Protecting America's Treasured Landscapes: An Overview and Update of the National Park Service Visual Resource Program

With a central mission to "… conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein … by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations," the National Park Service (NPS) has been entrusted with some of the most spectacular and historically significant landscapes throughout the country (National Park Service Organic Act 1916). The NPS has successfully addressed visual resource issues at multiple park units but each had to develop its own approach. Over the last several years, NPS has developed a program that establishes service-wide support to parks for managing visual resources. The program includes: conducting inventory and evaluation of visual resources; providing guidance on assessing the visual impacts of projects; assisting parks with incorporating visual resources in park planning documents; and developing policy and guidance documents to assure consistency of visual resource management across the service.