Flagstaff Ranger District Outfitter/Guide Program

Flagstaff Ranger District Outfitter/Guide Program

This page provides information on the outfitter/guide program for the Flagstaff Ranger District. For information on the Red Rock or Mogollon Rim Districts, please contact those offices directly. This page will be updated as new information becomes available.

 

Flagstaff Ranger District Outfitting and Guiding Prospectus

The Coconino National Forest, Flagstaff Ranger District is soliciting proposals from prospective outfitter and guide companies interested in providing commercial services to the public.  The area identified for this offering is the Mount Elden and Dry Lakes Area (MEDL). The prospectus and appendices can be found here.

The associated documents, including the Recreation Special Uses Management Plan, can be found below.

 

Draft Management Plan

The Flagstaff Ranger District has recently completed a Draft Special Uses Management Plan. This plan describes the District’s vision for a fully-developed outfitter/guide program, as well as a framework for managing recreation events.  We are seeking public input on the draft plan.   

 

The plan is rooted in two key analyses.  The first is a Needs Assessment , which demonstrates the public need for various guided services. “Need” is based on several factors, such as whether specialized knowledge or equipment is needed to participate in the activity, whether a guide is needed to address critical safety issues, and whether the activity contributes to the mission of the Forest Service.   Numerous activities were evaluated against such criteria by recreation managers on the forest.  The results are included as an appendix to the plan.

 

The second analysis is Recreation Capacity.  For this process, the district was broken into geographic compartments, each of which was examined by an interdisciplinary team of specialists to identify any natural resource or cultural/social concerns.  These were then combined with forest plan guidance and desired conditions to determine how much use might be allocated to outfitter/guides.  These results are described within the main body of the draft plan.

 

We then used this information to develop the vision described in the draft plan.  Key elements are: the total number of outfitter/guide permits for the district, which activities should be authorized in which locations, and how many permits there should be for each activity.  We also developed guidelines for temporary permits and recreation events. 

 

Opportunity to Comment

Before implementing this plan, we would like to hear from the recreating public and prospective outfitter/guides.  Your input will help us validate the framework we’ve developed and identify any elements we may have overlooked.  Once the plan is finalized, we hope to move forward with a prospectus (application process) in 2019.

 

Comments may be submitted by mail, email, or phone to:

 

Julie Rowe, Recreation Special Uses Program Manager

Coconino National Forest

P.O. Box 20429

Sedona, AZ 86341

928-203-7516

comments-southwestern-coconino-flagstaff@fs.fed.us

 

 

Please mark all written comments as: “Attention: Flagstaff Outfitter/Guide Plan.”  It would be most helpful if your comments were received by June 15, 2018.

 

Comments received in response to this solicitation, including names and addresses of those who comment, will be a public record and will be available for public inspection.

 

 

Contact Us

If you would like to be added to our mailing list to receive information about future opportunities to apply for an outfitter/guide permit, please let us know at comments-southwestern-coconino-flagstaff@fs.fed.us .  Please put “Outfitter/Guide Program” in the subject line so that your message can be routed correctly.