Evaluation of Group Size Limits in the Olympic National Park Backcountry

Schreiner, Ed; Underwood, Steve; Whittaker, Ed

Party size limits for backcountry use in National Parks and Wilderness areas have been set at various levels by land management agencies. Groups size limitations should be based on research indicating that resource damage or impairment of the quality of visitor experience occurs due to large numbers of people in a single party. Such terms as "quality of visitor experience" and "resource damage" must be consistent with backcountry management objectives and defined as clearly as possible. Olympic National Park does have a set of general backcountry management objectives, but no specific definition of the "quality of visitor experience" or acceptable limits of "resource change." It is impossible to set group size limits based on either of the above factors if they have not been defined. The committee has been forced to assume, then, that the party size limit for Olympic was set at the current level of twelve on the basis of convention or at best on an educated guess. Responses from both Mount Rainier and North Cascades National Parks suggest that they also have no research to support their limits of 12 (correspondence attached). There has been almost no research on the biological or sociological effects of different group sizes on resources or backcountry users, respectively. We have reviewed available literature and report that here along with relevant impact research in Olympic and some recommendations. We have generated more questions than we were able to answer. The question of party size must be addressed, however, since groups between six and twelve represent approximately 17% (1164) of the parties and 27% (10,476) of the people that use the Olympic backcountry.