As campers continue to flood into national forests — often towing large trailers, side-by-sides or outdoor gear — districts across Wyoming are taking steps to increase capacity, regulate use, protect resources and generate revenue for upkeep. 

Visitation and participation data indicates outdoor recreation’s popularity is here to stay, prompting overburdened staff to rethink camping management with both human behavior and the health of the landscape in mind.

Here’s a look at one of the initiatives taking place across Wyoming’s vast acreage of national forest.

New rules in the Bighorns

On the 1.1-million-acre Bighorn National Forest, Supervisor Andrew Johnson recently signed an updated order with new rules aimed to address long-standing dispersed camping problems in the popular northern Wyoming forest.

“We were hearing loud and clear from members of the public, forest users, county commissioners, members of our communities that addressing the dispersed camping challenges was important to folks,” Johnson said at a June steering committee meeting. The long-simmering problems mostly revolve around users “saving” spots by parking empty vehicles there or overstaying their limit.

The district has extended the forest’s 14-day stay limit to year-round. In addition, when visitors hit the stay limit, forest regulations will require them to move any personal property 5 road miles before establishing a new campsite. Wildlife attractant storage is also required, prompted by increasing bear conflicts, Johnson said.

The problems stretch back decades, Johnson said, and stem from issues like diminishing availability of sites in light of growing crowds, an inadequate ability to enforce camping limits and resource damage caused by overuse and rogue trails.

One of the biggest “complaints our front desks and our employees get,” Johnson said, “is all of the unattended property.”

Compounding the issue, Johnson said, has been under-staffing, which hampered the agency’s ability to enforce the stay limit. The district recently secured funding to hire a number of patrol positions, which he said should help to educate users and enforce the rules. Staff will also make a concerted effort to remove abandoned property from the forest, he said.

The new rules are the result of a process initiated around 2016 that led to the creation of a dispersed camping task force, which issued recommendations to the forest in 2020. Those recommendations also included: creating a sticker program to authorize dispersed camping, identifying designated dispersed camping sites and expanding a trailhead to allow overnight camping. Those could still be considered down the line, Johnson said, noting the forest will reevaluate the rules at the end of the year.

A new court-ordered fee schedule calls for higher penalties for violations of the rules, Johnson added. Violators will now be charged $100 after the 14th day, with a $30 processing fee plus an additional $20 per day over the limit. “And that adds up,” he said. “So there’s a much better deterrent I think for folks overstaying the 14-day limit.”