Leave No Trace — The 7 Principles

Leave No Trace (LNT) is both a nonprofit organization and a set of outdoor ethics. The seven principles were developed over decades by the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management in collaboration with outdoor educators and researchers, eventually becoming the standard ethical framework for wildland recreation worldwide. They are not arbitrary rules. Each principle addresses a specific, documented category of human impact on natural environments — and each rests on a foundation of ecological research. Understanding the "why" behind each principle makes them far easier to apply and far more likely to be followed when the trail presents an ambiguous situation.

Why LNT Matters

The United States has seen a dramatic increase in outdoor recreation participation over the past two decades, a trend accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many previously remote wilderness areas in California now receive millions of visitors annually. The cumulative impact of individual decisions — where to step, where to camp, how to dispose of waste — compounds across millions of visits in ways that fundamentally degrade the character of wild places.

The damage is not hypothetical. Alpine meadows around Yosemite's most popular destinations have been trampled to bare dirt. Sierra Nevada lake margins that should support sedge meadows and willows show widespread erosion and soil compaction from overuse. Food-conditioned bears in Yosemite have had to be euthanized after losing their natural foraging behavior — a direct consequence of improper food storage by visitors. The places we visit are not infinitely resilient. They have thresholds, and in many heavily used areas, those thresholds have been crossed.

LNT provides a framework for keeping individual impact below the threshold where it visibly accumulates. No one trip ruins a wilderness area. But millions of trips, each making the same poor choices, do.

Plan Ahead and Prepare

Most LNT failures happen before anyone sets foot on trail. Inadequate preparation leads to poor decision-making in the field — camping in fragile sites because you don't know better options exist, building fires in restricted zones because you didn't check current regulations, wandering off trail because you lack navigation skills.

Planning and preparation includes:

• Researching regulations for your specific wilderness area — permit requirements, campfire restrictions, bear canister requirements, camping setback distances from water.
• Knowing the terrain: topography, water sources, established campsites, sensitive habitat zones.
• Repackaging food to minimize waste. Bulk food in reusable containers reduces packaging that must be packed out.
• Selecting appropriate gear for the conditions so you don't need to make improvised decisions (cutting branches for shelter, building larger fires for warmth) that impact the environment.
• Traveling in small groups. Groups of four or fewer have significantly less environmental impact than large parties. Where larger groups are necessary, they should use especially durable, established campsites and spread out their impact.

Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces

This principle addresses where you put your feet and where you pitch your tent. The goal is to concentrate impact on surfaces that can absorb it without lasting damage, and to avoid fragile surfaces that cannot recover quickly.

Durable surfaces include established trails, rock, gravel, dry grasses, and areas of bare dirt that have already been impacted. In popular areas, staying strictly on established trails protects the surrounding vegetation from trampling damage. Multiple hikers making the same shortcut creates a new trail in one season; avoiding shortcuts prevents this.

For camping, use established sites in high-use areas — sites that are already impacted absorb additional use better than virgin sites. Camp on rock, gravel, or bare soil where possible. In remote areas with no established sites, camp on the most resilient surfaces: rock and sand. Avoid camping in alpine meadows, on cryptobiotic soil (the dark, knobby biological soil crust of desert environments), on lake margins, and in riparian zones (streamside and lakeshore vegetation).

The specific guidance in the Sierra Nevada: camp at least 200 feet (about 70 adult paces) from lakes, streams, and meadow edges. Many high-use zones have specific setback requirements of 100 feet from water in wilderness permit regulations — check before your trip. Avoid the same site on consecutive nights to allow vegetation to recover.

Dispose of Waste Properly

Waste disposal covers everything that leaves your body or comes out of your pack. The principle is comprehensive: pack out what you pack in, and handle human waste in a way that protects water quality and allows rapid decomposition.

Trash: Pack out all trash, including orange peels, apple cores, and nutshells. The "natural food" exception is a myth — organic food waste in the backcountry decomposes slowly (an orange peel can persist for over a year in dry alpine conditions), attracts animals, and has no place in an ecosystem where it is not native. If you packed it in, you pack it out.

Human waste: In most backcountry areas below treeline, the cat hole method is appropriate — a hole 6–8 inches deep, dug at least 200 feet from water, trails, and campsites. Solid waste is deposited in the hole and covered. Toilet paper should be packed out in a zip-lock bag (burning is prohibited in fire restriction zones and can smolder underground) or buried with the waste. In high-use, high-altitude, or heavily regulated areas — including the John Muir Trail's heavily visited sections, the Mount Whitney Zone, and areas above treeline throughout the Sierra — wag bags are required. See our dedicated article on Human Waste in the Backcountry for full guidance.

Washing: Soap — even biodegradable soap — should never be used directly in water sources. Carry water 200 feet from any lake or stream, wash with minimal soap, and scatter the grey water widely. Even biodegradable soap requires soil microorganisms to break it down — that process does not happen in the water itself.

Leave What You Find

The foundational rule: leave natural objects as you found them. This includes:

• Rocks, plants, and natural objects: Do not collect rocks, wildflowers, antlers, feathers, or other natural materials. The scale of recreational use means that if every visitor took a stone or a flower, popular places would be stripped bare. Many natural materials (feathers, birds' nests) are also protected under federal law.
• Archaeological and historical artifacts: Federal law (the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979) prohibits removing archaeological objects from public lands without a permit. This includes arrowheads, pottery sherds, and any evidence of historic or prehistoric human presence. Leave them in place and report significant finds to the land management agency.
• Do not build structures or dig trenches: Rock cairns, shelters built from branches, trenches around tent sites — all of these alter the landscape in ways that persist for years and can mislead future travelers. Dismantle any structures you encounter and scatter their components.
• Invasive species: Check clothing, boots, and gear for seeds and plant material before entering wilderness areas, and remove any hitchhikers. Invasive plants are one of the most damaging categories of human-caused ecological change in California's wilderness areas, and hikers are a primary vector for their spread.

Minimize Campfire Impacts

The campfire principle acknowledges that campfires have a deep cultural significance in outdoor experience — but also that their impacts are substantial and in many places have reached or exceeded sustainable levels.

The core guidance: use a camp stove for cooking instead of fire whenever possible. Stoves leave no ash, no scarring, no wood consumption, and no fire ring. They are faster, more controllable, and appropriate in all weather conditions. The decision to have a campfire should be deliberate and contingent on several factors: is fire legal and appropriate? Is wood abundant enough that collection won't visibly diminish the supply? Are conditions (wind, dryness) safe?

Where fires are appropriate: use existing fire rings, keep fires small, collect only dead and downed wood (never cut from standing trees, living or dead), collect wood from a wide area rather than stripping one area bare, and extinguish fires completely. See our detailed article on How to Build a Campfire for fire-building and extinguishment techniques.

Above 9,000–10,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada, fires are prohibited year-round in most wilderness areas regardless of seasonal fire restrictions. This reflects both the fire risk and the ecological sensitivity of high-altitude ecosystems where wood decomposes very slowly and fuel resources are limited.

Respect Wildlife

Wildlife encounters are among the most memorable experiences in the backcountry. The respect wildlife principle guides how to have those encounters in ways that benefit rather than harm the animals involved.

Observe from a distance: The standard guidance is at least 25 yards for most wildlife and 100 yards for bears and mountain lions. Use binoculars. An animal that notices you and changes its behavior (stops feeding, moves away, becomes alert) is too close. "Too close" means the distance was harmful to the animal, not just potentially dangerous to you.

Never feed wildlife: Feeding wildlife conditions animals to associate humans with food. A bear that has learned to approach campsites for food is a bear on a path toward being destroyed by wildlife managers who have no other safe options. Ground squirrels that beg for food contract diseases from human food and eventually die. The phrase "a fed bear is a dead bear" is literally true.

Store food properly: In California wilderness areas where black bears are present, a bear canister or approved bear box is required in many areas and strongly recommended everywhere else. Hanging food from trees using the PCT method is no longer recommended by wildlife managers in the Sierra — it is ineffective against the bears in this region, which have learned to defeat traditional food hangs. Carry a bear canister and store food, scented items (toothpaste, sunscreen, ChapStick), and garbage in it whenever you are not actively handling them.

Avoid disturbing nesting and denning animals: Give extra space and avoid noise near active nest sites. Do not approach obviously sick or injured wildlife — contact a ranger and let wildlife professionals assess the situation.

Be Considerate of Other Visitors

The wilderness is shared. The experience of solitude and connection with nature that most people seek in the backcountry is diminished by noise, crowding, and inconsiderate behavior. This principle asks each visitor to consider the experience they are creating for others.

Specific practices:

• Yield appropriately on trail: Hikers yield to uphill hikers (who have established momentum) and to pack animals (move to the downhill side and stand quietly while they pass). On narrow trails, leave room for others to pass.
• Keep voices low in camp: Sound carries farther in open landscape than in urban environments. Conversational voices at one campsite can be audible for hundreds of yards in quiet alpine terrain. This is particularly relevant after dark.
• Camp out of sight of the trail and other camps: The visual presence of other parties reduces the sense of solitude for everyone. Position camps in natural screening or behind terrain features where possible.
• Leave pets at home or control them fully: Dogs in wilderness areas harass wildlife, disturb other visitors, and can be injured by bears, rattlesnakes, and porcupines. Many wilderness areas prohibit dogs entirely; all require leashing. Be honest about whether your pet is suited for backcountry travel.
• Take responsibility for your party: Group leaders set the tone for how their party interacts with the landscape and other visitors. Explicit LNT conversations before a trip — especially with children or first-time visitors — reduce the likelihood of well-intentioned but damaging choices in the field.