National Park prepares Great Lakes Invasive Plant Management Plan
Public scoping period from March 28 until May 2
From staff reports
The National Park Service (NPS) is planning to prepare an Environmental Assessment (EA) for a Great Lakes Invasive Plant Management Plan (IPMP) for the following 10 parks located in the Great Lakes region: Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, Grand Portage National Monument, Ice Age National Scenic Trail, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Isle Royale National Park, Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, St. Croix National Scenic River, and Voyageurs National Park.
The Great Lakes IPMP/EA will be based on sound Integrated Pest Management (IPM). IPM is defined as a decision-making process that coordinates knowledge of pest biology, the environment, and available technology to prevent unacceptable levels of pest damage, by cost-effective means, while posing the least possible risk to people and park resources.
Based on the purpose and need for the project, the scope of the Great Lakes IPMP EA will be to develop a plan that identifies long-term invasive plant management tools that would reduce the impacts of (or threats from) invasive plants to natural and cultural resources and provide opportunities for restoring native plant communities and cultural landscapes.
This IPMP/EA will be intended to provide strategies for park staff to manage terrestrial and emergent wetland invasive plants on both NPS and NPS managed lands within the designated boundaries of the 10 Great Lakes parks.
Public Scoping Opportunities
The National Environmental Policy Act regulations at 40 CFR 1501.7 require an early and open process to determine the scope of issues to be addressed and for identifying the significant issues related to a proposed action. This process is termed “scoping.”
The public scoping period for the Great Lakes IPMP/EA is from March 28 until May 2. The public is encouraged to provide comments electronically through the NPS’ Planning, Environment and Public Comment (PEPC) database at: http://parkplanning.nps.gov/ipmpea.
Comments may also be mailed to: Great Lakes IPMP, c/o Kleinfelder, 300 E. Mineral Avenue, Suite 7, Littleton, Co. 80122-2655. Comments must be received by, time-stamped, and/or post-marked by May 2, 2011, 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST). Before including your address, phone number, email address, or other personal information in your comments, you should be aware that your entire comment – including your personal identifying information – will be included in the administrative record for the IPMP/EA, and may be made publicly available at any time. While you may ask us in your scoping comment to withhold your personal identifying information from public review, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so. Scoping comments may also be published as part of the IPMP/EA. All submissions from organizations or businesses will be made available for public inspection in their entirety.
During the public scoping period, public meetings may be held at the discretion of the individual parks within the Great Lakes region. Notices of public meetings will be advertised in local newspapers, park administrative offices, and on the PEPC website. For more information, please visit the project website at http://parkplanning.nps.gov/ipmpea or contact Carmen Chapin at (715) 682-0631, ext. 30.
Interested parties should also know that once the Draft IPMP/EA is completed, it will be made available for a 30-day public review and comment period. The NPS anticipates that the Draft IPMP/EA will be published for public review in the spring of 2012.
