A brief history of visitor exclosure installation as of 2015

Jacobi, Charles; Seymour, Abigail; Anderson, Karen

From introduction: "Since the year 2000 exclosures have been installed to direct visitor use to protect soil and plants throughout the park. Starting with three wooden barricaded areas on Cadillac Mountain, their number has increased to include many other mountains and trails. Ten thousand feet of ropes are now installed and maintained at ten locations. This report pulls together what we know about when and where these exclosures were installed. We compiled information from several sources to fully document their history. For several sites, we were not able to identify the year of installation precisely so the year indicates our best guess. All exclosures in this report are numbered by site with the numbers corresponding to the associated maps. The report is organized by location and year of installation. The locations of exclosures are: Cadillac Summit; Blue Hill overlook; Dorr Mountain summit; South Bubble summit; Ocean Path, North of Monument Cove; Ocean Path, South of Monument Cove; Ocean Path, North of Thunder Hole; Ocean Path, South of Thunder Hole; Ocean Path, Otter Cliffs; Otter Cliffs Climbing Area; Raven’s Nest (Schoodic); and Wonderland Trail. We selected exclosure areas because of severe soil and vegetation loss, as on Cadillac Mountain, or because of numerous social trails, as along the Ocean Path. We wanted to give these areas a chance to recover. On mountaintops like Cadillac, the recovery of vegetation has been very slow. Mountaintop areas that were still reasonably intact with soil and vegetation were left open to visitor use. The sense was that visitors have not used and impacted these areas substantially thus far and the likelihood was they would continue to avoid them. We understood that concentrating visitor use on a smaller footprint might have unintended consequences, but much of the area available for visitor use is exposed granite and thus quite durable. Some of the areas protected are fully surrounded by the exclosure ropes. Others (Wonderland e.g.) are not closed polygons but lines of ropes where the terrain or vegetation acts as part of the barrier. Each exclosure is accompanied by a combination of Leave No Trace and Restoration Area (red slash) signs within or adjacent to them. Leave No Trace messaging asks visitors to 'Stay on Established Trails or Step on Rock.'”

A brief history of visitor exclosure installation as of 2015

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