Principles of Leave No Trace

• Plan Ahead & Prepare
• Travel & Camp on Durable Surfaces
• Dispose of Waste Properly
• Leave What You Find

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• Minimize Campfire Impacts
• Respect Wildlife
• Be Considerate of Other Visitors

Leave No Trace is about respecting and caring for wildlands and the front country, doing your part to protect our limited resources and future recreation opportunities. Once this attitude is adopted and the outdoor ethic is sound, the specific skills and techniques become second nature.

Many of us have taken a pine cone or rock, veered off the trail to dodge mud puddles, gotten too close to wildlife or tossed an apple core into the woods. While these actions may seem harmless at the time, until we learn to reduce our impact, the quality of our outdoor experiences and the recreational resources we enjoy are at critical risk. Also at risk is our continued access to wildlands as land management agencies sometimes take restrictive action to protect the resources they manage. Unless, of course, education catches up with behavior, and we all learn to leave the outdoors as unchanged as possible by our presence.

Leave No Trace is not a set of rules that must be abided by, it is a way of minimizing our impact on the environment, whether this is front or back country camping. It is an ethic which we should all be trying to live by.

An ETHIC is
a set of moral principles, esp. ones relating to or affirming a specified form of conduct.

It is something that you continue to do when you are by yourself, when nobody is watching

Scouts camped a total of 6,093,410 nights during 2013. This has the potential to impact the land & wilderness greatly, and
We are visitors into another's home when we go camping. As such we should endeavor to leave it as good or better than we find it.

What is Wilderness
"Wilderness is the land that was - wild land beyond the frontier...land that shaped the growth of our nation and the character of its people...Wilderness is the land that is - rare, wild places where one can retreat from civilization, reconnect with the Earth, and find healing, meaning and significance"
- 1964 Wilderness Act

"A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."
- 1964 Wilderness Act

WAYS TO TEACH LNT

• Will you make it?
• Trash Timeline
• What is worse?
• Campfires

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• The most important point
• What we do here can impact all the rest of the principles
• Plan for your group
• Use proper gear
• Educate yourself

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• Protect water sources
• Do you walk through puddles instead of around them
• Do you take a short cut to shorten a trail
• Avoid walking in delicate habitats
• Good campsites are found not made

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• Pack it in Pack it out
• Practice good sanitation
• Wastewater
• Soap and lotions can still affect water supplies even if biodegradable
• Dispose of game entrails properly

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• Preserve the past
• Leave natural features undisturbed
• Avoid spreading non native plants and animals

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• Use a stove
• Build a minimum impact fire
• Use dead or downed wood
• Manage your campfire

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• Observe from a distance
• Avoid sensitive times and habitats
• Never feed animals
• Store food and trash securely
• Control your pet

RESPECT

• Respect other visitors
• Yield to others
• Keep a low profile
• Let nature's sounds prevail

WHERE DO WE START?

• Use Troop meetings to introduce the Principles
• Use the games and scenarios in LNT books
• Send your scout leadership to LNT Training
• Earn the Leave No Trace Award as a Troop
• Lead by example & encourage participation from the scouts

“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” Foreword to A Sand County Almanac (1949), ASCA viii.

"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."
Aldo Leopold A Sand County Almanac, 1948