Huachuca Mountain Recreation and Associated Benefits of Leisure and Needs Assessment Study


USFS Contract No: CCS-95-0035


Coronado National Forest, Sierra Vista Ranger District, USDA Forest Service
Challange Cost-Share Program

Final Report

June, 1997

Randy Gimblett, Principle Investigator,
Associate Professor, School of Renewable Natural Resources
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona 85721 USA
gimblett@nexus.srnr.arizona.edu
website: http://nexus.srnr.arizona.edu/~gimblett/huachuca.html

Cathy Kahlow, Recreation Specialist
Coronado National Forest, Sierra Vista Ranger District,
USDA Forest Service
5990 South Highway 92
Hereford, AZ 85615
(520) 378-0311
fax: (520) 670-4640

Executive Summary

It is apparent from the surveys that visitors to the Huachucas clearly are seeking a wilderness experience. While this was certainly possible in the past, the increasing pressure on the Huachuca Mountain from urban residents of Sierra Vista and surroundings is making that difficult at best to maintain. Although visitors indicated that they did not want large scale urban ROS scale, high amenity development in the forest, they did indicate that they would allow for some rural ROS scale development. This minimalistic approach which would continue to provide for a high quality recreational experiences yet protect the natural resource from further degradation.

The following are some of the important responses from the visitors to the Huachuca Mountains. Detailed statistical data can be found in each of the sections in the report. Of those respondents surveyed:

1.0 Introduction

With growing pressure on national forest lands by outdoor enthusiasts, the U.S. Forest Service (NFS) through it's multiple use mandate must attempt to accommodate a wide variety of recreation activities, uses and interests. While much planning in the past has at best been reactive to public needs and desires to meet this goal, there is a strong commitment to proactive forest recreation planning. In order to accomplish this goal, recreation managers are turning to the research community to assist them in acquiring a more in-depth understanding of societal needs, recreational demands and expected experiential or beneficial outcomes of such recreational use. Developing parallel to this growing pressure on forest lands, has been the recent USDA Forest Service directive for ecosystem management. Ecosystem management calls for the explicit consideration of the human management dimension in planning for and implementing management objectives on forest lands. Within the human dimension of ecosystem management, recreation and amenity uses of forest lands, and associated benefits of those uses, constitute an important component for land management decisions. With this need to acquire a rich understanding of recreational use, behavior and associated perceived benefits to make more informed management decisions, explicit functional relationships between manageable characteristics of forest lands and recreational uses of those lands must be sought. Such explicit relationships would provide clear linkages between management activities for recreational and non-recreational uses of forest lands, and between management activities for recreational uses and the outcomes, including beneficial outcomes of those activities.

What is not clear at the present are the potentials for examining benefits and their relationship to design and planning of recreation facilities. There are some basic questions that can be asked to acquire a better understanding of recreational use and beneficial outcomes of that use on forest lands such as; What are the reasons visitors come to certain forest environments?; What are the types of recreational activities they engage in? What are the appropriate forest settings for these activities? What are the perceived beneficial outcomes of these activities? What types of management actions can be implemented to achieve these recreational experiences and associated benefits? While these questions could take a life time to answer, this study will attempt through public surveys to address some of these questions.

The purpose of this study is to assess the experience preferences and associated beneficial outcomes of the visitors to the Huachuca Mountains of Coronado National Forest. The objectives of this study were to develop a survey acquire data on visitors in the Carr, Brown and Miller Canyons as well as Ramsey Peak on the Sierra Vista Ranger District. The survey was established to acquire information in the following areas;

1.1 Field Sampling Methods

The survey was conducted using a combination of on-site interviews and mail-back questionnaires designed in cooperation with the Forest Service personnel. Brief interviews were held at (3) dispersed camping sites, (2) wilderness trailheads and Reef Campground in Carr Canyon. (1) Dispersed Camping and (1) Trailhead in Miller Canyon and Brown Canyon trailhead. Visitors surveyed were also provided with a mail-back questionnaire for post experience or visit evaluation. In addition, mail-back questionnaires were made available in the Nature Conservancy visitor center and administered to those seeking permits to access the Miller Peak wilderness through Nature Conservancy lands in Ramsey Canyon. Random stops of visitors were made to provide them with mail-back surveys. Surveys and return boxes were strategically placed in locations that were not easily accessible on a frequent basis by the survey team for self-administration. These locations were: Miller Canyon Trailhead, Lower Carr, Reef Campground, Brown Canyon, District Office and Ramsey Canyon Preserve.

Figure #1 - Context Map for Huachuca Mountain Study Area

The following is brief summary of the result of the initial on-site and mailback field surveys. The initial on-site surveys were undertaken between between October, 1995 and April, 1996. The mail-back survey was started in October, 1995 and was completed in March 1997. The random on-site sampling was undertaken in three canyons as identified by Forest Service recreation management specialists. Those canyons were Miller, Carr and Brown. Each offers a range of recreation opportunities to it's visitors. This report summarizes the finding of this on-site portion of the visitor survey.

The report will be organized in the following sections: on-site surveys, mail-back surveys, a comparison of the two and a summary of open-ended comments.

1.2 Statistical Methods Used in Analyzing Recreation Response Data

The data collected on-site and mail-back were analyzed in three different way. First, SPSS, a commonly used statistical package was used to perform frequency analysis on the visitor characteristics and demographics data to obtain an initial overview of type of recreators who visit the area. Raw mean scores on all the rest of the data was undertaken to obtain information on the distribution of ratings were in order to assess the statistical differences in each of the questions. In addition, to acquire some sense of what the reliability and validity of the assessment techniques employed i.e. the survey, RMRATE, a statistical package was used. RMRATE provides a measure of the level of agreement between individual's and groups of observer's responses to the measured stimuli (Brown et al. 1990). Correlation coefficients are computed to assess the internal consistency and reliability of responses to individual stimuli. An initial test measured the individual observer-to-observer relationships, a second related the observer's responses to the group, and a third assessed the correspondence between the test group, and each other group from the population.

The observer-to-observer reliability statistic is an indication of the projected correlation between two individual's selected from an observer population. The group-to-group statistic relates to the projected correlation between group mean ratings from respondent groups of equal size. This measure estimates conformity of agreement between the respondent group tested, and any other respondent group from the same population. Observer-to-group correlations indicate the extent to which an individual's ratings conform with ratings from other observers within a population. For this analysis, group-to-group measures of reliability are extremely important because there is an assumption when setting up the study and assessing the data that you have adequately sampled the visitor population. This coefficient then indicates that the visitor sample could be compared to any other population of similar characteristics and would achieve the same degree of no agreement. Perfect agreement in the coefficients would result in a value close to 1.00. A value of .855 would suggest a very strong agreement with any other group, indicating that both visitor population sampled and the information they provide to us is statistically valid and reliable.

The third statistical analysis performs principal component analysis on the data. Since different observer's almost never agree perfectly in their ratings of a set of stimuli (questions). For a detailed discussion of this technique see Brown et al. (1990). Basically, this method explains the interconnections among a set of observers' in terms of a smaller set of inferred variables called "components". Each component is a weighted sum of observer ratings, with the weights mathematically define to capture the maximum amount of observers' variance, subject to the constraint that the components must be uncorrelated among themselves. This technique is employed to understand the underlying dimensions of choice for activities, benefits etc. It produced two kinds of output, first eigenvalues which represent the amount of variance in the total data set accounted for by each of the components; second component loadings and component scores. These score indicate how strongly observers' ratings are related to each component. If an observer has a high loading on a particular component, it means that the component is highly correlated with the observers' ratings. Component scores (which we are interested here) show the location of each of the stimuli (questions) on each of the dimensions represented by the components. The higher the score the more agreement.

2.0 Results of On-site Interviews

Each of the following sections summarizes the findings from each of the survey questions asked on site. A total of n=157 respondents were sampled on-site during the sampling period.

2.1 Visitor Characteristics and Demographics

Of the three areas sampled as outlined in Table #1, over 42 percent of those surveyed undertook recreation activities in Carr Canyon, followed by Miller and Brown. Of those sampled 60% were Male while only 40% were females.

Over 45% of those sampled fell within the 31 - 40 age group, followed by under 30 and closely by over 50. The 19% over fifty suggests that the heavy retirement population of sierra vista at this time are representative of those currently using the canyons as much as the middle age group.

When the data is analyzed from the mail-back survey, we may find that a high percentage of those who visit the surrounding forest service lands are visitors from outside the city limits of Sierra Vista. In addition, those sampled in this preliminary survey (See Table #3), it was found the 33% recreate in the canyons with their families, while 47% or nearly half those sampled tend to recreate with friends.

These findings differ extensively from those found in other studies in the state by the author who has found that in the Santa Catalina Mountains, a strong representation of the visitors tend to come alone to experience the wilderness setting. In Sierra Vista, Coconino National Forest it was found that local residents where strongly representative of those sampled in the canyon(s) and tended to hike alone and as much as 3-4 times a week.

2.2 Reasons for Visiting the Huachuca Mountains

Table #4 is a summary of the open-ended question on the survey to solicit responses from visitors as to some of the reasons why visitors were drawn to the canyons of the Huachuca Mountains. We have extracted those reasons and aggregated them into the following descriptive categories. The bold faced reasons for coming to the forest comprise the ones that standout as primary motivators of visitation.

It is clear from table #4 that there are two distinct classes of reasons why people visit the area. The first is for passive recreational activities such as hiking and walking outdoors and picnicking were the strongest reason for visiting the area(s) while others were drawn by the active recreational activities are adventure or risk-oriented sports such as biking and handglyding which equally made up the significant rankings. It seems from this descriptive technique however, that many simply come to hike and enjoy the sounds and sights of nature and don't require the intensive physical satisfaction found in many other public land settings.

2.3 Reliability Measures on Recreation Experiences and Associated Benefits

As discussed in the statistical analysis section of this report, it is important that a statement of the degree of reliability and validity of the visitor samples that are used for the quantitative analysis be made. In the return survey, this will be an important element as well if management decisions are to be made from the findings. To ensure significant visitor sample have been obtained an analysis was performed on the data to measure the individual observer-to-observer relationships, a second related the observer's responses to the group, and a third assessed the correspondence between the test group, and each other group from the population. These techniques have been explained earlier in the statistical analysis section. Table #5 is a summary of the findings of this analysis for each of the remaining questions in the survey.

An evaluation of the computer correlation coefficients to asse