Ethics, Place and Environment Vol. 12, No. 1, March 2009, 17–34 Beyond Leave No Trace GREGORY L. SIMON 1 & PETER S. ALAGONA 2 1 Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA 2 Department of History and Environmental Studies Program, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA ABSTRACT Leave No Trace (LNT) has become the official education and outreach policy for managing recreational use in parks and wilderness areas throughout the United States. It is based on seven core principles that seek to minimize impacts from backcountry recreational activities such as hiking, climbing, and camping. In this paper, we review the history and current practice of Leave No Trace in the United States, including its complex role in the global political economy of outdoor recreation. We conclude by suggesting a new framework for building on the successes of Leave No Trace, while moving beyond its self-imposed limitations, and recapturing wilderness recreation as a more collaborative, participatory, productive, democratic, and radical form of political action. Introduction To the average wilderness recreationist, Palisade Basin seems a world apart. Nestled between 14,000-foot peaks in the John Muir Wilderness of California’s High Sierra, its crystalline lakes, colorful meadows, and cascading streams appear to have changed little over the past 150 years, even as human activities transformed the surrounding region. One expects to see the grizzled figure of Muir himself ambling over the granite outcrops while extolling the virtues of beauty, solitude, and wild nature. Many travelers can still remember his sage advice: ‘go to the mountains and get their good tidings’. The appearance of Palisade Basin, however, is a complicated matter that has as much to do with human history and geography as it does with wild nature. During the 1970s, millions of Americans took Muir’s recommendation and ventured into the backcountry. The High Sierra had undergone decades of grazing, logging, mining, fire suppression, predator elimination, hydrologic engineering, and air pollution. Yet, to most new visitors, the region still appeared untouched by human action, and the ecological conditions they experienced there became their benchmarks for pristine wild nature. But as formerly remote areas, such as Palisade Basin, attracted throngs of wilderness recreationists, the landscape began to show new signs of change: erosion, pollution, overcrowding, and conflicts between humans and wildlife. In 1990, wilderness advocates throughout the United States came Correspondence Address: Gregory L. Simon, Bill Lane Center for the West, Environment and Energy Building—4225, 473 Via Ortega Office 343, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. Email: gsimon@stanford.edu 1366-879X Print/1469-6703 Online/09/010017–18 ß 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13668790902753021 Downloaded By: [Simon, Gregory] At: 18:49 8 April 2009