Guidelines being developed to protect park visitor experience.
HAWAII VOLCANOES N.P.-At Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, visitors enjoying moments of solitude can experience a unique assortment of ambient sound - from warbling birds and whistling winds to flowing, crackling lava. Unfortunately, they often also hear much more.
More than 30,000 air tours, in helicopters or small planes, fly over Hawaii Volcanoes each year, giving the park one of the highest levels of overflights in the National Park System. In response to these intrusions to natural quiet and park wilderness areas, the National Park Service (NPS) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are creating legal guidelines to help protect the experience of park visitors.
"We have some significant concerns about preserving the park's natural sounds," said Aleta Knight, management assistant at the park. "We want to make sure visitors can experience the natural soundscape, but without excluding visitors from having encounters in the park through alternative means," such as air tours. "It's about finding that balance."
The agencies' process of creating air tour guidelines follows the National Parks Air Tour Management Act of 2000, which sought to lessen "significant adverse impacts," such as excessive noise. Similar guidelines will eventually be set at more than 100 park sites, according to the FAA.
Sound levels have been measured at several areas inside the park since the fall. The guidelines are expected to specify the amount of air tours that can go over the park, as well as where they can go and how high they can fly. The guidelines are necessary, said Courtney Cuff, NPCA's Pacific regional director, because not all of the air tour operators have been cooperating with the park.
"All of the air tours make some level of noise and instrusion," she said. "But the bad air tour operators jeopardize the progress that's being made by the operators interested in doing the right thing."
The park's guideline process could be lengthy, because an environmental assessment or impact study will need to be done, said Knight. One public meeting has already occurred and more are on the way. Park officials said that the guidelines must be flexible to adjust for changes to the park caused by volcano eruptions, which draw air tour visitors to new areas of the park over time.
"The guidelines are necessary to protect the experience of park visitors," said Cuff. "Air tours can be very intrusive on a visitor's enjoyment of natural quiet, which is an increasingly endangered experience in our parks.
"We hope that this air tour management process will allow us to ensure remarkable visitor experience in the years and decades to come," she added. "It is one of the values we hold dear with national park visitation."
