Keep it Wild - Yosemite Wilderness Restoration Program
Vegetation and Ecological Restoration / Division of Resources Management and Science
Keep It Wild: Project Objectives
A campsite in Yosemite wilderness: two tents and two tarps are set up in a forested flat area.
Yosemite Wilderness is one of the most visited designated wilderness areas with over 100,000 user nights plus 600,000 day-use visitors annually.
Even if visitors take only pictures and leave only footprints, impacts such as soil compaction and erosion, reduced biodiversity, resiliency, and vegetation loss still occur.
The Keep it Wild project minimizes modern human impacts by documenting, removing, and ecologically restoring inappropriately located campsites, fire rings, social trails, and invasive non-native plants.
In doing so, we restore natural processes that support functional ecosystems. Functional ecosystems are more resilient to effects from climate change.
Planning & Implementation
A snowy slope overlooks more snow coated mountains and frozen/snow coated lake.
Yosemite wilderness destination, Lake Vernon, in early May. NPS crews worked this location in late July when it was snow-free.
With an extreme 2022/2023 winter, this season began with many challenges such as a delayed Tioga Road opening, damaged housing in Tuolumne Meadows, and elevated hazards in much of the wilderness. Despite these obstacles, the National Park Service (NPS) restoration crew started on schedule in early June.
In 2023, the Wilderness Restoration team consisted of one program manager, one biological science technician, three work leads, six workers, and one short-term volunteer.
Four staff members stand in a forested flat area, smile, and look off into the distance.
NPS staff are trained in work methods during the first backcountry trip.
NPS crews completed two weeks of training, six total wilderness hitches, and accomplished a significant amount of work from June through August.
Some work proceeded as planned while some shifted: to lower elevations to avoid snow crossings, to alternate routes to avoid high water crossings, or to later in the season to wait for water levels to decrease.
The SCA crew consisted of 3 crew members and 2 leads, all ranging in age from 17-25 and hailing from the Bay Area. They completed 3 days of training and one 21-day wilderness hitch in July.
2023 Crews
Photo left and middle: National Park Service crew; Photo right: Student Conservation Association crew
Invasive Plant Treatment
Treatment Locations:Little Yosemite Valley, Lost Valley, Sunrise Creek trail, Beehive switchbacks, Tiltill Valley, Rancheria Falls
Crew surveyed and treated 54.6 acres for invasive plants species including:
In Little Yosemite Valley (LYV), the 2014 Meadow fire enabled disturbance-loving invasive plant populations to take hold. Annual treatments by this crew have reduced some of these populations and mitigated further spread.
This year, many typical work areas were submerged or inaccessible due to high water. Staff targeted dense populations of Cirsium vulgare (bull thistle) in LYV, and scattered populations at Tiltill Valley and Rancheria Falls. They prioritized mature individuals that would soon produce seeds, shearing the plant's tap root with a shovel to kill the plant.
Staff member stands with a shovel beside a shovel sheared bull thistle plant.
Staff member uses a shovel to shear a bull thistle tap root.
Staff member stands in a burned forest and holds up a hand-pulled mullein plant.
Staff use manual methods of shovel-shearing and hand-pulling to remove invasive plant species.
Campsite Restoration
In addition to treating invasive plants, crews survey for and treat hundreds of campsites every year. Treatments include maintaining appropriate campsites, removing inappropriate campsites and restoring to natural conditions, and obstructing social trails in inappropriate areas.
In 2023, crews walked168.6 trail miles and surveyed 4.3 square miles of wilderness.
In 2023, crews surveyed 43 locations, treating 519 campsites.
Inappropriate sites removed & restored: 304
Appropriate sites maintained: 215
Map left: White triangles represent campsites surveyed/treated. Dashed purple polygons represent area surveyed in 2023.
Click the buttons below to view individual trips:
Photos from the Field
Before and After Restoration
Campsite Restoration: Swipe to see before and after
Before and after campsite restoration: photo left shows a large ring of rocks piled below a fire scarred boulder; photo right shows the pile of rocks removed and ground covered in fresh soil and organic matter.
Before and after campsite restoration: photo left shows a large ring of rocks submerged on the edge of a lake; photo right shows the fire ring fully removed from the water.
Before and after campsite restoration: photo left shows a large fire ring of rocks stacked multiple levels high; photo right shows the fire ring reduced in size and rebuilt with fewer rocks.
Documented 45 archeology observations. These will be reviewed and assessed in the field by archeologists.
Some items observed by restoration crews in 2023 including rusty cans, tools, and obsidian flakes. At the end of the season, we report all observations to Archeologists for follow-up evaluation and recording. Artifacts are not souvenirs and it's illegal to collect them. If you find one, leave it in place, document the location, and report to a Park Ranger or Cultural Resources Management atyose_archeology@nps.gov
Wilderness Archeology crew 2023 accomplishments:
Recorded 17 previously undocumented sites
Recorded 24 previously undocumented isolates
Surveyed 146 wilderness acres
Revisited, reassessed, and/or updated 40 previously recorded sites
2023 wilderness archeology staff at work. Artifacts are not souvenirs and it's illegal to collect them. If you find one, leave it in place, document the location, and report to a Park Ranger or Cultural Resources Management atyose_archeology@nps.gov
Special thanks to the foresight & longtime support of:
