Olympic National Park: Wilderness Draft Alternatives

Olympic National Park, our backyard playground, is working to make changes to their Wilderness Management plan.
Katherine Hollis Katherine Hollis
April 08, 2014

Olympic National Park (ONP) recently moved up the 5th most visited National Park in the United States! ONP had 3,085,340 recreational visitors in 2013. In comparison, Mt. Rainier National Park reported only 1,148,552. (For more, check out this Seattle Times article). 

For those that know the park, this probably comes with no surprise. As the Park Service often boasts, stunning mountain vistas, ocean tidepools, and some of the largest tracks of ancient forests left in the U.S., make spending time in ONP like visiting three parks in one!

Based on this popularity, finding a balance between minimizing recreationists’ impact while continuing to have recreational access is a priority for The Mountaineers. Read on for information on the Park's Wilderness Stewardship Plan.

Olympic National Park Stewardship Plan Draft Alternatives

With 95% of the Park being designated Wilderness, the Wilderness Stewardship Plan and Environmental Impact Statement that the Park is working on will have long-term impact on conserving this amazing place. The Park undertook public scoping for the plan in the spring of 2013.  The Mountaineers submitted comments on the plan (dated 05.14.13). The Park received 260 total correspondences, from which they developed a range of draft alternatives. Read their summary of alternatives and read more about their planning process on their website. 
The Park Service is asking you to weigh in!
You can submit comments on the draft alternatives:
- Online 

- Mail them to: 
Sarah Creachbaum, Superintendent
ATTN: WSP Preliminary Draft Alternatives
Olympic National Park
600 E. Park Avenue
Port Angeles, WA 98362  
- Attend one of a series of public meetings 

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