Trends in public recreational land management in the United States

Competition among various potential land uses for the finite and ecologically vulnerable resources of attractive landscapes is a problem of the first magnitude for the United States. Americans increasingly sense that the ‘frontier psychology’ of virtually unlimited space and resources as applied to recreational amenities and spaces is no longer valid; that they are indeed competing for recreational space. They compete with forms of land‐use incompatible with recreation and, more serious in terms of long‐term trends, they find themselves competing for access and enjoyment of facilities with other Americans.