Excerpt from Monitoring the Condition of Wilderness Campsites
In recent years, managers have been under pressure to im prove the Sophistication and accountability of wilderness management. Regulations in the National Forest Management Act of 1978 specifically require Forest Service wilderness managers to limit and distribute visitor use in such a way that natural conditions are largely unimpaired and to monitor the response of the wilderness resource to these actions. Much of this effort must be focused on campsites, the places that are most severely altered by recreational use and among which visitor use may have to be limited and distributed.
Unfortunately, funding for the collection of data needed for wilderness management is sorely lacking compared to funding available for collecting data used in the management of other resources, such as timber. Access to most wilderness acreage is poor; motor vehicles are not allowed and many remote areas are not even penetrated by trails. Moreover, many areas have thousands of sites that must be inventoried.
This paper discusses desirable characteristics of a backcountry campsite inventory and monitoring system, evaluates existing methods, and provides suggestions for developing a system that builds on the strong points of existing techniques.
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