![]() “Under that scenario, the number of available permits would be cut from 285 permits per day to 248. “However, under one model considered by the Forest Service, overnight paddling and hiking permits would be reduced by 13 percent throughout the reservation season that runs from May 1 through September 30,” the Star Tribune article reports. The Forest Service didn’t say how many permits would be eliminated, nor which entry points into the wilderness would be impacted. The planned reduction in the number of permits to be issued next year “isn’t a decision that we made overnight” she said. Gilkeson went on to note that reports of increased crowds, noise levels, and oversized groups have been growing in recent years, although they have spiked in recent years. Superior National Forest spokeswoman Joanna Gilkeson said that although the reduction in permits next year will be spread across the entire wilderness, the effort will focus on entry points and lakes where visitors have reported resource damage over the years, and complained about an inability to find campsites and “just not having the wilderness experience that they expected to have or that they’ve had in the past,” Minnesota Public Radio News reported. The use of permits also restricts group size to less than nine people and allows the Forest Service to ensure groups of people are equally spread across the area because the permits stipulate which entry point a group can use. The Forest Service uses permits to limit the number of groups entering the wilderness each day. Visitation was also high again early in the summer last year, but much of the wilderness closed later in the summer due to wildfires. Consequently, the number of issued permits rose from around 25,000 to more than 30,000, Minnesota Public Radio News reported. In 2020, nearly 166,000 people visited the BWCA, which is a 16 percent increase over 2019 and also the highest number of visitors in more than 10 years, according to the U.S. The area is home to many species of wildlife, including deer, moose, gray wolf, and black bear.īecause the area is a wilderness, permits are required, and, of course, visitors are expected to Leave No Trace. ![]() and Canada, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area wilderness includes more than 1,000 lakes and hundreds of miles of rivers and streams however, most of the area is forested, made up of pine, fir, and spruce trees. That means canoers can travel along interconnected fresh waters when they visit BWCA.Įxtending along the border between the U.S. There also are more than 1,300 miles of cold-water streams and 950 miles of warm-water streams within the forest. ![]() ![]() The forest itself is made up of more than 445,000 acres - or 695 square miles - of surface water. The BWCA, encompassing nearly one million acres, lies within the boundaries of the three-million-acre Superior National Forest in northeast Minnesota. “There are just too many people” in some areas of the wilderness, Susan Catton, a Forest Service spokeswoman, said, a Star Tribune article reports.Īs a result, in a move intended to ease congestion and also lessen the impact of visitors, the Forest Service plans to reduce the number of entry permits for the BWCA next year. There were also reports of illegal entry into the area, lack of permits for visitors, and “disruptive and oversized groups.” Forest Service called “an unacceptably high amount of resource damage,” which included the cutting of live trees, improper disposal of human waste, littering, and unattended campfires. Unfortunately, the surge in visitation led to what the U.S. The area’s popularity has grown significantly in recent years, and particularly last year as people looked for outdoor activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s about to become a little more difficult to visit the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) in northeastern Minnesota. ![]()
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