Webstories for Leave No Trace
Researchers Discover Traces of Pharmaceuticals and Other Contaminants in Colorado Backcountry Lakes
Researchers from the United States Geological Survey in Colorado published new findings detailing the discovery of pharmaceuticals, hormones, pesticides, and other contaminants in both remote and accessible lakes of Rocky Mountain National Park. Common contaminants detected from water samples in this study were caffeine, camphor, para-cresol, and even DEET (the active ingredient in many insect repellents). While some of the contaminants discovered can be attributed to naturally occurring sources, other traces of pharmaceuticals, including oxycodone, are clearly a result of human input. These alarming findings are a wake-up call for all of us in the outdoor recreation community.
Read more here.
Visitor Search & Rescues Drain Park Resources
The first principle of Leave No Trace is Plan Ahead and Prepare. We often talk about this principle as setting one up for success to be able to practice the other six Leave No Trace principles (i.e. if you're prepared with a trowel, you're more likely to dig a cat hole for your human waste). However, the often overlooked side of Plan Ahead and Prepare lies when things go wrong due to poor planning or lack of preparation. Here we're talking about Search and Rescue (SAR).
In 2017 alone, the National Park Service reported spending approximately $3.3 million dollars on 2,890 Search and Rescue operations, which occupied a staggering 83,000 hours of NPS staff time. These SAR operations divert dollars from being spent on trail maintenance and park improvements. They pull backcountry rangers from protecting the park's natural resources and interpretive rangers from communicating better with the public. Overall, these operations represent a preventable drain on our already strained National Park Service resources.
Read more here.
Wildlife Poop Versus Dog Poop: Explained
Researchers in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park were greeted with exciting findings earlier this year when samples of bear scat mixed with soil in the Park's greenhouse yielded more than 1,200 Oregon-grape and Chokecherry seedlings. The astounding number of seedlings that germinated from the fertile mixture of bear scat and soil provided even greater evidence for the interdependence of species living in the Rocky Mountain ecosystem. According to researchers, the seedlings are much more likely to germinate after passing through a bear's internal system compared to simply dropping off the plant. This is because seeds from plants like Chokecherry have a thick, durable seed coat that needs to be broken down for the seed to germinate - a service the bear's stomach performs remarkably well.
Read more here.
In An Age of Catastrophic Wildfire, Leave No Trace More Important Than Ever
Over 100 years ago, President Theodore Roosevelt established the U.S. Forest Service to manage what would become America’s 193-million acre national forests and grasslands for the benefit of all Americans. Today, that mission is being consumed by the ever-increasing costs of fighting fires.
Read more here.
San Marcos River Hot Spot: Protecting a Community Resource
Flowing from artesian springs, the picturesque San Marcos River emerges out of the Edwards Aquifer, forming Spring Lake and flowing south to ultimately join the Blanco River and the Guadalupe River 75 miles downstream. The San Marcos River is considered one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in the southwestern United States with numerous threatened and endangered species, including the Texas Blind Salamander, the Fountain Darter, and Texas Wild Rice. As a result, great care must be taken to ensure the river remains clean, clear, and continuously flowing with a stable temperature.
Read more here.
Skill Series: Authority of the Resource
The Authority of the Resource technique is perfect for rangers, volunteers, and even everyday citizens who wish to educate others about Leave No Trace practices in a positive way that can actually make a difference.
Authority is defined as “the power to influence or command thought, opinion or behavior.”Nature, or the resource, has its own authority to influence behavior. Because of this, people are more likely to enjoy the outdoors responsibly if they understand how their actions impact the natural world.
Read more here.
Summer Camp Staff Training and Leave No Trace
Since 1921, Camp Cheley has been helping their campers get outdoors to experience the wild Colorado Rocky Mountains. ampers at Cheley don't have to go far to feel immersed in the outdoors, campus is based just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park and has a plethora of residential wildlife including deer, elk, and bears. Cheley's programs like backpacking, horseback riding, mountain biking, and rafting encourage campers to have new exciting experiences while developing ethics and care for their outdoor spaces. At Cheley, Leave No Trace isn't just a term to focus on during overnight backpacking trips but is important to the entire camp environment and culture. It's so important to Cheley, that they invited Leave No Trace to do a 1.5-Hour Workshop with their 200 staffers during annual training.
Read more here.
Prevent the Spread of White-Nose Syndrome on Your Next Cave Adventure and at Home
On a cool summer evening with the last strokes of daylight touching the treetops, small darting silhouettes gracefully streak between the pines. Diving, twisting, soaring, and zipping through the darkening sky, bats are masters of the dusk insect hunt. Many of us can recall experiences watching with awe these incredible creatures emerge from their day of slumber to go about a night’s work, sometimes cheering them on to control the ever biting swarm of mosquitoes. Sadly, scenes like this may be on the decline due to a disease threatening bat populations.
White-Nose Syndrome (WNS) has caused catastrophic declines in hibernating bats. Since its discovery in Howe’s Cave west of Albany, New York in 2006 WNS spread to 33 sites by 2008 with a population decline in excess of 75% over just two years.
Read more here.
Even Aldo Leopold Shot the Wolf: Overcoming Your Less Than Leave No Trace Guilt
As we travel around the country completing workshops for children and adults we often meet people who feel compelled to tell us about a time when they did something that was “Less Than Leave No Trace”.
On a trail outside of San Antonio, Texas we met a man whose jaw dropped and eyes soften when we explained the harmfulness to wildlife when orange and apple peels are discarded in nature. He admitted he had just thrown his out during his hour trot and couldn’t help visualizing his orange peel, out there, being a potential threat to a place he loved to visit.
We met a woman in Joshua Tree, California whose eyes watered as she told us about a time when her classmates took a baby bird from a nest, thinking it was in distress. The baby bird died in her small, child hands a few days later after she found she couldn’t care for it.
Read more here.
Outdoor Optimism: How Your Positivity Helps the Leave No Trace Movement
We’ve been on the road as Subaru/Leave No Trace Traveling Trainers for 625 days. In that time, we’ve traveled the Western United States, conducted hundreds of events, reached millions of people with the Leave No Trace mission, and visited countless areas that are heavily impacted by human use as part of our Hot Spot Programs. One might think that after spending so much time seeing trash, trail damage, human waste, and other impacts from place to place that we might start to feel down about the state of the world, or that we might start to be pretty frustrated with how people treat our public lands. The truth is however, that we’re actually quite optimistic about the state of our lands and the future of outdoor recreation, and we’d like to share our tips for remaining positive about the Leave No Trace movement.
Read more here.
Grand Success at Grand Teton National Park Hot Spot
Grand Teton National Park is one of America's most iconic destinations. Craggy peaks erupt from the sagebrush valley skirted by pine forest and azure lakes, forcing all who pass to stop and marvel at this geologic wonder. Yet, Grand Teton National Park has seen a 23 percent increase in visitation in just four years, with 2016 seeing a record-breaking 4.8 million visitors. Although Grand Teton is a large national park, many of these 4.8 million visits are concentrated in certain frontcountry areas, creating concentrated areas of impact.
Read more here.
Embracing Technology in the Outdoors: Promoting Inclusivity and Managing Change
The technology-in-the-outdoors debate is alive and thriving. Since cell phones have become a part of our daily lives people have been asking how far is too far? When does technology start taking precious time from the present and rip us from our real-life experiences? “If only millennials would get off their phones and listen to the birds,” we often hear, “they are too blinded by their Instagram likes to really appreciate this place.”
Read more here.
Top 5 Reasons to Re-Think Burning Trash or Food
Burning trash or food in your campfire has negative consequences for the health of humans, animals, and plants alike. Unfortunately, we encounter burned trash in campfire pits all too often. Cigarette butts, plastic cups, foil, cans, and food scraps start the long list of trash we commonly find. Many folks don't burn their trash with malicious intent, but rather from lack of knowledge about the consequences of these actions. It's up to all of us to teach campers whenever possible to pack out all food scraps and trash, rather than burning them. Watch the video below for the top five reasons to re-think burning trash or food. Keep scrolling to read more in depth about each reason.
Read more here.
Solar Challenge Allows Traveling Trainers to Office Anywhere
On a breezy June afternoon overlooking Mt. Sopris just outside of Snowmass, Colorado, Subaru/Leave No Trace Traveling Trainers, Donielle Stevens and Aaron Hussmann, keep a watchful eye on the building thunderstorms that threaten to darken the skies. Their anxious gaze isn’t for fear of being rained on and caught in the elements, but rather that their power supply might get cut short this afternoon. At the time of this writing, Stevens and Hussmann have successfully avoided plugging into a wall outlet for 34 days out of 38 since beginning their challenge to utilize solar power during their year on the road.
Read more here.
5 Biggest Myths Hurting our Public Lands
For the past 16 months we've been traveling the Western United States, visiting national and state parks, designated campgrounds, BLM sites, and wilderness areas to teach visitors how to protect our public lands by recreating ethically and responsibly. We’ve camped 250 nights this past year and have seen some incredible places- and some not so incredible places. Places where the wildlife issues are so bad the squirrels will jump on you while you’re eating to get at your food, places littered with toilet paper and smell of human feces, places where there are two trails to the same place, an uphill and downhill trail, because people refuse to yield to other users, or places closed because of a recent fire caused by someone who left their campfire unattended. As we travel and educate we see some common themes, common misconceptions of how to act in the outdoors that are actually hurting the places people like to visit.
Read more here.
What's a Photo Worth? Leave No Trace Tips for Your Next Best Instagram Photo
We’re all familiar with old adage “take only pictures, leave only footprints.” Taking photographs in the outdoors can be a fantastic way to help practice the seven Leave No Trace principles by allowing people to fill their memory cards rather than fill their pockets with souvenirs that are best left in nature.
For example, Instagram is an incredible social media app for inspiring outdoor recreationalists. Many photos help users decide where to go for their next vacation and help them discover new places around the globe. Often we’ll see a photo on Instagram and say, “we have to go there!”. These photos encourage visitation in areas which then increases the need and desire to protect these beautiful places.
Read more here.
Soaking in Colorado's Conundrum Hot Springs
This week we visited Conundrum Hot Springs in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness of Colorado for a Hot Spots Week aimed to provide visitor outreach and recommendations toward protecting this unique resource. The issues at Conundrum Hot Springs are the same issues we're seeing in lots of areas with high visitation. Some of the main concerns include human waste, bear interactions, and the creation of a new permitting system effective April 18, 2018 in the area because of resource damage and impact to experiencing designated Wilderness.
Read more here.
Can Bears & Humans Co-Exist? Big Bend National Park May Have the Answer
In the early days of national parks, bears were treated as amusement for visitors. In the case of Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Sequoia National Park, as well as others, piles of visitor food and trash were placed in an open space and circled by bleachers. Then as hungry bears fed on the smelly garbage, attendees would awe in amazement.
We now know how detrimental this is to the bears' health but also to the future of bear-human interactions. Even as the bleachers were torn down and bear boxes were installed in campgrounds, much of the damage had been done. The bears had become habituated to humans, meaning they no longer had a healthy fear of us. And worse, they were food conditioned, meaning they sought humans out for food-sometimes becoming aggressive and therefore, had to be removed or put down.
Read more here.
Let Me Tell You About This Jerk I Know
“Can you believe those jerks!?” “Idiots!” “Those people don’t care!”
For life on the road as Subaru/Leave No Trace Traveling Trainers, we encounter these emotionally charged sentiments on a regular basis. Some are more mild, some more caustic, but they always come from people who care about our public lands and seethe at the sight of its destruction at the hand of humans. When we encounter these folks on the road, anxious to tell us about a recent atrocity they witnessed, we feel their passion, hurt, and anger at the misuse and abuse that too often occurs in our environment.
Read more here.
6 Ways to Stop Invasive the Spread of Species on Your Next Adventure
Invasive species are doing a lot of damage to our favorite places. The annual estimated cost in the United States of invasive species control is approximately $120 billion per year. It is estimated that the global cost of invasive species management is equal to five percent of the global economy. Approximately 42% of Threatened or Endangered species are at risk primarily due to invasive species.
Read more here.
Not So Dead Wood: How Dead Wood Creates Healthy Ecosystems
Dying and dead wood provides one of the two or three greatest resources for animal species in a natural forest … if fallen timber and slightly decayed trees are removed the whole system is gravely impoverished of perhaps more than a fifth of its fauna.–Charles S. Elton, The Pattern of Animal Communities, 1966
Death has always played an important role in the environments and ecosystems we love and visit. Yet, our human perceptions of death can mar our understanding of what role it has to play. We see death as the end of serving a purpose or being useful. For these reasons, when we’re recreating outside or just enjoying nature we may find it tempting to build big forts using dead wood and not leave them where we found them afterwards, take them as walking sticks, or even hack down a standing dead tree to use as firewood (as we witnessed during an outing this summer).
Dead trees are the biological capital for the forest and removing wood debris and snags can interrupt the energy and nutrient cycles. We must balance thinning areas for safety and human use and leaving these standing trees and down logs for their important role they play, even in their death.
Read more here.
Trail Benefits of Llama Pack Stock
The llama, native to the high puna of the South American Andes, is a relative newcomer to North America. The importation of llamas to North America in the 1800s was only common for zoo and exotic animal exhibits. But in the early 1970’s a few private breeders began recognizing the unique qualities of the llama as an alternative livestock for pet/companion animals and pack animals. Market momentum began to build and by the late seventies, two year waiting lists were commonplace for most breeders. Now, the U.S. llama herd now numbers in excess of 100,000 animals.
Read more here.
I Have To Poop Outside! What Do I Do?!
It can be difficult to know when to dig a cathole vs. when to use a WAG bag. Luckily we made this flowchart for you so now you always know what to do when nature calls. Read below for more tips on going #2 in the outdoors! In an attempt to understand local issues in our consistently changing scenery, we usually ask land managers, “What are the most common impacts you deal with?” Nine times out of ten the response is, “Improper disposal of human waste is our number one issue.” This is a sad realization.
Read more here.
It's Better Here: Decision Making For Nature Finds
Find something cool on an adventure in the outdoors? Here are some things to consider before you take the item from where you found it:
1. Is it an important part of the resource?
2. Does it provide a function in the ecosystem?
3. Does it have historical significance and should be left in the area for scientific study?
Read more here.