YOSE Wilderness Restoration Area Surveyed 2022

Carney, Anna

This feature layer depicts all areas where crew members systematically looked for campsites, invasive plants, and informal trails within Yosemite National Park's Wilderness areas. Crews survey for and document these items, then perform ecological restoration treatments as necessary to maintain and protect cultural and natural resources, natural processes, and wilderness character. Crews often concentrate surveys and treatments around areas of high human use, like trails, camping destinations such as lakes, rivers, valleys, viewpoints, and areas more accessible from development, but also survey the park by a large in search of disturbance. Fire, a natural process, for example, can be an accelerant for the spread of invasive plants as it provides open space for rapid growing plants to move into. Since its beginning in 1984, the WRP has restored thousands of campsites, hundreds of miles of rutted trails, and dozens of acres of land affected by invasive plants.