Most of this issue of the Planning Update addresses the Yosemite Valley Plan, but there are other planning efforts and projects underway in the park. One of them is the Yosemite Fire Management Plan.

In December 1995, the National Park Service (NPS) completed the final report of the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy and Program Review. From this report the NPS issued new directions for wildland fire management. As part of this initiative, Yosemite National Park is developing a new Fire Management Plan.

The plan will identify new directions in the management of naturally ignited lightning fires and prescribed fires. It will include suggestions for additional resources and options for implementing such a program. The program, nationally accepted by the fire management community, will allow for managing wildland fire for resource benefits and to return fire to the landscape as a natural ecosystem process. Comments can be sent to Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, P.O. Box 577, Yosemite NP, CA 95389 Attn: Fire Management Plan, or e-mail comments to yose_fmp@nps.gov.

YVP Progress Report

What Have We Been Working On?

As the alternatives are being developed for the Draft Yosemite Valley Plan/Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, the work of Yosemite National Park staff is being augmented by outside experts to ensure that we have the best possible information.

A sampling of this work includes:
 

• Ongoing noise and air quality studies.
• A trail workshop to develop non-motorized circulation elements of the alternatives, including pedestrian, bicycle, and stock uses.
• The use of criteria originally developed for the 1992 and 1996 Draft Yosemite Valley Housing Plan/Supplemental EIS to determine the number of employees that need to be housed in the Valley.
• Ongoing mapping of the rockfall zone mapping for Yosemite Valley.
• Delineation of wetlands in the east end of Yosemite Valley, including identification of one-year and five-year flood lines through campgrounds.
• Completion of an ethnographic inventory/evaluation of the Yosemite Valley Native American Cultural Landscape.
• A survey of National Register qualified structures and sites in Yosemite Valley, including preparing the nomination for the listing of Camp 4 (Sunnyside Campground).
• Completion of a cultural resources inventory and archaeological test excavations in the Yosemite Lodge/Lower Yosemite Falls area.
• A review of our transportation plans and proposals involving experts from federal, state and county transportation agencies, to improve transportation components of each proposed alternative.
• Design workshops for all transportation elements (parking, transit facilities, intersection alignments, traffic flow, etc.) to ensure that each of the alternatives provides for safe and  efficient access and movement throughout the Valley.
• Alternative fuels analysis for cleaner, quieter shuttle buses.