Webmaster
05-09-2010, 07:00 AM
By Lynda V. Mapes
Seattle Times staff reporter
Should commercial sightseeing flights be banned over Mount Rainier National Park?
That's one option the public could propose as the park works with the Federal Aviation Administration to prepare an air-tour-management plan for the park.
The number and type of flights (fixed-wing or helicopter) and hours and days of operation are all up for consideration — as is an outright ban. The environmental effects of sightseeing tours over the park also are up for discussion.
The plan is required under a federal law passed in 2000. That law put a moratorium on the number and type of air tours then under way at national parks, pending separate plans at national parks around the country.
Mount Rainier National Park had more than 1.7 million visitors in 2009 — and many of them come there for the quiet, some conservation advocates said.
"It's critically important," said Sean Smith, policy director for the Seattle office of the National Parks Conservation Association, a national nonprofit. "I think, more than anything, noise has the ability to pull you out of your experience and cause you to lose the very things you are seeking at Mount Rainier. You want to forget about your e-mails, your stresses in life."
Today, five operators from around the region are authorized to operate a total of up to 113 sightseeing air tours over the park in the course of a year. That is far fewer than some other national parks, such as Grand Canyon, where sightseers take thousands of flights per year over the park's air space.
Weather, including cloud cover, makes flights over Mount Rainier National Park a dicey proposition.
The planning is under way at parks around the country. Mount Rainier is the first in line in Washington state because of its unique natural feature with potential to draw commercial sightseeing flights: Mount Rainier.
The park has other special qualities, as well: The park, 65 miles southeast of Seattle on the west side of the Cascades, was established in 1899, and of its 235,625 acres, 97 percent are designated as wilderness, where motorized equipment are not allowed, in part to protect the wilderness experience for visitors.
Some signature animals of the park, such as the mountain goat, are sensitive to noise. So, apparently, are park visitors. The park reports that more than 90 percent of people queried in one survey said natural quiet is one of the park's key attributes.
Gordon Hempton of Joyce, Clallam County, records the sounds of nature for a living and says the number of truly quiet places in the state has dropped from 21 when he logged them in the early 1980s to only three when he revisited the same spots in 1992. For Hempton — who favors a sightseeing flight ban — quiet means 15 consecutive minutes without the intrusion of a man-made noise.
"We need to listen to what the white pine sayeth," Hempton said, paraphrasing Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American essayist, philosopher and poet. "Today, more than ever."
from: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011818376_airtours09m.html
Seattle Times staff reporter
Should commercial sightseeing flights be banned over Mount Rainier National Park?
That's one option the public could propose as the park works with the Federal Aviation Administration to prepare an air-tour-management plan for the park.
The number and type of flights (fixed-wing or helicopter) and hours and days of operation are all up for consideration — as is an outright ban. The environmental effects of sightseeing tours over the park also are up for discussion.
The plan is required under a federal law passed in 2000. That law put a moratorium on the number and type of air tours then under way at national parks, pending separate plans at national parks around the country.
Mount Rainier National Park had more than 1.7 million visitors in 2009 — and many of them come there for the quiet, some conservation advocates said.
"It's critically important," said Sean Smith, policy director for the Seattle office of the National Parks Conservation Association, a national nonprofit. "I think, more than anything, noise has the ability to pull you out of your experience and cause you to lose the very things you are seeking at Mount Rainier. You want to forget about your e-mails, your stresses in life."
Today, five operators from around the region are authorized to operate a total of up to 113 sightseeing air tours over the park in the course of a year. That is far fewer than some other national parks, such as Grand Canyon, where sightseers take thousands of flights per year over the park's air space.
Weather, including cloud cover, makes flights over Mount Rainier National Park a dicey proposition.
The planning is under way at parks around the country. Mount Rainier is the first in line in Washington state because of its unique natural feature with potential to draw commercial sightseeing flights: Mount Rainier.
The park has other special qualities, as well: The park, 65 miles southeast of Seattle on the west side of the Cascades, was established in 1899, and of its 235,625 acres, 97 percent are designated as wilderness, where motorized equipment are not allowed, in part to protect the wilderness experience for visitors.
Some signature animals of the park, such as the mountain goat, are sensitive to noise. So, apparently, are park visitors. The park reports that more than 90 percent of people queried in one survey said natural quiet is one of the park's key attributes.
Gordon Hempton of Joyce, Clallam County, records the sounds of nature for a living and says the number of truly quiet places in the state has dropped from 21 when he logged them in the early 1980s to only three when he revisited the same spots in 1992. For Hempton — who favors a sightseeing flight ban — quiet means 15 consecutive minutes without the intrusion of a man-made noise.
"We need to listen to what the white pine sayeth," Hempton said, paraphrasing Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American essayist, philosopher and poet. "Today, more than ever."
from: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011818376_airtours09m.html