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Visitor Experiences in High-Use Wildernesses in the Pacific Northwest
Wilderness use, particular in areas close to large metropolitan areas, is increasing and a large part of this growth comes from day use. There is considerable controversy about appropriate management of popular wilderness trails and destination areas. Much of the controversy stems from divergent interpretations of the language from the 1964 Wilderness Act that describes what wilderness should offer visitors: "outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation." There is growing debate about what causes more degradation of solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation: growing crowds of people or Forest Service imposed use limits and regulations, especially limits on day use. Tough, value-laden decisions must be made about appropriate management objectives regarding the experiential conditions wilderness should provide. This issue is a particular concern in the Pacific Northwest, where heavy recreation use occurs in wilderness areas close to large cities such as Seattle and Portland.
To inform these decisions, a major collaborative project was undertaken, beginning in 2002 between the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute (Dr. David Cole), the University of Idaho (Associate Professor Troy Hall) and the Pacific Northwest Region of the Forest Service (Regional Wilderness Specialist Susan Sater). A series of nine research and administrative studies were conducted in Forest Service wildernesses in Oregon and Washington between 2002 and 2005. Goals of the research were to understand the nature of human experience in wilderness and how experiences vary between heavily and lightly used places, as well as between day and overnight trips. Data were collected on what people experienced, their evaluations of those experiences and their opinions about what the Forest Service should do to manage wilderness experiences. Some people were interviewed at length while on their wilderness trips, while many more filled out questionnaires after their trip. At more popular trailheads, people were given questionnaires as they exited the wilderness. To collect information from users of more remote places, questionnaires were mailed to their homes. Finally, in addition to gathering information from on-site visitors of wilderness, information was also gathered at meetings of stakeholders particularly interested in wilderness. These meetings also provided an opportunity to study the degree to which visitor information was influenced by information presented at meetings or by group discussions about values.
This project was unique in recreation research for its high degree of collaboration between management and research as well as the ability to simultaneously apply multiple methods in many different wildernesses. Data collection has been completed but report writing has only begun. Results clearly show that visitor opinions about appropriate wilderness management are highly divergent and that providing visitors with information and venues for discussing and deliberating about management do not reduce polarization. Wilderness managers are going to have to make tough decisions about issues for which there is little consensus among the public. Experiential conditions in heavily-used places in wilderness are suboptimal. Visitors recognize that there are lots of people around, that there is more crowding than they prefer, that solitude is harder to find and more frequently interrupted. However, most visitors consider crowding to not be a very serious problem. They learn to cope with crowding, either though advanced planning (e.g. avoiding popular places on sunny weekends) or simply by rationalizing crowding as a necessary evil in such a beautiful place so close to the large cities where they live. When faced with the alternative of Forest Service imposed use limits, most visitors appear inclined to prefer that they be allowed to adapt and adjust to conditions, to be free to choose whether or not to visit a crowded place. Additional information about these studies and resultant reports can be
found online.
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