Does “Leave No Trace” Miss the Forest for the Trees?

I first learned about Leave No Trace (LNT) principles when I tossed an apple core off a cliff. It seemed harmless; the apple was biodegradable, after all. But my hiking partner swiftly admonished me. I ought to pack out my garbage, she said. They laid out the principles of the doctrine: Plan ahead and prepare, travel and camp on durable surfaces, dispose of waste properly, leave what you find, minimize campfire impacts, respect wildlife, and be considerate of others.

Although I continue advocating for these precepts to this day, I see them as increasingly insufficient amid the ever-accelerating socio-ecological crises we face. Current LNT principles were formulated for twentieth century challenges.

In a world where microplastics are found on the remotest shores, waterways are seeped with the effuse of industrial mining and agriculture, and global climate change is transforming everything we know, LNT should strive to be “a more collaborative, participatory, productive, democratic, and radical form of political action.” This renewed LNT will incorporate thoughtful stewardship, mentoring, and advocacy to realize our responsibilities to the places we love.

Tracing “Leave No Trace”

The ubiquity of LNT today may make it seem that it was always the dominant ethic for outdoor recreation.  However, at the turn of the twentieth century, outdoor recreation centered on woodcraft. Woodcraft involved using the land to support oneself (e.g., building shelters from trees, hunting and gathering wild foods, cooking on a campfire, etc.).  In newspapers and magazines of the time, animal hide-clad woodsmen associated woodcraft with rugged individualism and traditional masculinity. They trumpeted woodcraft as a bulwark against commercialization and what they saw as a weakening frontier spirit.

After World War II, outdoor recreation transitioned from a fringe subculture to a mainstream hobby. At this time, damage from woodcraft practices accumulated throughout fragile wilderness areas. Environmental groups pushed for legal protections, culminating in the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act. Although the Act set aside land “where man…is a visitor who does not remain,” it did not restrict the number of visitors. The number of visitors to wilderness areas increased 400 percent (from just under 3,000 to almost 15,000 annually) between 1965 and 1989. Consequently, many wilderness areas were at risk of being “loved to death.”

Business-as-usual was untenable, but wilderness areas could reasonably support more recreationists if each had a smaller impact. This would require principles to guide conduct in outdoor settings.

In the early 1990s, outdoor recreation industry leaders like REI and North Face joined with public agencies to form the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics (LNTCOE). LNTCOE laid out the seven LNT principles and elevated them as the dominant ethic. But even as environmental issues have continued evolving, LNT’s mandates remain unchanged.

What Trace? Where?

Woodcraft depended on knowledge of the land and showcased humans’ reliance on it.  By contrast, ethical outdoor recreation today requires equipment to minimize one’s footprint. In contrast to woodcraft’s distinctly anti-consumerist stance, LNT supports a burgeoning outdoor recreation industry.

Outdoor gear depends on non-renewable resources, from petroleum-based synthetic fibers to the indestructible PFAS, “forever chemicals,” in waterproof materials. Further, global transport of this equipment depends on fossil fuels. And as manufacturers race to produce ever cheaper and lighter equipment, the waste the industry produces has ballooned. REI acknowledges, “the environmental impact associated with the creation of products is probably larger than all other impacts we have as a company.”

Even the most zealous application of LNT can’t negate the externalities of outdoor recreation. These socio-ecological costs are merely displaced from the parks we love to out-of-sight-and-mind sacrifice zones. Without confronting consequences outside of outdoor recreation spaces, LNT risks becoming a form of NIMBYism, accepting degradation in some places (particularly those that are already socioeconomically marginalized) so long as we can protect our playgrounds.

The outdoor recreation industry transforms consumption from a driver of socioeconomic and ecological disruption into an acceptable indulgence, so long as it is the right kind of consumption. Outdoor recreation becomes an extension of the marketplace rather than a refuge from commercialism. For all its profound philosophical failings and environmental damage, at least woodcraft critiqued broader socioeconomic systems, offering a concrete mechanism for affecting change.

Peeling Off the Label

Giants of the outdoor industry hide their impact behind a veneer of respectable profitability. In their long chains of exploitation, they obscure each link to absolve themselves of responsibility. In shifting the blame to individuals, this outdated mythology distracts us from larger crises, obfuscates the constraints on our agency, and convinces us that our choices are not compelled.

LNT is firmly entangled with the outdoor recreation industry; each endorses the other. The Sporting Goods Manufacturing Association was one of LNTCOE’s founding members. Today, LNTCOE still partners with outdoor industry goliaths, including L.L. Bean and Subaru of America. They also accept funding from corporate sponsors with questionable environmental records, like Coca Cola, the biggest plastic polluter in the world.

LNTCOE further supports industry by using LNT outreach as a means to increase product sales. LNTCOE certifies several products with their logo, indicating the item will “improve your experience in the backcountry [and] help you tread lighter in the wilderness.” The Outdoor Industry Association’s Path to Purchase Report notes this branding is profitable. Imbuing equipment with “a mission of social responsibility. . . particularly with an emphasis on sustainability” has the potential to increase sales. Notably, these sales often offset the environmental benefits of those items. Thus, LNT certification can be co-opted for greenwashing, masking the externalities of the products.

Although LNT certifications suggest consumers can “vote with their dollars,” market constraints and inequality limit such influence. Furthermore, unlike buying Fair Trade chocolate or Forest Stewardship Council lumber, purchasing LNT-certified products does not even really cast a “dollar vote” because the certification does not reflect the producers’ manufacturing processes, labor conditions, packaging, or product disposal.  The LNT logo only indicates that consumers can use the product for “environmentally traceless” recreation. So, purchasing an LNT-certified product offers manufacturers no incentive to become more socially just or ecologically sustainable.

The lie that consumer power can achieve social change is appealing but disempowering. It atomizes us into individual consumers and undermines collective action. LNT fails to critically engage or disrupt the environmental degradation of outdoor manufacturers, retailers, and media, giving quarter to a growth-driven economic system at the root of environmental crises they claim to address.

Missing the Forest for the Trees

Since the formation of the LNTCOE, ecological crises, such as rising temperatures and biodiversity loss, have accelerated. But LNT remains focused on recreationists’ conduct in select environments. It critiques hikers for leaving “happiness rocks,” but not the fossil fuels used to get to the trailhead. While plastic production surges, LNT keeps attention on individual “litterbugs,” echoing industry campaigns that deflect systemic accountability.

LNTCOE’s myopic focus on the failings of individual recreationists relies on the striking visuals of litter around alpine lakes and poop at the base of our favorite climbs, but some people making these unfortunate choices sometimes shouldn’t prevent us from thinking bigger. Certainly, it is important for outdoor recreationists to limit their impacts in the backcountry (undeveloped parts of protected areas). However, LNT misses the forest for the trees.

LNT ignores the larger-scale degradation that is far more threatening to the spaces we struggle to protect (especially as environmental regulations are peeled back). Indeed, although LNTCOE’s efforts have largely succeeded at protecting wilderness areas from the immediate impacts of recreation, the direct impact of the growing number of recreational visitors to outdoor areas is now overshadowed by extractive industry pressures, climate change, and fire suppression. Sierra Club director Richard Sill echoed, “The impact of thousands of […] hikers cannot begin to approach that of one work crew with chain saws, a bulldozer or two, and some appended logging trucks.”

LNTCOE has suggested that its achievements stem from the limited scope of their mission, and that outdoor recreationists should not be expected to weigh complex trade-offs. Their intent, they say, is to be apolitical rather than address or transform global issues. However, questions of land access and management, collaborations with corporate and political actors, and engagements with commercial enterprises are always fundamentally political.

Addressing large-scale environmental destruction need not conflict with guiding individual behavior. The efficacy of their simplistic, blanket recommendations seems to have plateaued. Researchers have concluded mixed findings on whether low-stakes activism like LNT stymies or inspires further action. One study found that although LNT programming affected how individuals perceived their behavior, it actually decreased their environmentally sustainable behaviors in many cases.

Outdoor Ethics for the Twenty-First Century

LNT deserves recognition for its successes in the latter half of the twentieth century. However, if LNTCOE continues to focus on the visible errors of individual visitors to outdoor areas, its impact moving forward will remain limited.  If we are to take our environmental impact seriously, outdoor recreationists cannot dissociate from our role and impacts as consumers. LNTCOE also cannot continue to disengage from the industrial, political, and economic systems it overlooks, obfuscates, and certifies. 

We must adapt LNT’s ethical focus and expand its principles to address broader and deeper drivers of environmental harm. For example, we can travel less, cultivating a closer relationship with our local environments. In addition to packing out trash, we can reduce waste at the source, eliminating packaging and disposable products, making our own food, and composting.

Let’s care for what we have, repair what breaks, purchase only what we need, and seek out second-hand goods. Perhaps the most ethical purchase is not making one. If we have purchasing power, it is in not using it. In this system where expensive outdoor gear becomes a niche luxury that retailers and consumers use to signal their righteousness, used and repaired goods help maintain affordability and accessibility, as well as limit the impact of production. If buying new gear is unavoidable, let’s choose companies that attend to the life-cycle of their products (from production to use to disposal) and use materials that are both environmentally friendly and promote human well-being.

Even these principles, though, remain focused on individual behavior. Individual behavioral changes alone remain insufficient when a small number of companies dominate greenhouse gas emissions and plastic production.  Our outdoor ethics ought to transform systems, rather than just relocate their impacts.

Despite its limitations, it’s possible that LNT can still catalyze the collective action we need. The outdoor industry could pressure lawmakers to support environmental legislation and advocate for and facilitate public transportation to, from, and within recreation areas to replace personal automobiles. LNTCOE’s non-industry members must also take a more holistic perspective, pressuring outdoor industry partners to reduce socio-ecological externalities of manufacturing and retail.  This could include regulating advertising claims and making LNT certification contingent on sustainable industry practices. However, these reforms would require expanding LNT’s mission, values, and community to include marginalized groups and marginal lands, rather than the purity of wilderness areas.

Finally, rather than focus on avoiding harm, new principles should emphasize what we can do to be better. As socio-environmental crises grow, so too must LNT’s vision.

The Traces We Leave

A twenty-first century LNT ethic requires learning how to care for the land and one another, and asking what we can give back to our human and non-human communities. Fortunately, we can learn from the examples of cultures that maintain reciprocal relationships with their broader communities of life, including from Indigenous peoples displaced to create public lands.

Outdoor recreation has the opportunity to be prefigurative, cultivating reciprocal relationships with nature, reminding us that we are enmeshed in a web of mutuality. The outdoor recreation community can tend for the places we love, sustaining them as they do us. Rather than fruitlessly attempting to leave no trace, perhaps we ought to think about what kind of traces we want to leave.

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Featured image: A “Leave No Trace” sign in a Florida state park says “Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints.” Photo by Florida Guidebooks, 2021.

Tomasz Falkowski is an applied ecologist studying restoration through a socioecological lens to better understand how we can restore reciprocal relationships between ecological and human communities, for the benefit of both.  As an assistant professor in the Honors College at the University of New Mexico, he teaches courses about ecological restoration, agroecology, and land management.  Whenever he’s not collecting soil cores or facilitating classroom discussions, he tries to find as much time as possible to delight in the landscapes of northern New Mexico with his partner and their dog. Contact.