Anemone Cave visitation in Acadia National Park, Maine, USA
Elliott J, Stanley RD, Gibson A. 2025. Anemone Cave visitation in Acadia National Park, Maine, USA. Friends of Acadia
From the abstract: "Anemone Cave is a location of interest to Acadia National Park (ANP), as it was removed from park maps in 1971 to protect anemone populations but remains a visited location within park boundaries. This study was designed to assess current visitation down the paved trail and to the cave, and investigate methods of planning visitors use to see if a specific source is pointing visitors to the cave. Trail cameras found averages of 251 (SD = 11.6) and 255 (SD = 12) people using the trail daily in July and August, and during the high tides of the busiest days, an average of 53.8% of hikers going down the rocks to the north entrance of the cave. Surveying revealed commonly used trip planning methods include the National Park Service (NPS) website, word of mouth, and social media, with special consideration of AllTrails and artificial intelligence (AI) use. Moving forward, repeated visitor studies are recommended, with an added biological census to monitor the anemone populations."
- Type
- Unpublished Report
- Authors
- Elliott, Jessica; Stanley, Rebecca; Gibson, Adam
- Date of Issue
- 2025-10
- Publisher
- Friends of Acadia
- Units
- ACAD
- Keywords
- Caves, Crowding, Hiking, Human impact, Planning, Recreation, Research methods, Social behavior, Survey (opinions), Trails, Visitor experience, Visitor use, Visitors