Draft general management plan / environmental assessment / land protection plan / wilderness suitability review: Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska

National Park Service

The draft general management plan for Cape Krusenstern National Monument presents alternatives for planning and management for the monument for the next ten years. Similar plans are simultaneously being written and publicly reviewed for Kobuk valley National Park and the Noatak National Preserve. There are two alternatives for management presented in Chapter 3. Alternative 1 (the preferred alternative) calls for increased staff and funding, expanded facilities for administrative offices, construction of government housing and a small aircraft facility in Kotzebue. It calls on the National Park Service to initiate research in several areas including cultureal and antural resources, subsistence, and other public uses. It further recommends initiating several new cooperative agreements for management and research. This alternative also proposes to file for reservation of in-stream flow water rights, to expand opportuniites in Kotzebue to pass out interpretive information to the public, and to encourage a new cooperative museum for Northwest Alaska in Kotzebue. Alternative 2 (the Status Quo alternative) differs by not proposing increases in staff, or the expansion of administrative office space, the construction of government housing or an aircraft facility. The National Park Service would initiate less new research and no new cooperative agreements unless other duties of existing staff diminish and enable these tasks to be undertaken. Filing for in-stream water rights would not occur, nor would there be expanded opportunities for interpretive infromation to reach the public in Kotzebue. No effort would be put forth for a cooperative museum in Kotzebue. The land protection plan proposes to protect resources of significant value on private lands within the boundaries of the monument by a variety of methods. In the heart of the monument, at Cape Krusenstern, the National Park Service would acquire fee simple interest in Native allotments where significant cultural resources are known to be on the property. Additional research must be undertaken before this could occur. Acquisition could include all or a portion of an individual's allotment. Whenever possible, acquisition would occur on a willing-seller willing-buyer basis. Other recommended methods of protection include the Alaska Land Bank, cooperative agreements, acquisition of conservation easements and relinquishment of selections by Native corporations. The section on environmental consequences discusses the impacts of the alternatives presented in this document. The wilderness suitability review portion of the plan finds virtually all federal lands within the monument suitable for inclusion in the National Wilderness System. Readers of this draft are encouraged to review the entire document so that sections can be viewed in the context of the whole plan.