Remembering Jan Van Wagtendonk
Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2022 12:00 am
Just came across this article on the Wildfire Today website:
https://wildfiretoday.com/2022/08/14/re ... onal-park/
Jan was one of the good guys in government service. It's sad to hear of his passing. I met Jan in the summer of 1974, when I was assisting with field work for a UC Berkeley Forestry School research study of Yosemite backcountry visitor attitudes and satisfaction, and also when I took a UC Berkeley Extension course from him in wilderness management that same summer.
Although the article is primarily about his influence on fire management in his career as a Park Service and USGS scientist, it briefly mentions another important contribution of his that is of interest to HST: the design of the Yosemite wilderness permit quota system in the early 70s, which served as a model for the systems in the rest of the High Sierra. It is because of him that we enjoy the freedom to camp anywhere in the High Sierra, unlike other popular wilderness areas such as Grand Teton National Park, where camping is limited to designated sites only, with no flexibility. As an avid backpacker himself, Jan was determined to maintain this freedom. He did it by using field data combined with early computing technology to model backcountry visitation and then run "Monte Carlo" statistical experiments with the model that varied parameters of number of people entering each trailhead to estimate probabilities of crowding at popular spots. In this way, he was able to determine that controlling only the number of people entering the wilderness from each trailhead each day could prevent over-crowding in the backcountry. There was no need to actually control where individual hikers camped each night. This model worked so well to eliminate over-crowding that it was emulated throughout the Sierra, to our great benefit 50 years later.
-Phil
https://wildfiretoday.com/2022/08/14/re ... onal-park/
Jan was one of the good guys in government service. It's sad to hear of his passing. I met Jan in the summer of 1974, when I was assisting with field work for a UC Berkeley Forestry School research study of Yosemite backcountry visitor attitudes and satisfaction, and also when I took a UC Berkeley Extension course from him in wilderness management that same summer.
Although the article is primarily about his influence on fire management in his career as a Park Service and USGS scientist, it briefly mentions another important contribution of his that is of interest to HST: the design of the Yosemite wilderness permit quota system in the early 70s, which served as a model for the systems in the rest of the High Sierra. It is because of him that we enjoy the freedom to camp anywhere in the High Sierra, unlike other popular wilderness areas such as Grand Teton National Park, where camping is limited to designated sites only, with no flexibility. As an avid backpacker himself, Jan was determined to maintain this freedom. He did it by using field data combined with early computing technology to model backcountry visitation and then run "Monte Carlo" statistical experiments with the model that varied parameters of number of people entering each trailhead to estimate probabilities of crowding at popular spots. In this way, he was able to determine that controlling only the number of people entering the wilderness from each trailhead each day could prevent over-crowding in the backcountry. There was no need to actually control where individual hikers camped each night. This model worked so well to eliminate over-crowding that it was emulated throughout the Sierra, to our great benefit 50 years later.
-Phil