The Philadelphia Support Office of the National Park Service serves existing and potential units of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Virginia, and southern New Jersey.

River Management

River protection usually begins by focusing attention on a river’s conservation needs through the development of a river management plan. If the river flows through land that is owned by a federal agency; a river management plan is developed by that partkular federal agency to insure that the river and its related lands are managed in such a way that the area’s important resources are conserved.

If the river flows through land that is privately owned or flows through a combination of private and federally owned land then the administering agency seeks to protect the important river-related resources through agreements with local and county governnients, state agencies and landowners who manage the resources. In this case the river management plan becomes a frame-work for cooperative decision-making and a way to develop consensus on a conservation strategy for the river and its related lands.

River management plans can address a wide variety of river-related issues that concern people of the area, such as land use and conservation, resource interpretation and education, or recreation management. Protection is achieved by: identifying the important resources and their conservation needs; bringing together those who have jurisdiction over the important resources; and working to create a mutually agreed-upon river management plan.

In recent years the Stewardships and Partnership Team has worked on a number of "private land" wild and scenic river studies that have helped pioneer the concept of cooperative river management. Through these studies we continue to perfect river conservation strategies that rely on consensus and partnerships among widely divergent river interests. The success of these studies is in no small part related to the commitment of the National Park Service to provide a forum in which all river interests may be heard and where management issues may be resolved through collective reasoning and action.