America’s national forests are plagued by popularity. So many people want to visit them that the Forest Service can’t say “yes” to everyone, all the time.
The result is a fight over “recreation allocation” — an academic term for the real-life challenge of meeting public demand without degrading the 193-million-acre system of forests and grasslands. A new Forest Service research paper wades into the conflict, only to reach a less-than-solid answer: There’s no single solution that works.
“Certain rationing strategies benefit certain groups,” said Chris Armatas, a research social scientist with the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station, in an agency summary of the work. “There’s not a one size fits all.”
Researchers at the Forest Service and the University of Montana reviewed dozens of studies on the issue to come to their conclusion that local forest managers should decide for themselves what fits best — lottery systems, first-come-first-served setups or a mix of strategies.
