Mark DeOpsomer of Bozeman, Montana, is a backpacker with lots of miles on his soles. For almost four decades he’s gone to the remotest corners of the Northern Rockies.
On a recent trek 24 miles into the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana, he was relaxing along the banks of a creek, when out of nowhere a pack-rafter floated by. “I’d never seen any rafters before in The Bob but now they’re all over the place,” he said.
A few weeks later, he was driving to a trailhead at the end of a bumpy 50-mile-long dirt road along the Wind River Range of Wyoming. “There’s a game we like to play guessing the number of cars you expect to see in the parking lot,” he said. “Given that this is a strange year, I thought maybe 30. But there were over 200 and the scene was total mayhem.”
It’s like we’ve stared into a future that wasn’t supposed to arrive for a few decades
License plates on vehicles hailed from two dozen states and makeshift camps (without designated bathrooms) were everywhere.
At Forest Service campgrounds near Jackson, Wyoming, piles of human waste and toilet paper were ubiquitous and so was litter. The smelly messes were spread throughout an area in the middle of public land frequented by bears, including at times the famous Jackson Hole Grizzly 399 and her cubs.
When talking with managers of state and federal public lands these pandemic days, two issues popped up: what to do about large amounts of human feces deposited in wild places and how to handle far too many visitors. Both issues have served as a wake-up call to both land managers and environmentalists about the downsides of recreation.
“It’s like we’ve stared into a future that wasn’t supposed to arrive for a few decades,” said Randy Carpenter, who works with the community-planning organization FutureWest, in Bozeman. “The crush of people and the ecological impacts of rising recreation uses is right here, among us — right now — and it’s transforming the character of wild places.”
A paper published in the scientific journal PLOS One reviewed 274 scientific studies completed between 1981 and 2015 that examined the effects of recreation on a variety of animal species across all geographic areas and recreational activities. Kevin Crooks, a conservation biologist at Colorado State University, said given what we know now, “It might be time to establish limits on public access to protected areas and encourage changes in the behavior of recreationists.”
Though conservation groups continue to point fingers at logging, mining and ranching, they’ve been slow to acknowledge impacts from outdoor recreation.
Last winter, at a U.S. Forest Service meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, biologists noted that backcountry skiing and snowboarding were harming a dwindling, isolated herd of bighorn sheep. Displaying what can only be called a crass attitude, one skier was heard to remark: “Well, the sheep have had these mountains for 10,000 years. Now it’s our turn.”
Justin Farrell, the author of the book Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West, grew up in Wyoming, watched it change as big money moved in, and now teaches at Yale. He told me recently, “It’s too easy for all of us to look the other way — a sort of willful ignorance — to not really see and examine the actual impacts of recreation.”
Some recreationists insist on a quid pro quo: They’ll advocate protecting public land only if they’re allowed to use some of it. It’s happened in Idaho over wilderness and recently in debates over how to safeguard wildlife habitat in the Gallatin Range of southwest Montana.
An outdoor industry eager to get its slice of an $800 billion pie helps fuel the rush to the West’s public lands. Farrell says that outdoor-product manufacturers push hard for increased access to public lands in part because more users boost their bottom lines.
Meanwhile, many state tourism bureaus – like those in Montana, Wyoming, and Utah — spend millions of dollars advertising national parks and other places that are already uncomfortably overcrowded.
“Critical discussions about recreation are rare because these activities are layered with a thin veneer of innocence,” Farrell said. This recalls a narrative of heedless use that goes back to the 19th and 20th centuries: Exploit a special place until it’s used up and then move on, leaving waste, damage and displaced wildlife behind.
The problem is there aren’t many true wild places left to exploit.
This essay first appeared at Writers on the Range, and is republished here with permission.
Photo: Greg Rosenke/Unsplash
Billionaire Wilderness will soon appear here as part of our Recommended Reading column, but if you’d like to get a head start on the reading, maybe as if this were a book club, you can pick up a copy here. Amazon; Bookshop
People are more likely to support environmental and land management if they actually spend time in the outdoors using public lands.
There is no one single solution to this problem.
Land managers and the outdoor recreation industry need to recognize people will want to spend time in the wilderness and cooperate in finding ways to mitigate these issues.
When I worked as a Park Aide for CA State Parks Auburn District, the Whitewater Ranger applied for and received grant money to purchase composting toilets that he placed in several locations along the river. A strict permit system coordinated with the Whitewater Rafting companies limited the number of users and placed equipment restrictions including carrying and setting up portapotties whenever clients were on shore for lunch or side hikes. Penalties were steep for failure to comply.
Compromises will have to happen to protect wildlife and provide areas where people can recreate without impacting protected species.
Permit systems are already in place for many public lands and more place should considered that as a way to limit the impacts of people. It also makes it easier to enforce regulations and identify those that don’t follow the rules.
Clearly increased recreation is leading to increased environmental stress, but what seems to be implicit in the this article is that the problems are the new people or the new activities. Did the backpacker quoted in the article turn around when he saw the crowds and decide he was part of the problem. Is the author going to move away from Jackson because the area is overcrowded. I’m a just as much a hypocrite myself I continue to recreate despite the increased crowds I have seen in my neck of the woods, even if they are orders of magnitude smaller. Any solution will require across the boards sacrifices by everyone, not just newcomers/ packrafters/ mountain bikers/ backcountry skiers. Hikers, horsemen and outfitters need to share the pain.
I wouldn’t assume the backpacker didn’t turn around. I, myself, have turned around and even abandoned trips entirely when I’ve encountered these conditions. For the most part, I didn’t go out at all during 2020, which is the greatest sacrifice (the worst year) I’ve ever made. But, it wasn’t a selfless act. I simply didn’t want to recreate in those conditions.
I was pleased to finally see mention of the impact winter back country travelers are having on winter wildlife. There is an increase in motorized snow machine traffic as skiers and boarders use the machines to get to the goods that are deeper in to the mountains and farther from the crowded trailheads. Some ignore the wilderness boundary in search of excellent snow. We all need to be aware of our impacts on the already limited lands and the stress our presence has on the winter wildlife trying to survive to the warmth of spring. But in the Instagram realm of posting the most outrageous hucks, flips, gnar and rad lines it is unlikely we will be giving up our access any time soon.
That is what I have seen and been told by wilderness managers. One wilderness ranger put it this way: ” there used to be one poop under each rock, now there are three poops under each rock”. And from a friend who was a wilderness ranger and manager in the Bob Marshall for 25 years, when I asked what the biggest change he saw in his years – he did not hesitate “packrafts – both on the South Fork, Dearborn and many creeks that never saw use before”. The Wind Rivers were over the level of use that needs to be addressed – permits will need to be imposed if the levels of use keep up. People being aware of and helping to protect lands is good, overuse is bad. And this is not really new – we had the same discussion in the 1980’s and 1990’s about the huge increase in kayakers and rafters on rivers in western MT and north Idaho.
The issue with poop everywhere isn’t because of more people, it’s because of people not dealing with their poop correctly. I bury my poop the required 6-8″ down and put a rock on it. If 200 people know to get further away from the trailhead and to bury or pack out their poop, the issue is solved without limiting the numbers of hikers/runners.
The issue with crowds is a slippery slope, as you can end up like the extreme hikers who say ‘the only way to experience wilderness is to walk through it, and trail runners are enjoying it wrong and should be banned. Only me and my friends should be allowed access’ etc.
1) Way more education about poop etiquette. (is there a Leave No Trace education pack that teachers can use for a couple of classes each year at school? What about the last few days before the summer break the teachers fill in some lessons just before the kids go off on holiday).
2) More trailheads that stop everyone starting their adventures at the same location. Get people out into the wilderness and dispersed as quickly as possible. Sure, a few more trails, but get a link trail to a split 1 mile in, and then within 1.5 miles people will be dispersed and you’ll barely see anyone.
I welcome any walkers, runners and bikers into the wilderness who follow leave no trace. And any human powered user is generally undetectable by everyone else as soon as they’re out of sight.
This isn’t entirely true. In many places Leave No Trace means packing out human waste (something that I can say that I’ve never done, but probably should do in certain cases). Likewise, having those 200 people trample off the trail, and dig up whatever vegetation, soil, lichen, etc. that happens to be on the surface is not necessarily a responsible recommendation. I do recognize that issues of access to wilderness are incredibly nuanced, however there IS such a thing as too many people. We just have to confront the tough choices regarding shared usage.
poop. Yes there are lots of simple leave no trace books about poop. Boy Scouts, NOLS, Leave No Trace Foundation and many outdoors books teach only about how to poop in the woods. It wouldn’t take much education. In general, unfortunately due to human behavior, education is a good start, but enforcement of the education is sadly more effective. We don’t truly have the resources to regulate by permit or enforcement of good behavior in the outdoors.
We are told and encouraged from a young age that “this land is our land,” which it is and I highly support the benefits of recreating responsibly outdoors and the lessons that can only be learned there and lived there. Again, unfortunately, like many other things we are taught our rights but not our responsibilities…
I’ve backpacked and skied all over the West for 40 years. The increase in crowds this year is monumental and the impact on some trailheads is substantial.
But this has been building in my main stomping grounds in Colorado for many years. Some popular places need to be permit for camping in the backcountry. The Forest Service is a little behind on this here in Colorado anyway.
I’d like to try to call BS on the bighorn sheep story though. The Tetons are sizable and aside from a few very highly trafficked winter zones, it’s hard to imagine much winter impact on those herds from backcountry skiing, as they tend to winter lower then people ski. Much more impact from development in the valley I would suspect. We also hear this in CO around linx habitat, there is so much undeveloped and relatively inaccessible backcountry that the idea that skiers have much impact is really suspect, even crowded zones are rarely more than a few square miles in size. I would guess motorized winter sports have a vastly larger impact due to noise and the shear size of the mileage they cover compared with a skier, who rarely will be more than 1 or 2 miles from a trailhead in winter.
With all due respect, its doesn’t seem that you are very up to date about the Tetons.
First: they are quite a compact range, with easy access from East, South and West sides. Only the North end of the range enjoys a modicum of protection simply due to the very long approaches neccesary.
With this easy and straighforward access, the constant evolution of quality gear over the past few decades and of course the impacts of social media, the Tetons are under huge pressure, in summer and winter.
The sheep discussed here are indeed impacted on a regular basis by ski / snowboard tourers. Unfortunately, the few windswept summits that hold a bit of vegetation that sustains these poor beasts through tough winters are mostly in the south central part of the range, and within easy (if long) daytour range.
The miniscule amount of private land which can be (already has been) developed in the Valley is certainly taking up space in what was once prime winter range for elk, sheep and deer. While this is certainly a problem if you are an ungulate, realistically it will never be solved. The homes have been built, the roads paved….people arent going to just up sticks and leave. The only range left for sheep is up high, and a lot of skiers simply dont care.
Its sad to see that people who are ostensibly ‘out enjoying nature’ won’t yield and choose another destination when nature suffers as a result of their visit.
You are fine to your opinion about lynx and backcountry skier disturbance, but every field biologist who studies it knows you’re dead wrong. The area between East Vail and Vail pass is the most cited example, with no development at all, just a huge increase in winter (BC skiers) and summer (Mt biking) recreationalists. For lynx, we know that in Colorado lynx have been fine in the past with summer rec as long as they had winters relatively undisturbed.
The Elk herd in the area will also soon be gone as they are being scared away from their calves often enough to lead to an almost 0 survival rate.
When I think about where to go, I picture a chart with beauty one one axis, and effort on the other. Anything above the Mendoza line tends to be overrun. Like the paved path along the rim of the grand canyon would be a 10 in terms of beauty, and a 1 in terms of effort. So of course it is going to be packed. If you want to hike into the canyon, the effort goes up and it gets a lot less crowded. Now, if you go to a “less grand” canyon, with similar difficulty, there will be even fewer people.
With that said, it seems to me that more permitting is important in overcrowded areas, which is unfortunate. One of the greatest joy I get in nature is the escape from civilization, and nothing epitomizes civilization more than dealing with bureaucracy and permits.
I don’t even bother going to a trail head that’s been written about or appears on someone’s FB page or instagram. inevitably it will be crowded, noisy and trampled
Instead, I know the places that no one goes to. Where the trails are narrow, sometimes overgrown and the road in is rough & rocky.
Lucky for me I’ve been exploring remote places in my home state for many years. And I know where and when to go
Hey, as long as we use the words “compromise,” “mitigation,” “stewardship” and “sustainable” often enough, everything will be OK!
As disturbing as this is, the good news is, all of these issues are solvable with a combination of permitting, education, acquiring/preserving more wilderness lands, etc. All of them will require money but at least, as a country, we have plenty of that. I would think adding some simple pit toilets in some of these areas would make an enormous difference. Perhaps that could be paid for by a “toilet tax” on outdoor gear. I’d be happy to pay a tax like that.
In the meantime, we all need to do our part to “leave no trace” and gently inform others about taking care not to trash our wilderness.
There has been talk of outdoor brands being subject to an excise tax similar to the Pittman-Robertson Act, which taxes firearms and ammunition and sends funds to state wildlife agencies. There is obviously some push back from it, but with the need to continue preserving local resources I think it will become a more popular at the state level as years go on. At least Georgia has put one such act to the ballot.
I agree with you, there is an abundance of beauty across the US and it should remain accessible to people in a way that sustains it for future generations. That means increased education, increased resources, and increased permitting situations. As much as I despise permits, I also acknowledge their usefulness in limited overuse. Education is clearly an issue. As for increased resources, opening up and maintaining local lands (whether it is a local park or a new wilderness area) has the ability to inspire the next generation to be good stewards as well.
Agree on permitting. I kind of see permits as a last resort. For example, when a fragile area can only take a limited amount of wear, or when there simply aren’t enough campsites to meet the requests. Hopefully, some added resources will help with some of these other issues.
The beauty of permitting is that it provides the opportunity for education. If done in person, you have a captive audience with someone who works for the forest or park where they can educate about the local policies on human waste, food storage, wildlife interactions, and value or their resource. I understand that there are educational materials stapled to picnic tables and on kiosks at virtually every trailhead or campground but how many people stop to read those?
An interesting article for AJ to publish, esp if you consider that the majority of folks reading this article are the folks to blame.
Same goes for AJ, as part of the outdoor industry, whose business model promotes these impacts.
Face it folks, we are all the problem and the only answer is to reduce our impacts.
Sadly, the only answer to reducing impact is limiting access.
If there was a better answer, we wouldn’t be talking year in and year out.
Humans are a plague on the land, if only the sheep could speak …
There may be some truth to what you say.
I’m not sure if I’d be blaming you’re fellow readers directly as that, but we all should do our share to limit the impacts we make on Public Lands and the Planet.
Perhaps Steve Casimiro et al could add more articles about the ethics of Leave No Trace, Permit applications, and other ways of reducing our impacts on the great outdoors.
Talking is at least acknowledging this is a real problem and can encourage people to think about their responsibilities and actions.
Cheers
Perhaps we need a plague of some sort to reduce the number of people.
So far that seems to only have exacerbated the problem.
I think a more practical solution is to find more ways of enforcing good behavior on Public Lands and more ways to penalize those that don’t act responsibly. The Carrot and Stick approach.
Just like seeing more marked Law Enforcement vehicles on roads and highways encourages people to drive safely, seeing more Rangers at trailheads and in the backcountry could help people to observe proper LNT etiquette.
Went to yellowstone this summer thinking it might be epic because of reduced crowds. Early in the season, that was true from reports from friends who went in early June. By July, when I went, it was a s**t show. The campground was like a frat party with 4 plus campsites surrounding us full of drunks staying up well past 2 am yelling and screaming and blasting music….at 2 AM! There were no campground hosts or rangers around as we were in a pandemic. All the lodges and visitor centers were closed for covid, so no education for the new travelers on what was appropriate, so people were walking though fields, across the geyser basins, parking all over the place. Very few rangers and staff to tell the newbies what they were doing was not okay. I’ve been going to Yellowstone for 40 years, and this was the worst visit ever. We left after one sleepless night. We saw on the news the next day multiple people had been gored by bison in the park at one of the crowded, illegally parked areas we passed.
I’ll be happy when this mess is over and these clowns return to cruising and party towns and leave the outdoors for those who respect it and respect other people who want to share it with the next generation.
@Ben “Sadly, the only answer to reducing impact is limiting access.”
Limiting access or following leave no trace.
If 10 people go to a trailhead and dump trash and poop, then that’s damage. If 50 people go to the trailhead and just walk off into the wilderness and follow leave no trace, then that’s actually better (unless we’re talking about disturbing the sheep. If it’s winter sheep disturbance, then snow mobiles need to be restricted or made electric/quiet) So it’s not the number of people, but the things the people are doing.
A shame the $1.9T of COVID relief doesn’t include the $12B the Nat Parks need to fix things up. That would have provided many local jobs fixing trails and builds etc. And they could have hired twice the number of rangers for this summer to educate people.
Don’t know how many encounters you’ve had with Bighorns outside of National Park petting zoos, but it’s not the noise of the snowmobiles, it’s the presence of the skiers period.
They will run from human presence just hiking, but definitely moving any faster. They will abandon feeding and their own young, as will most animals.
This is the actual gatekeeping of the great outdoors, not the constant hemming and hawing I see about how we need to make the outdoors more “equitable” in access to people who may not want to go out and do things anyway, for whatever their personal reasons are.
it gets totally unreal when, like me, you are confined to an urban location through lockdown. I am lucky in having a large park very close-by. This park has a woodland, known for its bluebells. Its also part home to some deer, foxes, kites etc.
It has seen unsustainable use since lockdown and restrictions, keeping about 1m citizens away from the countryside, their indoor malls, foreign holidays & beaches. On weekends I now avoid it as it’s busier that the main shopping streets, which are conversely empty! However today, on my morning walk, I came across a group of people playing loud music and dancing in the woods, not a rave but I think some kind of ‘wellness’ event, a ‘dance in a wood and get in touch with your inner child’ happening. Unfortunately the inner child needs to develop a sense of responsibility and empathy. My thoughts were ‘There goes the neighbourhood. God knows where the deer can find safe grazing etc.’ The woods are now heavily trampled and all growth will suffer, for years after lockdown is lifted.
OK, so I too use the woods, but I keep quiet, pick litter, pull up invasive species, feed the birds, try not to be a pure taker but to give back as well. Tread lightly! Fight for more conservation.
I’m thinking when the pandemic subsides some of the crowds will go away. I’m not saying all of them will go away so the problem will still be there for sure.
Missing from the conversation is the impact that mere human presence has on wildlife. A problem with pushing Leave No Trace as a solution to the problem is that it only addresses visible “traces,” which are predominantly things that are visible and offensive to US, and not necessarily what is most impactful on the ecosystem. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t work to eliminate littering and trailside defecation, but we can’t assume that 1000 people “leaving no trace” as they pass through an area aren’t having a substantial negative impact on it.
It is evident to me, as mostly a day/section hiker that in the past year I have had to go further afield to get away from people. Likewise, I know of many, very uneducated people (in regards to the outdoors) who have slapped down gobs of $$ exactly because of IG or FB or whatever. Few of them have a clue what they are doing, let alone how to do it the right way.
Additionally, I have seen many folks on trail, woefully ill-prepared. My Son & I were visiting a waterfall w/a not horribly difficult access, but none the less you kind of needed to know what you were doing. As we were coming down we passed a group w/no water, no supplies and a couple who were wearing flip-flops (?!) . I would imagine these are same types who are polluting lots of places because, again, they have no clue….AND I’m sure they all had their cameras and selfie-sticks w/them…
If we’re gonna educate more people about Leave No Trace, I think it should include lessons of consequences to social media. LNT should include restraint on IG, FB, Campendium, and YouTube. I think leaving a geotag on social media is worse in the long run than an untrained dump.
1) educate on leave no trace
2) fast and light – so people get further away from the trailhead faster
3) better trash/poop facilities at the trailhead, so people know there’s a right place for trash close by
4) noisy/motorized modes of access to be limited more and perhaps cut to zero more readily when it’s mating season or some other delicate time
5) more promotion of obscure areas. I’m currently in NorCA, and people go to Tahoe, they go to Yosemite etc. But, if you look at the maps, there’s a ton of National Forests along the Sierras and enough room for everyone if we don’t all go to the Valley in Yosemite. Just need to get the word out. My friends and I are doing more and more in National Forests these days, as you feel like you have the place to yourself (if only the noisy dirtbikes and four wheelers werent there. You can hear them for miles and miles).
I’m positive that with more funding to better manage this, that having more people in the outdoors is good for so many reasons. Just need to educate and direct people to areas where they’ll have less impact.
Just thinking more about this.
1) Poop/Trash = Answer is education
2) Crowds at trailheads = Popularize more trailheads so people are spread out. The figures have been amazing about how popular parts (Yosemite etc) are seeing massive increases in numbers, but lesser known parks and National Forests are not seeing the same increase. Seems to be Instagram/Facebook driven.
3) People (even when Leaving No Trace and not using dirtbikes/4WD/snow mobiles) disturbing animals. Some of that is reduced by 2), but yes, if having anyone enter a valley where some sheep are breeding will throw things off, then limiting access or banning access is the only answer. And if we say 4 people a day in x-valley, then those people should be free to hike, trail run, bike, cross country ski. A recent patagonia article seemed to say hikers could go to an area, but bikes would be too many people and ruin it.
I just don’t like the narrative I read in some areas which is “my way of recreating, and just me doing it, is fine, the problem is more people coming along or people coming along and recreating in a different way than I do”.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to hit up National Forests or other remoter areas (bikepacking is amazing for getting people disbursed and should be encouraged, much like trail running. If you go bikepacking and put in 30 miles on gravel forest roads the first morning, then you’re not seeing anyone else the rest of the weekend)
Covid-19 says it all. In a year you’ll be lucky to see 40 cars in the parking lot. When people get back to work, playing school and other organized sports, and going about there business freely, they won’t have time for outdoor recreation. Some will stick to the outdoors, but not many.