here now exists the perception that present use on the river in the Grand Canyon has met or exceeded the capacity of the river to maintain a healthy riparian environment, and has negatively impacted the river “wilderness” experience by overcrowding, overuse of popular attraction sites like Deer Creek, Elves Chasm, and Havasu, and overuse of camping sites along the river. It is assumed that any new increase in user days to alleviate a generation-long wait for a non-commercial river trip permit would detrimentally affect both the environment and the river experience. It is also assumed that increasing non-commercial use must reduce commercial use in order to not increase total user days and keep an arbitrarily created “environmental balance.” This assumption, more than any other, has created unnecessary conflict between non-commercial and commercial river interests. These two user groups both serve a great purpose, both provide access to one of the greatest adventures in the world, and both can and should co-exist in a cooperative spirit.

   To date, the argument has boiled down to this: Everyone agrees that the wait for a non-commercial permit is unreasonable and unfair. Most feel that the only way to eliminate this problem is either to take user days away from commercial trips, or to increase private user days. Many also feel that any increase in user days means a degraded riparian environment and river experience due to increased contact. The result is that commercial and non-commercial interests are fighting for a finite resource due to increased demand and the assumption that there is no other solution. One entity feels they are fighting for their livelihoods, the great benefits they provide to one segment of the public, and their constituents. The other feels that they are fighting for the rights of the public to enjoy and access their national parks without having to pay someone else, and their particular right to experience the Colorado River the way they wish…on their own.

   ONE POTENTIAL SOLUTION: With computer modeling of put-ins, taking into account commercial trip length, usual attraction sites visited, interchange locations, and also a typical range of camps used on specific days, riparian environmental impacts and user contact on river and at attraction sites could be reduced by as much as 30% or more. This would allow the increase of non-commercial user days in order to reduce the wait for a permit to a reasonable amount of time, while also decreasing environmental impact and detrimental river contacts. Concurrently, no commercial user day decrease would be required, protecting this important aspect of river use.

   All companies keep to a fairly constant schedule, usually camping within a certain range of river miles on each day, usually hitting the same major attraction sites on the same trip day, always hitting the same site on the same day for passenger interchanges, trip after trip. Inasmuch as most companies will know this data, it would be easy to create a computer model on each company’s different types of trips and know within a few river miles where they will camp and which sites they will visit most of the time. Flexibility can and should be built into the system. A well planned system could even allow for different trip leaders to access data at Lees Ferry or Phantom regarding what companies will be where and when. They could then input a special choice different from their usual schedule, depending on availability. If put-ins were scheduled to take into account which companies would hit which sites on which day, then put-ins could be shuffled by the program years in advance so that 45 boats would likely not end up in the eddy at Havasu all at once (a personal observation over ten years ago).

   Currently, the Park has some rudimentary modeling concepts on hand. To date, they have not been used. Everyone has at least considered this alternative. Because of fears of added work or expense, and/or because of outfitter fears of having to try and sell a trip putting in on the wrong day of the week and perhaps losing money, the effort to date has perhaps been half-hearted. The Park could, in fact, save money in the long run by building this system. It could easily mean less staff time creating and studying individual schedules, dealing with special requests during the season, or handling conflicts. It could also enhance emergency rescues due to better information on expected locations of trips.

   It is my contention that this system, cooperatively investigated and developed between outfitters, the Park, mathematicians, computer specialists, and non-commercial representatives, could be made easy to implement, easy to comply with, and be designed to have little or no financial impact on outfitters. It could also realistically reduce visitor crowding at attraction sites, camp conflicts, and environmental impacts by spreading out use. This reduction could be scientifically quantified and qualified, producing a number representing percentage of decline of impacts. With this, the Park could feasibly increase non-commercial use in order to make the wait list reasonable, while actually decreasing the impacts along the corridor. This being the main battle that resurfaces every time there is a CRMP, everyone could end up a winner.