General Management Plan Summary
The plan divides the Park into Zones and gives general guidelines for the desired conditions in each zone. The zones that interest canyoneers are the Primitive Zone and the Pristine Zone.
The Primitive Zone includes the Subway, Orderville Canyon, Pine Creek Canyon and Keyhole Canyon. It also includes most of the official trails and the top of Horse Pasture Mesa. The Primitive Zone includes most of the "hiker" terrain in the backcountry, plus a few technical canyons that are either very popular or close to the road. The prescription for the primitive zone is that it provides a fair amount of solitude, but allows for some crowding and up to about 12 group encounters per day.
The Pristine Zone includes most of the technical backcountry where canyoneering skills are required. The prescription for this zone is that it provides outstanding opportunities for solitude, and encounter rates are expected to be low. In some places, the encounter rate is stated as zero, in other places it is stated as a few or infrequent.
The Park will do some research to figure out the carrying capacity of the backcountry areas. This VERP study will look at current usage and ask visitors to give their views on solitude, encounter rates and group size limits.
A Wilderness Management Plan will be developed based on these studies. User Limits will be set based on the carrying capacity study.
In the interim, Use Limits will be put in place to protect the resource and to maintain a high quality visitor experience.
Zion Canyoneering Coalition Comments on the GMP
The Zion General Management Plan is exceptionally well written, and the ZCC has only a few objections to it.
1. Emphasis on "Zero Social Encounters" in the Pristine Zone prescriptions.
The General Management Plan is meant to be a planning document, offering guidance but avoiding specific prescriptions. In several places, the GMP mentions that the Pristine Zone encounter rate level should be zero, though in other places it uses terms like "few", or that "visitors will usually not expect to encounter other groups".
Use of such a specific target in the GMP is not appropriate. The GMP establishes that fostering solitude is a primary management objective for the Pristine Zone. The ZCC supports this goal. But choosing a method (zero social encounters) for achieving this objective and building it into the GMP is clearly inapppropriate.
Promotion of "Zero Social Encounters" is a political statement. A wealth of research indicates that zero social encounters are not required to foster a deep sense of solitude, though a minority of NPS staff and wilderness advocates claim this is the only way to ensure solitude. A large number of studies have been conducted to attempt to justify this position scientifically, and they failed. The GMP should not write into its zone prescriptions a minority, discredited management method, it should write in general objectives, with the method to achieve these objectives left to the Wilderness Management Plan.
2. Inclusion of Mystery Canyon, Echo Canyon and Behunin Canyon in the Pristine Zone
Three heavily used canyons were included in the Pristine Zone, and we feel their inclusion is inappropriate. These canyons have become popular in recent years and are occasionally subject to crowding. While it is possible to turn back the clock and exclude visitors from these canyons, we believe it would be much wiser to include these canyons in the Primitive Zone, the zone description that more closely fits their usage over the last couple of years. We believe this also would provide a wider range of experiences for canyoneers in Zion, a primary park objective.
3. Closure of Research Natural Areas to All Public Use
The plan closes the Goose Creek and Parunaweap Canyon RNAs to all public use. This is excessive. Again, the GMP should establish management objectives for these areas, and avoid making hard and fast rules for the next 20 years. RNAs across the National Park System are not usually closed to all public access - they usually allow for some limited amount of public access carefully managed for zero impacts. Both Goose Creek (a grand, intermediate-difficulty canyon) and Parunaweap Canyon (a large area on the southern end of the park with access and cultural resource concerns) could be carefully managed and allow a small amount of public access. There is no reason to categorically exclude public use for the next 20 years.
The Zion Canyoneering Coalition generally supports the General Management Plan, with the few important exceptions noted above. What we object to is the Interim Use Limits proposed to manage canyoneering in the next couple of years while the park develops a Wilderness Management Plan.
