Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for a Wilderness Stewardship Plan, Mount Rainier National Park, Pierce and Lewis Counties, Washington

Mount Rainier National Park is initiating process to prepare a Wilderness Stewardship Plan (WSP) for the Mount Rainier Wilderness, a 228,480-acre area surrounding and including Mount Rainier, as designated by the Washington Parks Wilderness Act of 1988. Through this process, an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) will be prepared to analyze a range of alternatives for achieving wilderness stewardship objectives, which include providing appropriate types and levels of access for visitors and authorized users, protecting cultural and natural resources, and adhering to legally-mandated management and preservation requirements. Ninety-seven percent of Mount Rainier National Park is designated as wilderness. The Wilderness Act of 1964 (Wilderness Act) directs federal land management agencies to protect and manage wilderness so that it ``generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable,'' and so that it ``has outstanding opportunities for solitude, or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation.''