It was a cool, clear afternoon in the Olympic Mountains. I was an interpretive park ranger working at Olympic National Park, and this afternoon my duty was hiking a popular trail within view of the visitor center.
I spotted mountain goats–a nanny and her kid–unusual this close to crowds. I had been instructed to toss rocks at goats that were too close to people, and these goats definitely fit that bill, as they were wading through a sea of delighted tourists, most with their phones raised to take selfies.
I called for the visitors to leave the mountain goats alone, and then I grabbed a rock and aimed it at the goats. I only succeeded in confusing them–few of my rocks reached them and those that did bounced harmlessly off their thick wool coats–but at least they decided to bolt, trotting off trail.
I breathed a sigh of relief, until I heard a cry of excitement from the other side of the u-shaped trail arching over this hill–the goats had only moved to the other side and had found more visitors.
I booked it across the hill and began chasing the goats away, trying to get them to leave the area entirely. They were much quicker than I was (being mountain goats on a mountain) and I had almost lost sight of them when I reached down to pluck up another rock at the trail’s edge.
My hand connected with something firm, and I lifted it to throw. But it was too light to be a rock.
I looked down at my hand and saw that the object, though a little aged and dried out, was still moist enough to have smeared my hand with brown. It was sprouting bits of toilet paper.
I dropped the human feces like it had burned me and looked up. The goats were already gone. I heard the happy cries of other visitors in the distance, ones who had just discovered mountain goats in their midst. And I walked away.
I radioed in to other rangers about the goats and took my poop-stained hand and what was left of my pride back to the visitor center. Which was visible, by the way, from the spot where this person had taken a dump.
This visitor center had restrooms with toilets (and sinks, where I proceeded to scrub my hand for the next ten minutes). But instead of using them, the leaver of this poop had, like so many other visitors in these mountains, decided that our park was one massive toilet.
Imagine a dog park, after a busy weekend. All the dogs and owners have had a splendid time, but alas, not one of them has used the well-marked doggie bag dispensers or accompanying trash receptacles. You, the park’s caretaker, can’t take a step without, well, literally stepping in it.
This is what it’s like to be a national park ranger in a busy park, except that there seem to be no off-days, no time when the shit isn’t flowing. And it’s human beings leaving their waste behind, not dogs. People usually clean up after dogs.
National parks in the United States are facing an enormous poop problem. During the nine years I worked at national parks, I knew backcountry rangers who regularly collected hundreds of pounds of human feces while hiking in wilderness areas. Cleaning up human poop has become the modern ranger’s daily task.
Each year America’s national parks are flooded with visitors, and many of those visitors leave more than just footprints behind. In 2023, US national parks welcomed 325.5 million visitors. Humans create an average of a pound (½ a kilogram) of poop a day, and some park visitors spend more than one day in parks. That’s potentially millions, even hundreds of millions, of pounds of poop left behind each year.
And, despite what some well-intentioned folks think, poop does not magically disintegrate in nature. In the best of conditions–somewhere moist with lots of decomposers to break down and utilize human waste–poop takes about a year to decompose. That’s a year for it to be stepped in, or–more likely–collected by an unlucky ranger.
And in non-ideal conditions, the breakdown of human waste can take much, much longer. Or never happen at all.
Denali National Park is a popular spot for mountaineers: around a thousand of them attempt to climb Denali each year. Between 1951 and 2012, the park estimates that climbers left at least 150,000 pounds of human feces during that climb in the Kahiltna Glacier, where it will not decompose. It will remain frozen for countless years, until it melts out of the glacier, at which point it will cause another problem downstream.
And there are other places, like deserts, high altitude spots, beaches, or busy areas, where human waste will not have the conditions or time necessary to decompose.
Of course, national parks have facilities for catching and processing human waste. Traditional flush toilets, pit toilets, portapotties. These should be the poop destinations for park visitors, but so often, in my experience, they are not.
I suspect that park visitors think that the moment they are outdoors they are in prime pooping country; perhaps some people get a thrill from pooping in nature. Whatever their reasons, people often bypass the nearby toilet and drop their drawers over in the corner of the parking lot, behind the visitor center, or in the middle of a heavily used trail.
I once had a colleague who came across a pile of human feces in the center of one of our most popular trails, a hundred feet from the pit toilet at the trailhead. The poop pile was wrapped in toilet paper and had a used tampon sticking from the top, like a birthday candle on a cake. This was not an accident; this was an art installation. And my friend had to dig in and clean it up.
If you want to be the most responsible pooper to ever visit a national park, here is what you do: use toilets. Go before you start on the trail.
But what about those times when we have accidents, or when we are far from a toilet, perhaps on multi-day trips in the wilderness? There are responsible methods for that too.
Many parks, now including Denali, request that park visitors pack out any waste they create. Don’t leave trash behind, and don’t leave your poop either.
If you can pick up your dog’s poo on your daily walk, you can do the same for your own.
There are products designed to reduce the ick-factor and the environmental impact. WAG bags (Waste Alleviating Gel bags) are designed to turn your poop into an odorless gel. Many of them decompose within landfills within months, although you need to check that you are purchasing a compostable version that is certified for landfills.
For parks where you are still allowed to dig catholes, it still may be a better option to use a WAG bag.
Research done at several US national parks has shown that human feces are present in even their most remote water sources. In one study conducted in 2019 at Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, all 59 samples of water tested from sites throughout the park contained fecal matter.
And water moves–Rocky Mountain for example is the headwaters for the Colorado River. Countless streams, rivers, and possible drinking water within parks and beyond their borders can be contaminated when there is this much poop being left behind.
Building new and more remote pit toilets is also not a sustainable solution. Many backcountry (far from civilization) toilets must be emptied by helicopter, an expensive and tedious task. And in some popular parks even the most remote locations are already full of feces–some rangers are finding decommissioned pit toilets whenever they look to build new ones. The wilderness is already full of poop.
The future of pooping in parks seems to be one of using available toilets or carrying it out with you after you go. This transition will require an educational push and a sense of responsibility on the part of park visitors.
So let’s start here: if you love your parks, look up and follow their guidelines for human waste. Add a WAG bag to your pack for your next park adventure. And if a toilet is available to you, use it.
And if you ever hear nature calling and decide to disregard all the rules, spare a thought first for the ranger who will one day have to scoop your poop.