For this week’s Gazette-Mail column, I went to Judy Rodd, the principal source for the push to create a national park and preserve in West Virginia’s northeastern highlands. Judy was able to answer some of the existing questions, but not all. Here’s the column.

Last week, when news broke that much of West Virginia’s northern Allegheny Highlands might be considered for national park and preserve status, sportsmen raised a ton of questions:

How big would the park be? Would hunting be outlawed? Would trout stockings be curtailed? Who would manage the fish and wildlife? And what would become of trapping, ramp digging and ginseng hunting?

We have answers now for at least some of those questions. Earlier this week, I spoke with Judy Rodd, a spokeswoman for Friends of High Allegheny National Park and Preserve, who clarified some of the murkier points.

The preserve, as currently envisioned, would be pretty darned big – roughly 750,000 acres.

Rodd said it would start at Cathedral State Park in Preston County and extend southward to Cass in Pocahontas County. Its western boundary would start at Shavers Mountain near Elkins and would extend eastward to include current units of the George Washington National Forest in Hardy and Hampshire counties.

“All the lands that would be included in the preserve would be lands that are current state parks or are part of the Monongahela and George Washington national forests,” Rodd explained. “No private lands would need to be purchased.”

She added that only a portion of the land would be considered a full-fledged national park.

“The main units of the national park portion would include Cathedral, Blackwater Falls and Canaan Valley state parks, and some portion of the Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area,” she said.

“The Park Service folks have said units of the park could be spread apart like that. The rest of the land in the Allegheny Highlands – the vast majority of the land under consideration – would be in preserve status, where hunting and fishing would be encouraged.”

Rodd said she wasn’t sure if the Park Service would allow trapping on the preserve. However, a subsequent Internet search of several preserves’ websites showed that trapping is allowed on most of them.

The question of ginseng hunting caught Rodd by surprise; she said she “would have to talk the Park Service about that.” As to ramp digging, she harbored a rather strong opinion: “I dig them too, so naturally I would want [that] to be allowed.”

One of the more ticklish questions surrounding the preserve concept would be whether the state Division of Natural Resources or the National Park Service would have primary control of fishing-related issues.

In the New River Gorge National River, for example, DNR officials manage fisheries as they see fit. One sticking point has arisen, though. Park Service officials several years ago asked that non-native fish – rainbow and brown trout, specifically – not be stocked within the park’s boundaries. Stockings continue to this day.

In the state’s mountain highlands, trout fishing is a big issue. Most of the state’s most popular stocked-trout streams and rivers are in the preserve area, and most of the fish stocked are rainbows and browns. Rodd said she didn’t know whether DNR or Park Service policies would prevail.

“That’s too technical an issue for me,” she said.

Rodd said provisions to address any or all of sportsmen’s concerns could be written into legislation that would establish the park.

“That’s a long way off, though,” she said. “The [upcoming] study is called a reconnaissance study. If it finds that the area is unique enough to be included in the national park system, a resource study would follow. And then there would be a period of time to write the legislation and get it passed. Park and preserve status is still years away.”

Oh my.

It appears one of my humble blog posts touched a nerve, and a rather sensitive one at that.

In Wednesday’s post, I detailed how national park designation for West Virginia’s northern Allegheny Highlands might cause the area to be closed to hunting, and might affect trout stockings too. Within hours, Judy Rodd, the source quoted in Paul Nyden’s original Gazette story about the potential park, posted a reply to the blog, which read as follows:

Hunting would be allowed in the proposed High Allegheny Park and Preserve and in fact would be encouraged. Fishing would also be a main attraction. — Judy Rodd, Friends of High Allegheny National Park.

Not long after that, I received a phone call from Marni Goldberg, press secretary for U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

Ms. Goldberg explained that Sen. Manchin would never support legislation that might curb hunting in West Virginia’s mountain highlands or anywhere else. She said Manchin was willing to consider the area as a preserve, but not as a full-fledged national park.  She offered to e-mail me a formal statement from the senator, which read as follows:

“Senator Manchin is a lifelong hunting enthusiast and is committed to making sure that the Alleghany Highlands remain open to hunting if the area receives a new designation from the National Parks Service.”

So apparently the idea is to create in northeastern West Virginia something akin to the New River Gorge National River in the south — an area administered by the National Park Service, but not a full-fledged no-hunting national park.

I find it intriguing that Rodd’s reply to the blog post referred to the proposed area as “High Allegheny Park and Preserve,” while her signature line affiliated her with an entity called “Friends of High Allegheny National Park.” Did the word “preserve” only recently get added to the name, and if so, why?

I also find it intriguing that the original Gazette story sent shock waves through the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. My sources there say interoffice e-mails were flying fast and furious.  Apparently they didn’t get the “hunting will be allowed” memo, either.

I might be wrong, but my reading of the tea leaves is that proponents of the “High Allegheny Park and Preserve” didn’t adequately address the question of hunting in their early public-relations efforts, or possibly they failed to gauge the backlash that would result from a push for a full-fledged national park.

According to the National Park Service’s own website, a “preserve” designation is possible for lands where hunting is important to the local populace. Hunting is allowed on reserves. The Denali and the Wrangell-St. Elias parks in Alaska are examples, as is the Big Cypress Reserve in Florida.

The website also says that when lands receive the full “National Park” designation, hunting is not allowed.

The Park Service’s study of the High Allegheny National Park and Preserve issue will begin soon. My guess is that the issues of hunting and fishing will be adequately addressed.

Tuesday’s article by Gazette colleague Paul Nyden focuses on a soon-to-begin  National Park Service study to determine whether sizable chunks of West Virginia’s Randolph, Tucker, Pendleton and Pocahontas counties should be designated a national park.

While park status would certainly add another layer of environmental protection for what are currently U.S. Forest Service lands and designated federal wilderness areas, it could put an end to deer and turkey hunting in a part of the state where people pursue hunting with an almost religious fervor.

Read Paul’s story to get an idea of the scope of the proposed park:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Next month, the National Park Service will begin conducting a survey to determine if some areas within the Monongahela National Forest should be made into a national park – something West Virginia doesn’t currently have.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., requested the survey, which is scheduled to be completed by September 2012.

On Monday, Manchin said he “is pleased that the National Park Service is undertaking this survey to evaluate whether this beautiful part of our state should be designated as a national park.”

In a recent news release, the NPS said the survey would “determine whether the historic, natural and recreational resources in the project area are ‘likely’ or ‘unlikely’ to meet Congressionally-required criteria for a national park.

Judy Rodd, executive director of the group Friends of Blackwater Canyon, said the proposed High Allegheny National Park would be formed from “lands in the northern area of the Monongahela National Forest, which is already federal land,” as well as Blackwater Falls and Canaan Valley state parks.

“It would not cost anything,” Rodd said.

The new park would offer visitors a unique ecology, the chance to see a wide variety of beautiful and rare birds, as well as historical battlefields and forts from the Civil War era, Rodd said. Lands in the proposed park would also include those improved during the Great Depression, under projects run by the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps.

The proposed new national park would include lands east of Elkins, north to the towns of Thomas and Davis, east to Petersburg, and south to Seneca Rocks and Franklin.

The park could also include well-known sites such as Spruce Knob, Seneca Rocks, Blackwater Falls, the Otter Creek Wilderness, Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge and Dolly Sods.

The headwaters of the Potomac, Monongahela and Greenbrier rivers would all be within the park. Recreational activities available to visitors could include hiking, biking, kayaking, skiing, horseback riding, rock climbing and spelunking.

Last year, T. Destry Jarvis, president of Outdoor Recreation and Park Services LLC, prepared a report given to Manchin that stated, “The High Allegheny Plateau, currently a portion of the Monongahela National Forest, is the best preserved and least ‘developed’ region of the state.

“The High Allegheny Plateau offers outstanding scenery, composed of nationally significant natural features and cultural sites, abundant wildlife and rare species of plants and animals — as well as the hospitable, well-cared-for communities that offer the service amenities needed by the recreational visitors [and] tourists,” Jarvis wrote.

“This would help put West Virginia on the map as a place to visit. It would be an economic engine for the highlands,” said Rodd.

We’re talking about a big chunk of land here. I’m sure I’m a little off here and there, but it appears to me that the park would start in Randolph County somewhere east of Elkins — possibly in the vicinity of Shavers Mountain  — and extend eastward into Pendleton County’s Seneca Rocks – Spruce Knob area. From its northern terminus at Thomas in Tucker County, it would extend southward through the Blackwater Canyon and Canaan Valley all the way to Durbin in northern Pocahontas County.

If the area becomes a true national park, managed under the rules established in parks such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, Great Smoky Mountains and others, most of West Virginia’s northern Allegheny Highlands (minus private in-holdings, of course) would become a no-hunting zone overnight.

Of course, lawmakers being lawmakers,  it’s always possible for them to create a special rule that would keep the lands open to hunting. When members of Congress voted to designate the New River Gorge area as a National River, they did just that.

Equally worrisome to sportsmen should be the National Park Service’s attitude toward trout stockings. In Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Park Service officials are attempting to eradicate rainbow and brown trout from streams where native brook trout can live. It’s not difficult to imagine a scenario whereby trout stockings might be prohibited for the Blackwater River, the North Fork of the South Branch, Seneca Creek, Gandy Creek, Dry Fork, Glady Fork, Shavers Fork and the East and West forks of the Greenbrier.

Stay tuned. This could get interesting…