NPCA | The Types of Park Plans

NATIONAL PARK PLANS

Each national park is managed through four kinds of plans: a general management plan, a six-year strategic plan, numerous implementation plans, and annual plans prepared for each fiscal year. Each of these plans fulfills a distinct role in the framework for decision making.

General Management Plan:

   The general management plan (GMP) should take a long view, even many years into the future. It may propose objectives that cannot be achieved for decades, yet can be built incrementally through a series of sequential management decisions. The GMP also should consider the park holistically (in its full ecological and cultural contexts) both as a unit of the National Park System and as part of a surrounding geographic region. Related units of the National Park System or other regional sites should be considered in determining the best management for the park.

   The GMP should ensure that each park has a clearly defined direction for resource preservation and visitor use. This direction is established by prescribing in detail the resource conditions and visitor experiences that should be maintained in each distinctive area of the park (the park's management zones). These prescriptions, called management prescriptions, are the heart of the GMP.

   The National Park Service is required by law and policy to ensure that the direction established by the general management plan is developed in consultation with all interested stakeholders, including other federal, state, tribal, and local agencies; interest groups; and private citizens. Before making decisions about the future direction for the park, the National Park Service must rigorously analyze the benefits, environmental impacts, and costs of a reasonable range of alternatives. This analysis is documented in an environmental impact statement or environmental assessment accompanying the general management plan.

   Because of the importance and complexity of the decisions made during general management planning, and the broad public interest in those decisions, many years may be needed to complete a general management plan and environmental impact statement. The National Park Service strives to complete most plans in three years or less, but the largest plans may take even longer.

Expect a GMP to:

Focus on why the park was established and what resource conditions and visitor experiences should be achieved and maintained over time.

Do not expect a GMP to:

Identify all the specific projects that need to be accomplished in the park
Describe any specific projects in detail (although a GMP may be accompanied by one or more implementation plans that do describe specific projects)

Park Strategic Plan and Annual Performance Plan

The park strategic plan establishes park-wide goals for roughly the next six years. The six-year strategic plans and annual performance plans provide the basis for park-wide budgeting and workloading in six-year and one-year timeframes and allow for public involvement in this priority-setting process. The strategic plan is updated every three years; annual plans are prepared each year. These plans do not require environmental impact statements or assessments.

Expect a park's strategic plan to:

Express six-year priorities in terms of measurable goals, so that managers may be held accountable for achieving those goals.
Focus on results, not efforts.
Identify the need for detailed implementation plans.

Do not expect a strategic plan to:

Revisit or deviate from the desired future conditions established in the park's general management plan. (If the park decides that a major shift in direction or emphasis is needed, the strategic plan should identify the need for a new or revised general management plan and environmental impact statement.)

Implementation Plans

   Implementation plans describe and direct specific programs and projects. The National Park Service uses the term implementation plan to refer broadly to any of a large number of detailed plans, including natural and cultural resource management plans, transportation plans, site development plans, VERP plans (plans that establish specific, measurable standards for particular visitor experiences or resource conditions), backcountry management plans, and wilderness plans. The content of implementation plans may vary widely, depending on whether the plan is analyzing and prioritizing needs for a specific funding program (such as the establishment of priorities for natural or cultural resource management), directing a specific activity (such as the management of fire in a natural system), or outlining a specific project (such as the construction of a visitor center).

   Implementation plans ensure that individual projects contribute to the desired future conditions described in the general management plan and that the costs, site-specific environmental impacts, and public interests and concerns are adequately considered as part of project development.

   Project-specific implementation planning generally will be deferred until the project has sufficient priority, usually established through the park's six-year strategic plan, to indicate that action will be taken within the next two to six years.

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