General management plan/environmental assessment: Montezuma Castle National Monument and Tuzigoot National Monument

Montezuma Castle National Monument; Tuzigoot National Monument

As the responsible agency, the National Park Service prepared this general management plan to establish the direction of management of Montezuma Castle National Monument and Tuzigoot National Monument for the next 15 to 20 years. The general management plan provides comprehensive, integrated guidance for preserving cultural resources, perpetuating natural systems, providing opportunities for visitor enjoyment and understanding, and establishing the organizational mechanism to accomplish the plan. The previous general management plan for Montezuma Castle and Tuzigoot national monuments was completed in 1975. Since then, much has changed, including visitor use patterns, land uses in the Verde Valley outside the monuments, and area populations. These changes affect how visitors access and use the national monuments, the facilities needed to support those uses, management of resources, and how the National Park Service manages its operations. Therefore, a new plan is needed to allow the monuments to achieve desired conditions that implement goals of the National Park Service and the public for management and preservation of cultural and natural resources. The environmental assessment that was prepared to determine the impacts of the general management plan considered three alternatives: • Alternative A, the no-action alternative; • Alternative B, which is the National Park Service preferred alternative and emphasizes opportunities to connect the monuments, including Montezuma Well (a detached unit of Montezuma Castle National Monument), with improved regional orientation to the Verde Valley; and • Alternative C, which emphasizes self-discovery of the monuments’ resources. The environmental assessment was prepared in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act to provide the decision-making framework that 1) analyzes a reasonable range of alternatives to meet objectives of the proposal, 2) evaluates potential issues and impacts to the monuments’ resources and values, and 3) identifies mitigation measures to lessen the degree or extent of these impacts. Resource topics included in this document because impacts may be greater than minor include cultural resources, natural resources, visitor use and experience, socioeconomics, and monument operations. Other resource topics were dismissed because the plan would result in negligible or minor effects. No major effects are anticipated as a result of this plan. Public scoping was conducted to assist with the development of this document, and comments received during scoping are to a great extent reflected in the content of this document and were considered in the development of the action alternatives. (Copied verbatim from the plan.)

General management plan/environmental assessment: Montezuma Castle National Monument and Tuzigoot National Monument

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