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Park Service tightens restrictions on air tours at Rushmore, Badlands [1]

['Searchlight Staff', 'More From Author', '- November']

Date: 2023-12

The National Park Service has adopted new restrictions on commercial air tours at Mount Rushmore National Memorial and Badlands National Park.

The tours will have to stay at least a half-mile from each site’s boundaries.

The Rushmore plan will “provide a peaceful setting for visitors to enjoy and experience,” Mount Rushmore Superintendent Michelle Wheatley said in a news release. Eric Veach, superintendent at Badlands National Park, said in his news release that the Badlands plan is “reflective of the experience desired by visitors.”

Annual visitors number more than 2 million at Mount Rushmore and more than 1 million in the Badlands. Thousands of those visitors pay private companies for air tours, mostly in helicopters, to get a novel view of the Black Hills mountain carving and the beautifully eroded Badlands formations. Air tours near the sites may continue, “just at a further distance,” Park Service documents say.

The Helicopter Association International opposed the plans.

“Besides closing off opportunities for thousands of visitors to enjoy the natural beauty of the parks, the NPS aims to cut back air-tour flights to such a degree that some tour operations will close,” the association said in June.

Noise and other complaints about air tours over Park Service sites nationwide led Congress to adopt the National Parks Air Tour Management Act in 2000. The law requires tour operators to seek permission for flights, and mandates the formulation of air tour management plans or similar agreements to regulate tours and mitigate their negative impacts.

Bureaucratic difficulties and delays stalled compliance with law. The national nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility sued in 2018 to force the adoption of air tour management plans. The group ultimately won an order that was upheld by an appeals court in 2020, which led to a wave of plan adoptions at Park Service sites across the country.

When draft versions of the Rushmore and Badlands plans were released in May, Jeff Ruch, of the public employees group, celebrated the move as the culmination of decades’ worth of effort.

“National parks are now on the verge of reclaiming control over their skies,” Ruch said.

There’s a 60-day appeal window for each decision.

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[1] Url: https://southdakotasearchlight.com/briefs/park-service-tightens-restrictions-on-air-tours-at-rushmore-badlands/

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