Merced River Corridor Plan Ready The Fresno Bee - June 22, 2000 YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK - Thirteen years after work began on a comprehensive management strategy for the Merced River in Yosemite National Park, officials announced Wednesday that the plan is finally out the door. The river plan is basically a zoning document that creates a quarter-mile-wide corridor along the Merced. It's a "set of decision-making criteria" that will be used to guide development of the park, said Chip Jenkins, the park's planning executive. The document ultimately restricts development and recreational access to environmentally delicate areas of the river. It allows for the removal of several campsites and some visitor lodging along the river's banks and could lead to the removal of some bridges that hamper the free flow of the Merced. It also allows for some reconstruction of the flood-damaged Yosemite Lodge complex and the construction of a transit center and a day-visitor parking lot at either the Taft Toe woodland area or the defunct Camp 6 The Yosemite Valley Plan, due out later this summer, will provide details about how and where development actually occurs in the park. In July 1999, U.S. District Judge Anthony Ishii - in response to a lawsuit brought by environmental groups - ordered the park to finish a river management plan before any other environmental, development or visitor plans were completed. In 1987, the Merced River had been given protection under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. The act mandates that planners place the protection and restoration of threatened rivers before all other considerations. But it wasn't until the Sierra Club and Mariposans for Environmentally Responsible Growth sued in 1999 to halt road expansions at the valley's eastern end that the park began to work in earnest on a river management plan. Some environmentalists think that the park's previous plans to upgrade roads and restore flood-damaged developed areas are still dominating their restoration efforts. But Jay Watson of the Wilderness Society thinks the park has succeeded in striking a balance between environmental protection and recreational use of the Merced. "The river plan sets a high watermark for resource protection at Yosemite. It will provide strong guidance for the Park Service for decades to come," Watson said.