Leave No Trace

"Leave no trace" sign on the Attikamek Trail near Sault Ste. Marie Canal in Canada.

A demonstration of a Leave No Trace fire in a fire pan.

Leave No Trace refers to a set of outdoor ethics promoting conservation in the outdoors. It is built on seven principles:

1. plan ahead and prepare,
2. travel and camp on durable surfaces,
3. dispose of waste properly,
4. leave what you find,
5. minimize campfire impacts,
6. respect wildlife,
7. be considerate of other visitors.

These seven principles have been adapted to different activities, ecosystems and environments.

Since 1994, Leave No Trace Center For Outdoor Ethics, a non-profit organization also known as Leave No Trace, exists to educate people about their recreational impact on nature as well as the principles of Leave No Trace to prevent and minimize such impacts.

Origins

In the mid 20th-century there was a cultural shift in wilderness ethics from woodcraft where wilderness travelers prized themselves on their ability to rely on the resources of wild lands to a post-WWII ethics of minimal impact on the environment. Leave No Trace began in the 1960s and 1970s. There was a large increase of wilderness visitation following the creation of new recreational equipment such as white gas stoves, synthetic tents, and sleeping pads. This began a commercial interest in outdoor recreation which in turn caused more visitors to National Parks. In those decades, the United States Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service started to teach their non-motorized visitors how to have a minimal impact on the land. Wilderness Informational Specialists were trained to educate visitors on minimal impact camping in the different parks. In 1987 the three departments cooperatively developed a pamphlet titled "Leave No Trace Land Ethics".

Also in the 1970s, groups such as the Sierra Club were advocating minimum impact camping techniques. The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) had been actively advocating training and implementation of Leave No Trace and outdoor ethics principles early in the 1970s at such places as Philmont Scout Ranch in Northern New Mexico. A pilot program in the 1980s between the BSA and the Bureau of Land Management in the High Uintas Wilderness tried to reach a wide audience.

The national education program of Leave No Trace was developed in 1990 by the United States Forest Service in conjunction with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). At the time the USFS also created other programs such as Smokey Bear, Woodsy Owl, and previously in 1985 the Tread Lightly! program which was geared towards motorized recreation. The Bureau of Land Management joined the program in 1993 followed by the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1994.

Principles

Leave No Trace provides a framework for outdoor recreation decision making, which is summarized in the following seven principles. Originally developed for the "backcountry", there are now also seven "frontcountry" principles as well:

Backcountry

1. Plan ahead and prepare: poorly prepared people, when presented with unexpected situations, often resort to high-impact solutions that degrade the outdoors or put themselves at risk. Proper planning leads to less impact.
2. Travel and camp on durable surfaces: damage to land occurs when surface vegetation or communities of organisms are trampled beyond repair. The resulting barren area leads to unusable trails, campsites and soil erosion.
3. Dispose of waste properly: though most trash and litter in the backcountry is not significant in terms of the long term ecological health of an area, it does rank high as a problem in the minds of many backcountry visitors. Trash and litter are primarily social impacts which can greatly detract from the naturalness of an area. Further, backcountry users create body waste and waste water which requires proper disposal according to Leave No Trace.
4. Leave what you find: Leave No Trace directs people to minimize site alterations, such as digging tent trenches, hammering nails into trees, permanently clearing an area of rocks or twigs, and removing items.
5. Minimize campfire impacts: because the naturalness of many areas has been degraded by overuse of fires, Leave No Trace teaches to seek alternatives to fires or use low-impact fires.
6. Respect wildlife: minimizing impact on wildlife and ecosystems.
7. Be considerate of other visitors: following hiking etiquette and maintaining quiet allows visitors to go through the wilderness with minimal impact on other users.

Frontcountry

1. Know before you go
2. Stick to trails and camp overnight right
3. Trash your trash and pick up poop
4. Leave it as you find it
5. Be careful with fire
6. Keep wildlife wild
7. Share our trails and manage your pet

Criticism

Despite the fact that Leave No Trace is a widely accepted conservationist ethic, there has been a good amount of criticism. Environmental historian James Morton Turner argued in 2002 that Leave No Trace focused attention of backpackers "largely on protecting wilderness as a recreational landscape" rather than tackling larger questions, such as "the modern economy, consumerism, and the environment". Turner also argues that this ethic omitted the calculus behind it, and the code itself, in his view, "helped ally the modern backpacker with the wilderness recreation industry" by encouraging backpackers to practice the Leave No Trace ethic while in the wilderness and to keep an eye out for the logo of this ethic in shopping malls.

Gregory Simon and Peter Alagona had a different argument, saying in a 2009 article that there should be a move beyond Leave No Trace. They argued that this ethic "disguises much about human relationships with non-human nature" because it makes it seem that parks and wilderness areas are "pristine nature" which in their view, "erases their human histories, and prevents people from understanding how these landscapes have developed over time through complex human–environment interactions". In the place of this ethic, they say that there should be a new environmental ethic "that transforms the critical scholarship of social science into a critical practice of wilderness recreation, addresses the global economic system...and reinvents wilderness recreation as a more collaborative, participatory, productive, democratic, and radical form of political action". In the article they also write about how certain corporations in the outdoor recreation industry and magazines like National Geographic support Leave No Trace (LNT), but that in stores for outdoor recreation products like REI, "the LNT logo becomes both a corporate brand and an official stamp of approval".

The authors also argue that because LNT "focuses on the immediate, local impacts of recreational use while ignoring larger issues of change over time and connections through space" it has what they consider "two conceptual flaws": the idea that the current wilderness is in a "natural, pristine condition" and the obscuring of the "spatial connections between what takes place inside parks and wilderness areas and what occurs outside". The authors note that additionally, this ethic is limited in scope, offering "a code of conduct calibrated to the particular, limited, and arbitrary geographic scale of parks and wilderness areas". They articulate their new environmental ethic as expanding LNT, not rejecting it all together, expanding its "spatial scale beyond the boundaries of parks and wilderness areas...broaden[ing] LNT’s ethical purview to include the global economic systems that make contemporary American wilderness recreation possible", redefining recreationists rather than "passive ethical subjects and consumers, to active participants in collaborative programs" and in sum, "a more democratic, more participatory, and more radical vision of outdoor recreation as a form of political action". Near the end of the article, the authors articulate the seven principles of what they call 'Beyond Leave No Trace':

1. Educate yourself and others about the places you visit
2. Purchase only the equipment and clothing you need
3. Take care of the equipment and clothing you have
4. Make conscientious food, equipment, and clothing consumption choices
5. Minimize waste production
6. Reduce energy consumption
7. Get involved by conserving and restoring the places you visit

Three years later, Simon and Alagona responded to critiques of their 2009 article calling for a 'Beyond Leave No Trace' approach. They argued that they were not the first to explore LNT's history, that they "joined a growing chorus of researchers", and importantly that they "remain steadfast in our endorsement of LNT’s value and potential" but that they believe that "this simple ethic is not enough in a world of global capital circulation where the goods we produce and consume in order to enjoy the outdoors can have long-term and far-reaching social and environmental ramifications". While dismissing the concerns of critics, they write that, firstly, Leave No Trace "could not exist in its current form without a plethora of consumer products;" secondly, that "the use of such products does not erase environmental impacts;" and thirdly that LNT "systematically obscures these impacts, displacements, and connections by encouraging the false belief that it is possible to 'leave no trace'".

Other critics of Leave No Trace have argued that it is impractical, displaces environmental impacts to other locations, "obscures connections between the uses of outdoor products and their production and disposal impacts" and have questioned how much the ethic affects everyday environmental behavior.

Scientific foundation

Two primary scientific disciplines form the foundation of the Leave No Trace program: recreation ecology and human dimensions of natural resources. Recreation ecology research, "a field of study that examines, assesses and monitors visitor impacts, typically to protected natural areas, and their relationships to influential factors" has provided the foundation for Leave No Trace messaging because of its focus on recreational impacts. Recreation ecology has dominated most minimum-impact research, and reviews suggest that there have been over one thousand recreation ecology articles published within recent decades. Examples include both ecological and social impacts of visitors. Yet, the behavior of outdoor enthusiasts is perhaps the largest determinant of impact, and human dimensions research, which focuses on the sociological, psychological, cultural, and economic aspects of recreationists is limited but growing with regard to Leave No Trace-related studies.

The majority of human dimensions research related to Leave No Trace has evaluated educational effectiveness through various communication strategies in an effort to increase knowledge and influence behavioral change. For example, studies have evaluated communication strategies to mitigate human and wildlife conflict, reduce litter, minimize removal of natural objects or deter off-trail hiking. Few studies have addressed Leave No Trace specifically, instead focusing on minimum-impact behaviors broadly, and even fewer studies have evaluated the most common user-group, frontcountry visitors. More recently, however, social scientists have explored concepts such as knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviors of outdoor enthusiasts in the context of Leave No Trace practices, and have begun examining the perceptions of frontcountry visitors.

Organization

Leave No Trace Center For Outdoor Ethics

Formation	1994
Type	501(c)(3) Nonprofit
Headquarters	Boulder, CO, USA
Executive Director	Dana Watts
Staff	18
Volunteers	25,000+
Website	http://www.LNT.org

Since 1994, a Leave No Trace program has been managed by the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics. The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, is dedicated to the responsible enjoyment and active stewardship of the outdoors worldwide. The Center's mission is to teach people how to enjoy the outdoors responsibly. This mission is accomplished through education, research, volunteerism and partnerships. Leave No Trace tries to build awareness, appreciation and respect for wildlands. Since its founding in 1994, the Center has provided training in every state in the U.S. and over 25 countries. There are more than 25,000 active volunteers and members who help provide training and outreach that impacts more than 22 million people annually in the U.S. alone.

Training

A Leave No Trace Master Educator Course is typically five days in length and designed for people who are actively teaching others outdoor skills or providing recreation information to the public. The Master Educator Course provides participants with a comprehensive overview of Leave No Trace skills and ethics through practical application in a field-based setting. The first day is spent in a classroom introducing the course and schedule, providing in-depth information on the overall Leave No Trace program and the Center for Outdoor Ethics, reviewing gear, and packing. The remaining days are spent in the field on a short backcountry trip learning and practicing the principles of Leave No Trace. Each course is staffed with a minimum of two experienced outdoor professionals who are Master Educator Instructors.

The Leave No Trace Trainer Courses are two-day trainings facilitated in an outdoor setting by Master Educators. Participants learn the concepts of Leave No Trace and prepare to teach Leave No Trace curriculum in a variety of settings. Workshop topics include the underlying ethics and seven principles of Leave No Trace.

Leave No Trace Awareness Workshops are any type of formal Leave No Trace training that are one day or less in length.

Programs

State Advocate Program

The Leave No Trace State Advocate Program assists interested Leave No Trace educators and volunteers with their local effort to promote and teach minimum impact outdoor ethics. These active State Advocate volunteers are a key part of the Leave No Trace program because they coordinate outreach, education and training in their respective states. The State Advocates support volunteers with Leave No Trace training, increase on-the-ground awareness and attend events to further the Leave No Trace program and mission. The State Advocates have been instrumental in building communities of volunteers and educators, state-by-state.

Subaru/Leave No Trace Traveling Trainer Program

The Subaru/Leave No Trace Traveling Trainers provide hands-on educational workshops and training. Each presentation is unique, from an hour-long workshop to a two-day Leave No Trace Trainer Course. One team travels the West coast, one team travels the East, and the Senior Team travels the entire lower 48 states. The teams visit outdoor retail stores, National and State Parks, schools, and festivals like National Public Lands Day. These trainers also provide Leave No Trace courses specific to rock-climbing, mountain biking, sea kayaking, and others.

Promoting Environmental Awareness In Kids

The Promoting Environmental Awareness in Kids (PEAK) Program began as a partnership program between the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics and REI in 2003. The program’s curriculum centers on providing youth, age 6-12, with information about Leave No Trace through hands-on activities, referred to as "modules". The program is presented in a "PEAK Pack", which includes a large packet of ready-to-go activities, supporting materials and an instructional DVD. Activities can be delivered in any sequence and are designed to be 30–60 minutes lessons each. Initially, the PEAK program included four modules. Over the past five years, the program has grown to include six standard modules, a Start Card with teaching tips, an instructional DVD, additional modules (two new modules are added per year to both PEAK and Teen), a Teen Pack and both Spanish PEAK and Teen packs. The "Packing with PEAK Fund" was created to help make the Packing with PEAK program available to youth-serving organizations across the country.

Partners

The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics has partnerships with the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, US Army Corps of Engineers, and nearly 400 other partners such as colleges, universities, outfitter/guide services, small businesses, non-profits and youth serving organizations such as the Boy Scouts of America and the American Camp Association. An example of how this partnership works is that wilderness areas managed by the U.S. Forest Service actively promote adherence to Leave No Trace principles, as do most of the nearly 400 units managed by the National Park Service. The Center has also developed partnerships with other parks, municipalities, and agencies that wish to incorporate the Leave No Trace program in information provided to the public.

The Center for Outdoor Ethics currently has four international branches in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, and dozens of international partners around the world.

See also

• Clean climbing
• Leave the gate as you found it
• The Country Code
• Trail ethics
• Tread Lightly!

External links

• Official Website of the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics