NPS Park Planning Policy
NOTE: This review draft has not yet been approved.
Park planning and decision making will be conducted as a continuous, dynamic process that extends from broad visions shared with the public to annual work assignments and evaluations.
Each park will be able to demonstrate how decisions are related in terms of a logical, trackable rationale. Management teams will be held accountable for identifying and accomplishing long-term goals and annual goals as incremental steps toward fully carrying out the park’s mission.
At key points of planning and decision making, the National Park Service will identify reasonable alternatives and analyze and compare their differences with respect to consistency with park purposes, quality of visitor experience, impacts on park resources, short- and long-term costs, and other environmental consequences that may extend beyond park boundaries. The National Park Service will tier project-specific and site-specific analysis off more general regionwide and parkwide analysis. Decision makers will look at the park holistically and in its full national and regional context before delving into the details of site-specific planning and analysis of site-specific conditions.
The public will be appropriately involved in planning and decision making commensurate with the level of public interest and the potential for environmental impact.