The action is nearly two decades in the making. Although Congress passed the National Park Air Tour Management Act in 2000, tasking both agencies with developing management strategies to limit commercial air-tour operators and create incentives for quiet aircraft, nothing has come to fruition in the years since. But last month, in the face of a lawsuit filed by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the NPS and the FAA began working on plans that would cover seven parks: Death Valley, California; Mount Rainier, Washington; Badlands and Mount Rushmore, South Dakota; Great Smoky Mountains, in Tennessee and North Carolina; and Glen Canyon and Rainbow Bridge, in Arizona and Utah.
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