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Show Green-Yampa management plan ready for review The National Park Service announced Friday it has completed com-pleted a draft environmental assessment of a plan that offers Eve alternative approaches ap-proaches to the management of Whitewater boating on the Yampa and Green Rivers in Dinosaur National Monument. The proposals will be the subject of a series of public workshops that will be held in November at Flagstaff, Arizona; Ari-zona; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Denver, Colorado. The alternatives range from provisions for maximum public use of the rivers through Dinosaur National Monument to a minimum use "Wilderness Solitude" concept con-cept for the river canyons that would limit the number and size of parties that would be permitted to run the rivers. Regulation of public use on the rivers became necessary with the exploding popularity of white-water boating during the 1960's. From only 400 persons who floated the rivers in 1959, public use swelled to more than 17,000 persons in 1972. These increasing numbers produced extensive environmental environ-mental damage as a result of boat landings, campfires, ten sites and waste disposal. In 1972, river use was frozen at existing levels and distributed among private and commercial commer-cial boaters while Dinosaur National Monument staff members and consultants sought new river management manage-ment alternatives. Permits were issued to private boaters on a first-come, first-come, first-served basis in response to mailed requests postmarked December 1 and after. The same permit system sys-tem will be continued through next year's boating season pending the results of the public workshops on the proposed pro-posed new alternatives. The Environmental Assessment Assess-ment prepared by Dinosaur National Monument addresses addres-ses such issues as user ceilings, ceil-ings, seasonal distribution of use, group size, trip duration, camping, categories of use and permit applications. The assessment also considers consid-ers a variety of proposals that concern campfires, scheduling systems and disposal of human hu-man waste. Both the complete document docu-ment and a more concise synopsis are available for public review and comment. Either may be obtained from Dinosaur National Monument, P.O. Box 210, Dinosaur, Colorado Colo-rado 81601, or from the Rocky Mountain Regional Office of the National Park Service, 655 Parfet Street, P.O. Box 25287, Denver, Colorado 80225. |