Glacier National Park VUM Plan Meeting

News and Adventure from Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park is asking for your input to help envision the future of how visitors access and travel in the park.

The National Park Service (NPS) mission calls for Glacier National Park to provide the best possible access to meaningful and enjoyable experiences while preserving the resources that make Glacier special. In recent years, achieving that mission has become more complex due to growth in visitation and changing use patterns, experienced not only in the park but in northwestern Montana, generally.

The goal of this process is to identify strategies that will holistically manage visitor access and travel to alleviate vehicular and pedestrian congestion. These strategies will preserve what makes the park special and maintain the unique character of different areas of the park. The plan will assess a variety of ways to improve park experiences and resource protection, including enhancing shuttle services, implementing reservation systems, and pursuing other strategies that would be applied in a fair and equitable way. A long-term plan would ensure that park operations and infrastructure remain sustainable for generations to come. This plan is needed to address the following issues:

– traffic congestion and visitor movement challenges
– road and valley closures as a result of traffic congestion
- staff capacity and visitor use impacts on park operations
– visitor use impacts on natural and cultural resources
– impacts on the quality of visitor experience at key destinations

As part of this process, Glacier National Park will be hosting a virtual public meeting tomorrow, from 5pm – 6:30pm. There will be a short presentation at the beginning of the meeting by NPS staff on long-term visitor use management and transportation planning followed by an opportunity for questions and answers. The goal of this process is to identify strategies that will holistically manage visitor access and travel to alleviate vehicular and pedestrian congestion for visitors from both near and far. These strategies will preserve what makes the park special and maintain the unique character of different areas of the park.

There will be several other meetings over the next couple of weeks as well. For more information, please visit: https://parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?projectId=126808

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Check out our online trail guides:

• Glacier National Park: HikinginGlacier.com

• Grand Teton National Park: TetonHikingTrails.com

• Rocky Mountain National Park: RockyMountainHikingTrails.com