NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
                           MORNING REPORT


To:         All National Park Service Areas and Offices

From:       Division of Ranger Activities, Washington Office

Day/Date:   Monday, November 27, 2000

ALMANAC

On this date in 1868, Lt. Col. George A. Custer's 7th Cavalry attacked 
and defeated Black Kettle's Cheyennes at the Battle of the Washita.  
Washita Battlefield NHS commemorates that event.

INCIDENTS

00-716 - Manassas NB (VA) - Car Clout Arrests

A series of car clouts in the Stone Bridge parking lot over the past 
month led ranger Joe O'Haver to conduct surveillance of the lot in an 
unmarked vehicle on November 17th. At 2 p.m., a Subaru station wagon 
pulled into the lot next to a mini-van. The driver, J.P., got 
out of the Subaru and began pulling on the van's door handles; when he 
found that they were all locked, he used a center punch to shatter the 
passenger-side window. J.P. then reached in, grabbed a purse, and put 
it in his Subaru. O'Haver got out of his vehicle and identified 
himself to J.P. J.P. refused to comply with O'Haver's orders and 
took off. O'Haver requested backup and pursued. Rangers Tim Manner and 
Gil Goodrich joined the pursuit through the park and attempted to pull 
J.P. over, but he refused to stop. County units joined the chase, 
which ended up on I-66 during the middle of rush hour. J.P.'s vehicle 
was finally pinned against a concrete barrier by an off-duty officer 
driving a U-Haul van. He was taken into custody and held on a $15,000 
bond. No one was injured and no other vehicles were damaged in the 
pursuit. Several state and federal charges are pending. The Subaru was 
filled with other property that may link  J.P. to several other 
larcenies in Fairfax and Prince William counties. [Kim Coast, CR, 
MANA, 11/20]

FIRE MANAGEMENT

National Fire Plan

The third National Fire Plan update - entitled "Information for NPS 
Cultural Resource Management Staffs Re:  Wildland-Urban Interface 
Initiative" - has been transmitted by the Fire Management Program 
Center in Boise. It was prepared by Trinkle Jones, an archeologist 
with the Western Archeological and Conservation Center in Tucson who 
is currently on detail to the center. The text follows.

During this fire season, more than 100,000 wildland fires burned 
7,000,000 acres and 852 structures.  The FY2001 appropriations bill 
addresses this catastrophe and tentatively provides $18 million to the 
NPS to "accelerate treatments, planning efforts, and collaborative 
projects with non-federal partners in the wildland urban interface."  
The plan is to reduce fuel loads now under our own terms, rather than 
to let nature, Congress, or others choose the time, place, and 
severity.  Prescribed burning may be used, and there is emphasis on 
fuel reduction by mechanical means.

It provides the opportunity to proactively address fuels management so 
that cultural and natural resource management objectives can be 
accomplished while providing for firefighter and community safety. 
This creates an additional workload under short timeframes (as 
mandated by Congress).

In terms of compliance, the intent of Congress is not to grant 
exemptions or change compliance or consultation requirements, but 
rather to ensure that coordination and staffing are provided to meet 
the needs in an efficient, timely, and consistent way. Projects for 
FY2001 have been selected. Compliance has already been completed for 
many of these projects.  FY2002 and 2003 projects will be planned this 
year. Our goal is comprehensive, programmatic compliance so that 
project level analysis will not be necessary. 

Fortunately, an NHPA Section 106 programmatic agreement (PA) for the 
federal fire program, including fuel reduction, burned area 
rehabilitation, and suppression, has been under development for some 
time.  The focus of the PA is the preparation of comprehensive and 
compliant fire management plans at the local level.  We will not be 
advocating standardized recipes, such as clear-cutting 30-ft wide 
buffers around historic properties.

The Fire Management Program Center at Boise convened an 
interdepartmental cultural resource advisory group to oversee this 
effort, and a review draft of the general provisions and the fuel 
reduction module are nearly completed. Once completed, it will be 
widely circulated throughout the NPS and to our interagency partners.

Many of the principles of the PA have been developed during two 
offerings of the course on cultural resource protection and fire 
management planning.  The instructors provide cultural resource and 
fire management teams from each park with the tools and time to draft 
cultural resource management objectives and resource-sensitive 
treatment recommendations for fire management plans. The course also 
includes a summary of current research on fire effects on various 
types of resources, slated for publication in the Forest Service's 
"Rainbow Series" on fire effects.

The incident management team overseeing fire plan implementation is 
committed to doing what's necessary for compliance. We realize the 
importance of not only bringing together fire and cultural resources 
folks, but also subject matter specialists from each of the cultural 
resource subdisciplines.

Yes, this landscape-scale initiative may have implications for 
cultural landscapes, historic structures, archeological sites, and 
traditional and ethnographic resources. However, we believe fire can 
be an effective tool to restore and maintain some of these resources. 
Fire has been used successfully to meet cultural management objectives 
at very different areas, such as King's Mountain and City of Rocks. 
And fuel reduction is a risk management tool that can mitigate the 
kind of catastrophic damage to cultural resources that occurred this 
summer. At Jewel Cave NM in the Black Hills, the Jasper Fire displayed 
the most severe fire behavior in the history of the area - 50,000 
acres burned in only a few hours. Yet when the fire encountered an 
area previously burned under prescription, it dropped from the crowns 
of the trees to the ground, where it could be safely attacked by the 
firefighters. Because of the prescribed burn, no historic structures 
were lost. With your support and help, that is the kind of success we 
can achieve from this initiative.

For additional information, see the following:

o       Wildland Urban Interface Initiative (WUII) - www.fire.nps.gov/ 
        fireplan/wui.htm
o       Fire management presentation at the Federal Preservation Forum 
        (Denver, November 28th) - www.pe.net/~fpforum/
o       Fire management planning symposium at Cultural Resources 2000 
        conference (Santa Fe, December 6th) - www.cr.nps.gov/cr2000
o       Cultural resource protection and fire management planning 
        course at WACC (Tucson, January 22nd - 26th, announcement 
        closes December 5th) - Learning Center bulletin board on 
        cc:Mail
o       Fire planning status report at the annual meeting of PWR/AR 
        cultural resource staffs (February 12th - 16th) 

If you know of other regional cultural resource meetings and would 
like a briefing, please contact Trinkle Jones or Paul Gleeson at the 
Fire Management Program Center in Boise.

Park Fires

No fires reported.

CULTURAL/NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

No submissions.

INTERPRETATION AND VISITOR SERVICES

No submissions.

OPERATIONAL NOTES

No submissions.

MEMORANDA

"FY 2001 Appropriations Implementation Strategy," signed on November 
21st by Associate Director, Park Operations and Education Dick Ring 
and sent to all regional directors on November 21st. A reply is due by 
November 27th. An informational copy follows; the attachments are on 
the original, but not on the Morning Report. 

"This memorandum transmits the National Park Service (NPS) '2001 
Appropriations Implementation Strategy and National Fire Plan.'  This 
plan was developed to ensure successful implementation of the 2001 
Department of the Interior Appropriation Act to reduce wildfire risks 
to communities and to restore forest and range land health on public 
land.  The 2001 Appropriation will bring significant changes to 
Federal wildland fire management in both the short- and long-term.  
The attached document merits careful consideration by all employees.   
       
"An Incident Management Team to ensure the requirements in both the 
Appropriations Bill and National Fire Plan are completely met within 
the mandated time frames and is in place and fully operational at this 
time.

"A coordinated, cohesive and cooperative effort to involve major 
stakeholders in the planning and implementation process is absolutely 
critical to the success of the Appropriation Implementation Strategy.  
These stakeholders include tribal representatives, State and local 
officials and resource management agencies, rural fire departments, 
and environmental groups, among others. Additionally, this interagency 
effort will require effective cooperation and coordination with Fish 
and Wildlife Service (FWS), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), U.S. 
Forest Service (USFS), Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), and the Bureau 
of Reclamation (BOR).

"To this end, each region must designate a principal contact to 
provide continuity and timely responses to consolidated requests for 
information and to ensure effective outreach and communication with 
identified stakeholders. Appointed contacts will coordinate with their 
regional colleagues in participating agencies to ensure a consolidated 
approach to outreach for the implementation of the National Fire Plan. 
Please submit names of designated principal contacts via email to 
National Fire Plan by November 27, 2000.  Designated contacts for the 
BLM, and USFS National Fire Plan are attached. FWS contacts are yet to 
be determined but will be circulated as soon as they are available.   

"The Incident Management Team will provide timely information and 
updates on the progress of the National Fire Plan effort.  Please 
direct inquiries to Roberta D'Amico, Information Group Supervisor 
208/387-5239 or 208/387-5200. For further information please contact 
the NPS Incident Management Team at 202/208-3277 or email at National 
Fire Plan.

"Region and local area coordination with our allied agencies and 
stakeholders is absolutely essential to the successful implementation 
of the 2001 National Fire Plan. Thank you for your full attention to 
this matter."

INTERCHANGE

No submissions.

PARKS AND PEOPLE

Submissions pending.

                            *  *  *  *  *

Distribution of the Morning Report is through a mailing list managed 
by park, office and/or regional cc:Mail hub coordinators.  Please 
address requests pertaining to receipt of the Morning Report to your 
servicing hub coordinator.  The Morning Report is also available on 
the web at http://www.nps.gov/morningreport

Prepared by the Division of Ranger Activities, WASO, with the 
cooperation and support of Delaware Water Gap NRA.

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