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SHERIDAN — Two years after a dispersed camping task force provided recommendations addressing problems surrounding dispersed camping, the Bighorn National Forest is soliciting public comment on those suggestions.
For the forest, meetings like the one held in Sheridan Aug. 23 are an important way to continue addressing an issue that has been a topic of discussion for more than a decade, Tongue District Ranger Amy Ormseth said.
“Dispersed camping, and the issues surrounding dispersed camping, is a dialogue that has been happening in this forest for almost a decade or more,” Ormseth said. “I’ve been here eight years, and it was a topic we were talking about even when I arrived…All of us were kind of sitting around scratching our heads saying ‘Well, we know this is an issue, but what do we do about it?’ So we’ve spent years trying to find solutions.”
Dispersed camping — or camping outside of a designated campground — is a favorite pastime of many in the forest, Ormseth said, but it has also led to recurring issues such as the lack of availability of campsites in popular areas and overcrowding.
The expansion of dispersed camping has also dramatically impacted the way local wildlife interacts with visitors to the forest, said Tracy Pinter, a wildlife biologist in the Bighorn National Forest.
“If you go up to the meadows, you’ll see them just covered with campers,” Pinter said. “Some wildlife is more tolerant of that than others, but we’ve certainly seen an increase in encounters between wildlife and humans and an increase in bears breaking into coolers and things like that, because there is more opportunity for them to do that than ever before.”
Currently, the forest requires campers to move at least five miles after 14 days in one location. However, many campers, trailers and recreational vehicles are left on the mountain unoccupied for much longer, Ormseth said.
The forest has long been aware of the problems associated with dispersed camping and has worked to address those issues for years, Ormseth said.
In 2016, the Bighorn Mountain Coalition, in coordination with Bighorn National Forest staff, initiated a public discussion of dispersed camping in the forest. The coalition asked each of the four counties comprising the forest — Sheridan, Johnson, Big Horn and Washakie — to seek interested citizens to participate in a collaborative task force. The goal of the Dispersed Camping Task Force was to hear dispersed camping concerns and work on building possible solutions.
After a year of monthly public meetings, the task force submitted a list of recommendations to Bighorn National Forest managers in 2020. Those recommendations sat on the shelf for a couple years due to staffing shortages and the COVID-19 pandemic, but the forest is now soliciting public feedback on what they feel to be the most easily implementable solutions, Ormseth said.
“We are now recognizing that it’s been a couple years since those meetings,” Ormseth said. “…So let’s have a focused and intentional public comment period over a month or month-and-a-half, and then by the end of the year, we can roll out an official proposal.”
Ormseth separated the task force’s recommendations into three broad categories: changes to the special order related to dispersed camping; implementing a sticker program; and smaller, localized solutions such as allowing overnight camping at the Jaws Trailhead near Lovell.
The current special order, which ends Dec. 31, enforces a 14-day stay limit at any dispersed camping location, but only between June 1 and Sept. 30, Ormseth said. Campers can stay in one place for as long as they want outside of those four months.
Currently, Bighorn National Forest is the only forest in the nation to impose a seasonal 14-day stay limit, Ormseth said. All other forests enforce the limit year-round, and the task force suggests doing the same.
“Everywhere else in the state of Wyoming — BLM, state lands, other national forests — they all have 14-day or 16-day stay limits year-round,” Ormseth said. “So some of this is a consistency thing: If you’re going to recreate in the Black Hills or Ashland, Montana or anywhere in Wyoming, you will be expected to follow the exact same rules you follow here.”
Another proposed change to the special order would clarify how far a camper would need to travel when moving after a 14-day stay. The current rule is they must travel five “air miles” or the distance measured by traveling in the air. That guidance frequently proves confusing for many using the forest, Ormseth said.
“Whatever we decide, I want to make sure it is simple and understandable to the public,” Ormseth said.
The implementation of a yearly sticker all dispersed campers would have to purchase would also help the forest enforce its dispersed camping rules by making it much easier to contact users who are violating the forest’s 14-day rule, Ormseth said.
While she has heard from public commenters concerned with what they see as an additional tax on recreation in the Bighorns, Ormseth said there was a practical advantage to the proposed change.
“Mainly, it provides a quick and easy database we can query,” Ormseth said. “Right now, if you have a license plate, I can’t run it. My officers can’t run it. I have two people in the entire forest who can run it, and those are the full-fledged law enforcement officers who have to call the sheriff’s office…It has taken them as long as two weeks to run a plate in the past…It just becomes a tracking issue…so implementing a sticker program would hopefully make it a lot easier for us to find out who’s following the rules and who isn’t.”
Ormseth said she didn’t expect the cost of the stickers to exceed $35, and that money would help fund forest protection officers who could focus exclusively on enforcing dispersed camping regulations.
“We are a huge beneficiary of the state ATV sticker program and that program funds all of our FPOs (forest protection officers) for the forest… but that’s only for ATVs — they’re not supposed to be checking campers,” Ormseth said. “…If we had this funding source, we could have one person per ranger district at least that could just focus on camping.”
The Jaws Trailhead changes are the primary localized solution the forest is considering right now, although other suggestions are welcome and encouraged throughout the public comment process, Ormseth said. Local solutions could also include identifying and designating new dispersed camping areas, Pinter said.
Ormseth said there are different timelines for implementing the various task force suggestions, with the forest hoping to approve a new special order before the current one ends in December. The sticker program would be a larger project that might not come into fruition until 2023 or beyond. Smaller solutions like the Jaws Trailhead could be implemented as soon as next summer, she said.
The forest service continues to welcome comments from Sheridan County residents on the proposed dispersed camping changes, Ormseth said. Residents can fill out a dispersed camping comments form on the forest’s website or email comments to FS.bighorninfo@usda.gov. An in-person public comment meeting will be held Aug. 25 in Buffalo at the Johnson County Fire Hall, starting at 4 p.m.
Stephen Dow is a reporter at The Sheridan Press.
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