We Support Keeping Utah Mighty

Southern Utah has five national parks, Arches, Bryce, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Zion. Together they are known as the Mighty Five. Every year millions and millions of people come to see the beauty and explore the wonder of these parks. But that many people can take a toll on the natural environments. So it’s important that when people visit these special places that they take care to limit their impact. That way we can all keep Utah mighty.

Photo by Leo Visions via unsplash.com.

Here’s What You Can Do To Help

There is a Forever Mighty page on the official tourism page for the state of Utah. We’ll give you the headlines here. But if you want to dig into this concept more, you should check out that page. This is how you can limit your impact while maximizing your fun in Southern Utah:

Leave No Trace –

• Know where you are going. It’s easier to damage the environment if you are wandering aimlessly. Check out travel blogs, get the right maps, and have a plan.
• Stick to the trails. This is extremely important. Using the trails ensures that only a small portion of the living soil is affected by foot traffic. And be extra careful not to step on the biological soil crusts.
• Put your trash in designated trash receptacles. If there are none where you are, be sure to pack your trash out with you.
• Protect any cultural heritage sites that you visit or come across. There are tons of these in Southern Utah, and they are important to the American Indian tribes that have ancestral ties to these places. Don’t deface them, and don’t remove any part of them. Besides being a jerk thing to do, it’s also illegal, and will land you in a lot of trouble.
• Observe fire notices. Sometimes in some places you will not be allowed to have campfires. And when you do, be sure to be safe and minimize their impact. You don’t want to start any wildfires.
• Finally, don’t mess with the wildlife. They don’t like it. Plus, it’s dangerous.

Practice Ethical Posting –
With the amount of people coming to Utah, it can sometimes be a bit of a headache for the local wildlife, environment, and Utahans to keep up with the traffic. This can be made worse when tourists post about certain locations that don’t have the infrastructure to support large amounts of visitors. We’ve written about this before in our Ethical Tourism post. But the quick version is: be mindful of what you share when posting to social media.

But when you do post about the many great established sites in our great state, be sure to tag it #ForeverMighty!

Photo by Yansi Keim via unsplash.com.

Southern Utah is Mighty Because of You

Only with the help of all the millions of visitors just like you can we all keep Southern Utah’s national parks mighty! So thank you for all of your help in this endeavor. We’ll see you out there!