Leave No Trace: The Seven Principles Explained
Leave No Trace is a set of seven principles developed by the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics (LNT.org) and adopted as the standard framework for low-impact outdoor recreation by the US National Park Service, Forest Service, and equivalent agencies in the UK, Australia, and Canada. The principles are not aspirational guidelines — in many designated wilderness areas, violating them is a regulated offense. More practically, they are the accumulated knowledge of what outdoor recreation does to land, water, and wildlife when done at scale.
1. Plan ahead and prepare
The principle is that most LNT violations stem from inadequate planning — arriving at a site unprepared and improvising in ways that damage the environment. Specific applications: know the fire regulations before you light a fire; know whether water sources require treatment; carry a map so you stay on trail; know the waste disposal rules for the area (some desert parks require pack-out of human waste; some require a wag-bag kit). A permit system exists in many wilderness areas precisely because the carrying capacity of the land is finite. Book the permit; obey the group size limits.
2. Travel and camp on durable surfaces
Durable surfaces are rock, sand, dry gravel, snow, and established trails. Vegetation, especially fragile alpine or sub-alpine communities, can take decades to recover from a single night's tent footprint. In heavily visited areas, concentrate all use on existing, visible camping spots — spreading out across a meadow feels more low-impact but creates a wider damage zone. In pristine areas where no camping spot yet exists, disperse rather than concentrate, pitching on the most durable available surface. Stay off wet vegetation; it compresses and dies faster than dry.
3. Dispose of waste properly
Human waste: dig a cathole 6 to 8 inches (15-20 cm) deep and at least 200 feet (60 metres) from water, trails, and camp. Carry a small trowel; a stick is not adequate. Toilet paper should be packed out in a sealed bag in most areas; in some desert and alpine areas, all human waste must be packed out entirely using a wag-bag kit — this is specifically required in Mount Whitney (Sierra Nevada) and the Colorado River corridor through the Grand Canyon.
Washing dishes: carry wash water at least 200 feet from any water source, scatter strained dishwater over a wide area, and pack out all food particles. Do not wash directly in a stream or lake — even biodegradable soap has a significant impact on aquatic ecosystems.
4. Leave what you find
Natural features — rocks, plants, archaeological artifacts — belong where they are. The rationalisation "I'm only taking a small rock" is statistically false at the scale of millions of visitors; Petrified Forest National Park estimates that visitors remove nearly a tonne of petrified wood annually one small piece at a time. Do not build new fire rings, cut switchbacks, build cairns in places where they are not navigational aids, or carve anything into trees.
5. Minimize campfire impacts
Use a fire ring where one exists; use a fire pan or stove where one does not. Keep fires small. Burn wood to ash and scatter cold ash. Collect only dead-and-down wood smaller than your wrist — nothing needs to be cut or broken. The rule is that a fire ring should be cold to the touch before you leave it. See the companion post on fire safety for ban-season detail.
6. Respect wildlife
The food triangle and bear canister principles covered in the wildlife safety post apply here. The LNT framing adds: observe from a distance and never follow or approach wildlife to get a closer look; do not feed any wild animal under any circumstances, including squirrels, jays, and chipmunks that approach for scraps; protect wildlife by storing food and waste securely. The rationale for not feeding squirrels and chipmunks is not sentimentality — conditioned ground squirrels in Yosemite and Sequoia have driven some species densities to levels that degrade the campsite environment for every subsequent visitor.
7. Be considerate of other visitors
Yield the trail to uphill hikers and to horses. Keep noise levels low, especially from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. Respect the solitude of other campers who have chosen remote sites. Use earth-tone tent colours where practical rather than high-visibility ones that visually intrude on the landscape.
Micro-trash
The category LNT practitioners call micro-trash is where most good-intentioned campers fail. Pistachio shells, twist-ties from bread bags, candy wrappers, foil blister pack backings, and cigarette filters all fall in the category of items small enough to seem inconsequential but large enough to accumulate into visible pollution, cause wildlife ingestion problems, and take decades to decompose. Check the cook area and dining area on hands and knees before leaving a site. Check the tent footprint. Check the fire ring edge.
Pee on rocks, not vegetation
Urine itself is largely sterile and does not harm soil or water in small quantities, but it contains salt, and many animals — deer, mountain goats, marmots, and bears included — will dig and root at spots where humans have urinated in pursuit of the mineral. In alpine environments above the treeline, the digging damage from salt-seeking wildlife is a real and documented problem. Urinate on bare rock or dry gravel where the rain will wash it off, not on vegetation or soil where it concentrates.
Hammock straps: one inch minimum
Hammocks cause severe damage to tree bark from straps narrower than 25 mm (one inch). Thin cord or narrow webbing cuts through bark and into the cambium layer, which is the living tissue under the outer bark that the tree uses to transport nutrients. A single night on a thin strap can girdle a tree. Use flat webbing straps at least 25 mm wide and at least 60 cm long; wider and longer is better. The Kammock Python Straps and ENO Helios straps meet the minimum. Most hammock-specific straps sold in the last five years meet it; most improvised rope or cord setups do not.
Find low-impact sites on the map
The map shows developed campsite locations worldwide. Established campsites with designated pitches, fire rings, and waste facilities are inherently lower-impact than improvised wild camping sites, because the damage is concentrated in one already-impacted spot rather than spread across new ground.