining of the plan will take about three years to com-plete,” noted Spencer.
    By the middle of this year park officials hope to be able to identify a range of future visions or man-agement concepts for the park expansion lands. By the end of the year, preliminary alternatives should be developed. Different aspects of these alternatives will be considered before selecting a preferred alternative. In 2009, a preferred alternative will be selected and a draft plan will be prepared describing the manage-ment alternatives and impacts. This will be distributed to the public for final review. Following that, in 2010 the approved amendment will be implemented.
    Although the primary issues being addressed in the management plan involve preservation of cultural and natural resources, other aspects being included are the range of visitor uses, impacts of visitor uses, education and access to the expansion lands.
    According to Lyn Carranza, chief of interpretation at the park, the open house brought in about 20 peo-ple who expressed interest in issues such as requesting more hiking trails into additional areas, expanding trails to include some of the more historic areas, such as Route 66 and the Beale Wagon Road, and guided tours into more sensitive areas such as the petroglyphs. Some of the concerns expressed by visitors in-cluded how a casino in the area might affect the park, providing fencing that won’t harm pronghorn deer and off-road enthusiasts.
    Individuals who would still like to provide ideas or concerns for the new general management plan may do so online at http://parkplanning.nps.gov/ or they may write the amendment team at Petrified Forest Na-tional Park GMP Amendment Team, c/o Miki Stuebe, National Park Service Denver Service Center, P.O. Box 25287, Denver, Colo 80225-0287.