Anza Borrego Desert State Park - California State Parks - State of ...

Final Report – October 2001
common medium of first awareness of the Park. More than 62% (1081 of 1722) of the
visitors surveyed reported word of mouth as the medium of their first exposure to
information about the Park. Less significant sources of information were guidebooks and
road maps. This characteristic was consistent across both seasons and all sites. Visitors
reported their intention to return to the park at a rate of 87% (1619 of 1851). This ranged
from a low of 79% at the Visitors’ Center to high of over 93% at Coyote Canyon, Fish
Creek, and Blair Valley. Over 59% of the visitors surveyed reported that their visit
included at least one overnight stay in the Park. Nevertheless there was considerable
variability across sites, ranging from a low of 34% at the Visitors’ Center (122 of 359) to
a high of over 80% at Blair Valley (117 of 146). This question was asked in the spring
survey only, so no comparison can be made between seasons. A majority (54%) of Park
visitors (410 of 754) stayed in primitive or developed campsites within the Park. An
additional 20% (157 of 754) reported staying in open camping areas within the Park
during their visit.
When asked about their reasons for visiting the Park, respondents consistently ranked a
cluster of motivations: scenic beauty, unique characteristics, wildness, nature displays
and sanctuary for wildlife. According to visitors, the Park’s role as an economic
resource, a place to be free from society’s rules and regulations, and a place for social
interaction were relatively less important. Measurements of the importance of the Park
to visitors also displayed themes, although there was more variability across seasons
and sites than seen in the visitors’ motivations to visit. This variability in the responses
suggests that there is a rather wide range of opinions about the role the Park should
occupy. Visitors’ assessments of how the Park is managed were generally positive and
supportive. As a group, visitors expressed an interest that the Park be managed as a
refuge, and as a showcase for displays of nature. The general trend in the data is that
actions related to the preservation of the Park’s resources are viewed as more important
than changes in facilities, or development targeting recreational use, visitor concerns or
local interests.
In all sites except the Visitors’ Center, additional questions in the survey included
presenting the visitors with a series of photos portraying a range of ecological or
management conditions, and asking them to rank each photo according to acceptability.
In general, visitors preferred more natural, less impacted conditions, but were accepting
of less than optimum conditions. In Coyote Canyon, the photos depicted a range of offroad
impacts to vegetation, from pristine conditions to heavily scarred. A majority of
visitors were accepting of a small amount of impact, the result of minor intrusions of offroad
vehicles, but at increasing levels visitors judged conditions to be unacceptable.
Surveys at Blair Valley and Fish Creek used the same approach to gauging
acceptability, but the issue in these two locations was crowding. The photo series in this
case portrayed a span of conditions ranging from solitude to extremely crowded
conditions. In both sites, visitors displayed some tolerance for a certain amount of
crowding but exhibited a threshold at which conditions became unacceptable. In general,
the fewer the number of other groups in the photo, the higher the rating of acceptability.
The Borrego Palm Canyon and Mountain Palm Springs surveys included a photo series
depicting a range of trail standards from primitive and unmarked to heavily signed and
paved. The results from this set of questions were enigmatic; visitors were mostly
accepting of all conditions except for the most extreme—the signed and paved trail. In
fact, the rating of acceptability increased with the conditions represented by photos
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