Often people hike, bike, ride motorcycles and ATVs, and horses on trails and enjoy our federal (national forests, parks, conservation lands, and wildlife refuges), state, and local public lands without thinking how their actions can have serious environmental impacts. More education, planning, and enforcement of natural resource protection laws are needed to ensure that we do not “love to death” the wilderness and wildlands that we profess to visit, enjoy, and treasure.
An example of the need for education and the damage that recreation can do occurred in September 2018, when Zion National Park used its Facebook page to post a photo that showed many stone towers (stacking) that were created by visitors. In National Parks and other public lands, stacking stones can cause erosion, damage animal ecosystems, disrupt river flow, and confuse hikers who depend upon cairns placed by management agencies to navigate where trail locations are not clear.
On many public lands the guiding philosophy is to “take photos and leave only footprints”. Damage or alteration of living and non-living elements of ecosystems is considered “vandalism”.
Another example of damage that occurs due to recreation and involves our electronic technology is “geotagging” on social media like “Instagram”. Natural wonders, places, and many wild areas can only take a limited number of visitors each day before their natural features and solitude, and quiet are degraded. “Geotagging” can take areas that receive little visitation and impacts and turn them into “grand central stations” where trampling, erosion, and other environmental impacts rule. For instance, little known Delta Lake in the Grand Tetons used to have about 2 hikers visit its remote beauty each day. After being “geotagged” now as many as 145 people hike each day to Delta Lake. This has caused erosion and cost money to mitigate the damage.
Recreation can also affect wildlife. Wildlife impacts were found recently when researchers looked at the presence of humans on trails. The researchers were able to remove the influence that trails have on wildlife in their study and focus solely on “human presence”. Birds were surveyed to determine their reaction to human presence on trails in four forests in Switzerland and France. Two of the trails had high use and two of the trails had little use. Birds in forests were found in lower numbers near trails with high human use compared to forests with trails that had less human use.
The researchers stated that “Our findings clearly show that the mere presence of humans affect the forest bird community … This effect is measurable in forests which are used for recreation”. Recommendations by the researchers included restricting human access into remote areas that have not yet had human recreation and trails and “… do not construct new trails, or at least limit the amount of trails … If trails have to be constructed, avoid local rare habitats, take into account the present species, and keep large connected habitat untouched. Trails at a habitat edge are as pretty as in the middle of the habitat.” The study did not take into account the effect that trails have on the fragmentation of habitat by trails.
The National Park Service (NPS) has a mandate from the U.S. Congress via the National Park and Recreation Act of 1978 to establish in general management plans “visitor carrying capacities for all areas of each park unit”. But NPS has not kept this mandate. This was documented by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) in July 2016, when it reported that of the 59 national parks, 19 national preserves, 2 national reserves, 18 national recreation areas, and 10 national seashores that it reviewed, only 7 of these units have established carrying capacities and only 1 unit has carrying capacity standards for the entire unit.
NPS has not only failed to obey the law but at the same time has encouraged more visitor use at parks that have no carrying capacity limits and have been negatively affected by visitor use. It appears that overcrowding and natural resource damage is not a priority for the NPS but that more visitation is. This policy of more visitor use occurs even though budgets that fund law enforcement and natural resource protection have been slashed by the U.S. Congress.
The NPS’s 1916 Organic Act requires that it “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” For over 100 years NPS has not given enough attention to “carrying capacity” and “visitor use” so that it does not impair the natural resources the public enjoys.
What should we do? First educate yourself about public lands, their use, level of use, and which areas are most visited. Make informed and reasoned decisions about when and where you want to visit your federal, state, and local public lands. Report damage and overuse of public lands and facilities to public land managers. Contact your U.S. representative and senators and tell them you support more funding for carrying capacity studies, their implementation, and visitor use education, planning, law enforcement, and natural resource protection.
Lobby for carrying capacity studies that are implemented before damage is done not after-the-fact when it is harder to reduce visitation and mitigate environmental damage. Volunteer for service work that maintains facilities like trails and protects natural areas from too much use. “Just say no” to visitation on days and at times and in places where too much use has already occurred. This is a problem for all of us to solve since it comes from all of us. Be a “steward” of public lands and not just a “user”.
By Brandt Mannchen