Port Oneida Historic Landscape Management Plan/EA on the PEPC website.
Project Overview
The National Park Service (NPS) at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (National Lakeshore) prepared an Environmental Assessment (EA) that examined alternatives for addressing historic landscape management activities in the Port Oneida Rural Historic District (Port Oneida). The Port Oneida Historic Landscape Management Plan/EA proposed desired future resource conditions and an array of historic landscape management treatments. Implementation of these historic landscape management treatments would result in meeting the desired future resource conditions for Port Oneida.
Since the end of agricultural activity in Port Oneida, historic spatial patterns have incrementally deteriorated. The physical and visual connections between landscape features, agricultural buildings, and community landmarks have diminished, and the number and diversity of historic plant materials has decreased. The overall result, which signified the need for the EA, is diminished integrity of design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association in the historic landscape; the qualities that make up historic integrity. The NPS seeks to prevent any further loss of integrity through the development and implementation of the selected alternative.
The selected alternative presents an active program of removing vegetation to maintain or reestablish the historic configuration of fields (or a semblance thereof) while addressing natural resource concerns such as invasive plant management, wetland protection, and soil conservation. Field maintenance is one of the primary objectives for this alternative, as it is critical for retaining large-scale spatial patterns in the landscape. This alternative provides direction for stabilizing existing, or reestablishing missing, patterns of field and forest and protecting existing historic vegetation through removal of non-historic (and often invasive) vegetation. It provides a general framework that will allow flexibility in applying techniques for removing and disposing of non-historic vegetation and maintaining the desired vegetation. This alternative will also permit the National Lakeshore to respond positively to proposals for adaptively using the farms that are compatible with objectives for Port Oneida.
View the complete Port Oneida Historic Landscape Management Plan / EA along with the Finding of No Significant Impact and Errata Sheet and Public Comment / Response Summary on the PEPC website (click on document list on the left hand side).
