Fire management plan environmental assessment/assessment of effect

Bryce Canyon National Park Fire Management Team

This document details the possible environmental impacts of the adoption of a new fire management plan at Bryce Canyon National Park. Increases in fuel loadings and vegetation densities in some park areas constitutes a risk to adjacent public developed areas and federal lands, and the proposed plan seeks to lower these risks through fuel reduction. Under guidelines written in 1994, both prescribed fires and mechanical reduction of fuels is allowed, but all wildland fires are suppressed. The proposed fire management plan seeks to allow implememntation of the full range of fire management activities, including wildland fire use and fuels management, and will be developed in collaboration with the USDA Forest Service. This environmental assessment found the proposed fire management plan to be the preferred environmental alternative, and gives a detailed description of possible environmental impacts under both the continuation of the old plan and the adoption of the proposed plan.... SUMMARY The National Park Service (NPS) proposes to develop a new Fire Management Plan for Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. The plan would guide the wildland fire program by providing management direction that would support the accomplishment of resource management and protection objectives. Fuel loadings and vegetation densities have increased in some areas beyond their range of natural variability. Some park developed areas, adjacent public developed areas and adjacent federal lands are now at risk. Increased management intervention is required to reduce fuels that, under severe burning conditions, could threaten life and property, and to restore the role of fire as a natural disturbance across the Bryce Canyon National Park landscape. The current 1994 fire plan permits prescribed fires to meet resource objectives, as well as limited manual hazardous fuels treatments involving cutting and thinning to establish defensible space around values to be protected. All wildland fires are currently suppressed. The revised Fire Management Plan would provide strategies that include suppression of unwanted wildland fires, expanding opportunities for increasing the use of prescribed fire to meet resource objectives and improving fuel reduction treatments (mechanical fuel reduction and prescribed fire) that would enhance defensibility around structures. The fire management plan that will be developed from this environmental assessment will be an interagency plan with the USFS. The Fire Management Plan (FMP) provides a framework for joint management of wildland and prescribed fire as tools to safely accomplish both resource protection and resource management objectives on USFS and NPS lands. The lands include those administered by Bryce Canyon National Park, Cedar Breaks National Monument, Powell and Cedar City Ranger Districts, Dixie National Forest in southern Utah. The (FMP) is an Appendix to Bryce Canyon National Park's and Cedar Breaks Resource Management Plan (RMP) and a supplement to the Dixie National Forest’s Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP). This environmental assessment is just for lands administered by Bryce Canyon National Park. Two alternatives, a no-action and a proposed action/preferred alternative, were identified based on program goals and objectives; internal and external scoping; guidance from existing park plans; policy guidance from the NPS; the 2001 Federal Fire Policy; the National Fire Plan; and research, monitoring, and experience from the existing fire management program.