Programmatic Parkwide Forestry Work Plan

Forestry's purpose is to detect and mitigate or abate tree hazards before they fail and injure or damage people or property. Facilities are in forested areas where fire exclusion and landscape manipulation have changed Yosemite, and trees have not stabilized. Yosemite tree failures have killed seven people, seriously injured 19 others, and caused over $1MM property damage. Natural processes such as fires, storms, and rock fall result in large and unanticipated tree hazard workloads. Over the last two decades, events have been within the scope of the programmatic parkwide forestry work plan. Public Law (16 USC 3 and 54), National Park Service Management Policies (8.8), NPS-77, Special Directive 82-6, and the Yosemite Resource Management, Vegetation Management, and Fire Management Plans guide Forestry and stress the importance of human life, remind us that visitors to natural areas assume some degree of risk, and direct managers to remove known hazards where it will not impair resources, or otherwise abate hazards through closures or warnings. Pacific West Region Hazard Tree Management Directive PW-062 provides a framework for Forestry, including appropriate rating systems, to minimize threats to life and property from the failure of hazard trees, consistent with the NPS mission of conserving parks' natural and cultural resources.