Responsible recreation includes Leave No Trace

During a trip to Medicine Lodge State Archeological Site, you may come across some pretty yellow wildflowers. You know that your mom’s favorite flowers are sunflowers, so you pick her a bunch to give to her.

Next, you might notice some bald eagles perched in a tree in the distance. You walk off-trail through a patch of Wyoming Indian Paintbrush to get a good photo. As you continue along, you happen to find a perfect elk antler shed to add to your collection, so you strap it to your backpack.

Lastly, you’ve always heard that milkweed is “just a weed”, so you pull out a small patch near the trailhead to help park staff in beautifying the area. You return to your car satisfied with your trip and head home.

You proudly hand your mom the half-wilted bunch of sunflowers when you get home, but there is a nagging feeling in the pit of your stomach. Have you ever experienced this before?

We all know someone (if it wasn’t us ourselves) who has done these things. What is just ONE wildflower or ONE antler shed? Well, it is actually a lot to the ecosystem that it is a part of!

Those yellow sunflowers may be what native bees need to rest and collect nectar; that patch of paintbrush might be used to carry out Native American cultural traditions; the elk antler shed may be the only one around that provides small animals with minerals like calcium (that don’t exist elsewhere in the ecosystem); and the milkweed may be the only patch in the area that monarch butterflies rely on to lay their eggs.

Although collecting one item from nature may seem harmless, the impacts of taking just one item may be drastic–especially if each one of our millions of annual visitors to Wyoming State Parks and Historic Sites do the same thing. This is an example of “Leave No Trace” (LNT) Principle Four: Leave What You Find.

Recently, over 170 eighth graders from Big Horn County joined agencies and organizations from across the state (including me, Big Horn District Interpretive Ranger Katie Singleton). This event took place on March 4 so they could learn about LNT and its seven important principles. This event was valuable to the students, as they typically begin recreating outdoors on their own around this age, and we hope that they (and you) will remember these principles of responsible recreation to help preserve our amazing natural places for generations to come.

(Katie Singleton is an interpretive ranger for Wyoming State Parks.)