Denali National Park and Preserve state of the backcountry – 2012

Abbe, J.; Burrows, Rob

Denali National Park and Preserve (DENA) encompasses the heart of the Alaska Range in interior Alaska. It is home to North America’s tallest mountain, extensive mountain glaciers, tight river canyons, broad braided river valleys, sweeping tundra, robust populations of Dall Sheep, moose, caribou, black and grizzly bear, lynx, and wolf, one of the oldest cultural histories documented in North America, and unique paleontological resources. In 1980, over 4 million acres were added to the Park through the passage of Alaska National Interest Land Conservation Act (ANILCA) bringing over 6 million acres of wild lands under protection to preserve extensive, unaltered ecosystems in their natural state. In addition, most of the original Park was designated as the Denali Wilderness adding 2,124,783 acres to the National Wilderness Preservation System. The purpose of this report is to document the state of DENA’s backcountry by summarizing implementation of the Backcountry Management Plan, wilderness character indicators, and other current and relevant data. Backcountry is defined as “all park and preserve lands, except the park road corridor and adjacent development zones and backcountry day use areas…” page iii of the DENA Backcountry Management Plan (National Park Service 2006). The Denali Backcountry Management Plan (BCMP) was completed in 2006 after a long and extensive National Environmental Policy Act Environmental Impact Statement process. The BCMP identifies indicators and sets standards for desired conditions in 12 different management zones with different levels of standards. These indicators and standards are specifically used to help protect the wilderness resource values throughout DENA’s backcountry, both designated Wilderness and eligible wilderness. More information on Denali’s indicators and standards can be found in Table 1 on page 32 of the summarized Backcountry Management Plan. They were established prior to the current Wilderness Stewardship Framework, which is focused on assessing and protecting Wilderness Character. Wilderness Character is defined in the Wilderness Act as comprised of five qualities: natural, undeveloped, untrammeled, opportunities for solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation, and other features and values. The indicators and standards established in the BCMP focus on specific wilderness resource values which provide critical information on some of the conditions comprising of DENA’s Wilderness Character. To effectively monitor all five qualities of wilderness, DENA’s Wilderness Character monitoring program will incorporate additional indicators and standards. A first summary of DENA’s Wilderness Character and associated indicators and standards can be found in Table 3 on page xiii. Standards are expected to be achieved for 95% of all measurements or samples obtained through monitoring over the course of a visitor season. Utilizing the new ‘State of the Park’ reporting process, DENA staff summarized the status and trends of wilderness stewardship and character as shown in Table 3. The first section of this report explains the data and rationale used to produce the summary.

Denali National Park and Preserve state of the backcountry – 2012

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