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SPEAKER 1: My general sense is that visitor use is up. The trend over the last several years has been an increasing number of groups to the Boundary Waters. In 1990, for example, there were about 26,500 overnight camping groups that visited the Boundary Waters and it's been increasing by about 1,000 a year for the last five or six years.

SPEAKER 2: Is it a danger to the Wilderness to have that many people visiting every summer?

SPEAKER 1: Well, we think so, I guess. And it's how. How you define the wilderness, in part. There are both the, the physical impacts that large numbers of people have on, particularly, the campsites, but also on the portage trails to some degree. Where if the campsite is occupied almost every night for the whole summer season, obviously those kinds of physical impacts and the loss of ground cover, the expansion of the campsite area into the forest, the loss of trees right in the campsite, soil compaction.

All those sorts of things begin to take their toll on a campsite. And then there are, there are a different kind of impact that the greater number of visitors have also on the wilderness and these are more of the intangible qualities, the loss of solitude, the loss of remoteness, those kinds of things which are hard to quantify but still make up what that area is supposed to be all about.

SPEAKER 2: I was there recently myself, and one thing that did strike me is that given that I understand this is the most heavily used wilderness area in the country, I was interested in how little garbage, for instance, there was around. It seems as though perhaps the people who go there may at least be trying to be careful.

SPEAKER 1: Yes. I know the Forest Service has increased its visitor education efforts in the last several years. And I think that we're seeing some of the results of that now. I think the campsites and the area in general are much more, or less trashed and less garbage found at the campsites. We are also cooperating with the Forest Service and some of the Outfitters on an exciting project right now to develop a professionally produced videotape that can be used to show to people before they go on their canoe trips that help impart a better wilderness ethic and help teach people about minimum impact camping techniques and ways that they can minimize their impacts on the wilderness.

SPEAKER 2: Are there other thoughts you have about what ought to be done to try to keep that area wilderness?

SPEAKER 1: Well, we also believe that the number of people allowed into the Boundary Waters, at current levels, are too much. And we have been advocating a decrease in the number of entry point quotas, certainly at least at certain times of the summer and in certain bottleneck areas, if not, even in the interior portions. There is too much crowding to really give people a good wilderness experience. And so we have been advocating that the Forest Service reduce the quotas, at least to some degree, to better enhance the wilderness experience that people are seeking when they go there.

SPEAKER 2: How bad do you think it is? How concerned are you?

SPEAKER 1: Well, we're very concerned. This is one of the big issues that we've been working on. Just to give you a good comparison, Quetico Provincial Park, which adjoins the Boundary Waters Canoe area on the Canadian side of the border, is roughly the same size as the Boundary Waters. Both of them are a little over about 1.1 million acres.

Quetico Provincial Park, however, only allows in about 1/5 the number of groups that go into the Boundary Waters. And so the type of experience and that people can have in Quetico is, I think much better than is available in many places in the Boundary Waters just because of the crowding and racing another party for the last campsite on a lake at the end of the day, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER 2: Kevin [INAUDIBLE], thank you very much for being with us. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER 1: You're welcome.