As he was deposed, a woman in the jury box gave the few people in attendance an occasional side eye. For Clark, a lifelong Libby, Montana resident who had accepted his incurable predicament long ago, being called in to testify was confusing. Clark was brought into the courtroom and deposed because Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) had found his records among thousands of others the company subpoenaed, and they convinced the Montana legal system to take a second look at his disability status; a status that stems from an asbestos-related disease that’s all but unknown outside of Libby.

BNSF pushed back on an emerging asbestos diagnosis, and this left victims fighting not just for compensation or medical treatment, but for recognition of their suffering. Clark was diagnosed by the Center for Asbestos Related Disease, or the CARD clinic. This non-profit institution is primarily funded by the CDC through grants, and it screened people like Clark for asbestos-related diseases, including an ailment known as lamellar pleural thickening. Clark is unable to work, hunt or live a life of comfort, and BNSF argued that not only was his disability status ascribed by the CARD clinic under false pretenses, but that Clark’s underlying condition does not exist.

“I went to find out if I was going to have health issues in the future,” Clark said. “Then I started having health issues. When it started, I was thankful that someone was smart enough to diagnose me.”

Lamellar means stacks of thin layers; it’s been compared to layers of saran wrap contouring the lungs. According to experts, the scar tissue and inflammation caused by microscopic asbestos particles can easily be missed or mistaken for fat on lung images — especially by those unfamiliar with the condition. During Clark’s deposition, BNSF lawyers slowly read his X-ray and CT scan history.

“There are nonspecific pleural thickening changes bilaterally.”

“Current changes are not diagnostic of pleural-based plaques and very likely could represent pleural-based fat.”

“No acute disease.”

“The lungs are clear.”

What Was CARD Sued For?

Clark is one of nearly 1,000 people who developed this disease after being exposed to Libby’s unique asbestos composition. Residents, workers and the public writ large were initially exposed not only by the W.R. Grace mine, but also by companies involved in the transport or processing of vermiculite insulation. After declaring bankruptcy, the mine left many victims to wait out an extremely lengthy settlement process that established non-disclosure agreements and, nearly 11 years later with many dead or dying, W.R. Grace has not yet paid many of the victims. BNSF, which refused to comment, is one of the companies that avoided bankruptcy, exposed a wide swath of the community, and still has not settled hundreds of asbestos claims. For Clark, it’s hard to maintain hope.

“Social Security shouldn’t be paying for my disability, W.R. Grace should be. They caused it. But the laws protect W.R. Grace because they filed bankruptcy,” Clark said. “I don’t believe I, personally, will ever see a penny from W.R. Grace.”

Clark was prescribed heavy painkillers that BNSF witnesses said were unnecessary. He said that he feels like he was accused of drug addiction and worries about how he may have harmed the clinic’s reputation with a poor defense of the pain that he wakes up to every day. The depth of Clark’s pain goes far beyond his affliction. In his deposition, BNSF lawyers made him defend using a disability hunting permit. Clark said that it was prescribed so that he could hunt with his son and help feed his family. In court, a mere few months into grieving the murder of his daughter, he had to defend himself in front of BNSF lawyers regarding how his daughter’s student loans were forgiven, because of his disability.

“What about the people who lost their lives? They’re putting a number on somebody’s life,” Clark said in a personal interview.

During his deposition, Clark stared at his hands and told lawyers about how he’d flatlined several times during an attempted back surgery. As his wife, Candy Clark, explained, Clark’s lungs are like airbags under a truck tire. During the surgery, Clark was lying face down while his oxygen content slowly depleted. Since then, he’s been unable to find a doctor willing to retry the surgery without accepting long odds.

“I can’t get out of my back pain because of asbestos-related disease,” Clark said. “It’s still weird to me; it doesn’t click that I can’t get back surgery and get my back fixed because of the asbestos-related problems that I have.”

The cases brought into question by BNSF were often disability referrals for “lamellar pleural thickening,” a condition that over 50, peer reviewed, scientific journal articles have focused on, providing strong validation of its existence. Diagnosing an asbestos-related disease is a complicated medical procedure that requires several findings, one of which is impairment.

Judge Dana Christensen heard the CARD case, and one clinic employee claimed that Christensen’s jury instructions on the definition of a “diagnosis” essentially directed the jury to find the CARD clinic liable for making false claims. The judge’s opinion and his directions were upheld on a later appeal, which CARD lost.

The judge did not allow the jury to hear testimony by former U.S. Senator Max Baucus, who reportedly advocated for the CARD clinic, and who reportedly affirmed that the clinic was following the intention of the law he’d helped create. Baucus was the author of the Libby provisions of the Affordable Care Act, created to address the contamination in Libby, and he worked closely with CARD staff to craft the specific language of the Act — including the requirements for a “diagnosis.”

The CARD clinic reads X-rays or CT scans and sends information about patients to the Social Security Administration. The administration then either approves or denies patients’ for disability benefits. As the clinic submitted forms for patients, the Social Security Administration approved them.

One interpretation of the Affordable Care Act is that the clinic needed to diagnose all patients before referring them. That was not CARD’s interpretation, and the clinic claims that they were concerned with the difficulty of spotting early stage asbestos disease. In essence: the clinic believed that they could diagnose an impairment, like Clark’s lung problems which keep him from receiving surgery that would solve his back pain. This went on for years, and, according to a CARD employee, the Social Security Administration approved cases until at least one month before the trial. CARD lost, though they maintained that the problem stemmed from a miscommunication with the Social Security Administration.

Another qualifier is a practicing physician’s diagnosis, and, according to court testimony, Clark’s doctor, Dr. Brad Black, persuaded him to sign up for disability benefits. The case focused partially on the disparity between Dr. Black’s reading of CT scans or X-rays and those of outside physicians or radiologists, with whom the clinic shares copies for each patient. For instance, Dr. Steven Becker reviewed Clark’s X-rays and found no signs of asbestos-related disease. He later testified in court against Dr. Black’s practices and diagnoses.

At one point during the trial, Dr. Becker, a radiologist who has significant experience reading the chest X-rays and CT scans of those exposed to Libby asbestos, testified that he had concerns after seeing several CARD diagnoses. Becker said that some were made without, what he considered to be, sufficient radiographic findings. BNSF also brought in other experts like Dr. Steven Haber, who previously testified for companies like Glencore and the W.R. Grace mine.

In court, BNSF’s legal documents state that CARD is the only facility in the world that diagnoses people with lamellar pleural thickening; that the diagnosis is made up, and that people like Clark are simply suffering from a false diagnosis. CARD was forced to make two arguments. One for the existence of this ailment, and another in defense of their references for disability.

The jury found CARD liable for 337 cases of false disability claims to the Social Security Administration. The decision was not retroactive, and no one in Libby lost benefits. BNSF spent nearly $1.5 million litigating CARD. In the end, the judge did not allow the jury to identify the specific acts for which they found CARD liable, and he barred both CARD and BNSF lawyers from contacting the jury to determine the reasoning behind their verdict. Both sides were eager to contact the jury, because the ambiguity introduced by the trial’s verdict set a potential precedent for BNSF’s argument on the validity of “lamellar pleural thickening,” and its very existence, as opposed to whether CARD was simply following federal law when forwarding patients to the Social Security Administration. With a less than clear verdict, the disaster’s legacy continues to vanish into the obscurity of court cases and the privacy of doctors’ visits.

Not Your Grandfather’s Asbestos Disease

What unfolded in Libby was once termed the greatest industrial disaster in America by the EPA, and research on the Libby amphibole is still being conducted. At the time, there wasn’t enough data to quantify the relationship between autoimmune endpoints or cardiovascular disease — conditions which were not commonly associated with other types of asbestos.

According to the Libby Asbestos Superfund Oversight Committee (LASOC,) new research on autoimmune diseases, like lamellar pleural thickening, were not known or considered a decade ago, and the EPA should reassess their remedies made under outdated information. In a July 2025 community meeting, the EPA said that they had no formal response to LASOC’s concerns.

“How do we determine how much asbestos is too much?” Jason Fritz, a toxicologist at the EPA, said to Libby residents in the meeting.

Fritz said that the Libby Asbestos toxicity value, derived in 2014 in order to assess community risk, was made with different information available and that the hazard characterization focused on all the asbestos knowledge at the time. In Libby, there was data on workers or on industrial plants where Libby asbestos was shipped, and the EPA set a toxicity value that factored in a level of uncertainty. The work studied populations exposed to Libby asbestos as far away as Ohio and Minnesota. It noted that many studies had found people exposed to Libby asbestos had higher mortality rates from COPD.

According to experts, what would later become known as lamellar pleural thickening is often misdiagnosed as COPD, or seen only as “fat” on X-rays and CT scans. The novelty of the asbestos crisis and the creation of the CARD clinic go hand-in-hand —CARD is funded by, and CARD’s records inform, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which works alongside the EPA and the CDC. Asbestos-related diseases weren’t identified until the 1950s in the U.S. Initially, it was often workers who were exposed and studied, but many recent claims are from people who grew up exposed to Libby asbestos through community exposure. It was not until the last twenty-five years that Libby Amphibole research began, and scientific advancements require time to evolve and gain acceptance, according to Tracy Mcnew, executive director of the CARD clinic. One scientist compared the effort to delegitimize lamellar pleural thickening to what tobacco companies did with cigarettes.

Clark’s mention of taking anti-inflammatory medications for his joints was a subtle point in his testimony. According to Jean Pfau, a partially retired immunotoxicology professor at Montana State University, there is a link between the unique effects of Libby Amphibole Asbestos and autoimmune diseases, like lamellar pleural thickening. In susceptible individuals, exposure tricks the immune system into making autoantibodies which drive painful inflammation and the production of layers of scar tissue in the pleural lining of the lung.

People with specific autoantibodies suffer from this lamellar pleural thickening, which progresses faster and is more severe than other asbestos-related diseases. Pfau’s comments on pain echoed Clark’s description and she continues to publish work about the links between Libby Amphibole Asbestos and autoimmune diseases.

“We’ve been working really hard to get the word out there, to physicians and other people who make the diagnostic criteria to say that ‘Hey in Libby, the disease doesn’t always look the same,’” Pfau said. “I think that it’s highly likely that it’s being underdiagnosed.”

The asbestos contaminated insulation shipped out of Libby is still in an estimated 20 to 30 million homes and public buildings, and with only a few doctors trained to spot lamellar pleural thickening, scientists estimate it is an underdiagnosed condition. Though there are many asbestos fibers, chrysotile is what many people think of when they hear asbestos, according to Dr. Albert Miller, a pulmonologist and professor at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. The Libby amphibole, which is what causes pain alongside lamellar pleural thickening, is different. Miller, who helped pioneer some of the original research on asbestos, said that he was skeptical of what people told him about the novel affliction in Libby. After studying victims of Libby asbestos exposure, the evidence convinced him and his colleagues that this was something different.

“Forty years ago, when HIV appeared, we didn’t have a diagnosis. We were completely puzzled,” Miller said.

After the 2023 verdict, BNSF lawyers separated from the company, took the information they found during discovery in the BNSF v. CARD trial and used much of that information to start a new malpractice suit that they filed against the CARD clinic, the former CEO and Dr. Brad Black, and the lead physician who made many of these diagnoses. The malpractice suit was then mailed to local media organizations before the CARD clinic had time to open their copy. The malpractice suit argues that the interventions made by CARD, for a disease variant that does not exist, caused harm.

“Hundreds of patients have no idea they were misdiagnosed, nor that CARD was literally in the business of misdiagnosing patients for years,” according to the complaint.

While these actions are separated from BNSF, this suit would not have been possible without the company’s legal proceedings concerning Libby asbestos — the malpractice suit builds on BNSF’s legal argument that CARD consistently forwarded people to the social security administration for a disease that is not readily visible on CT scans or X-rays.

The 2023 suit against the clinic was only one part of the Libby asbestos legal proceedings that have now proceeded for a quarter of a century. Clark was first evaluated in the early 2000s, when it was first realized that Libby was contaminated with a form of asbestos. As facts came to light, it became clear that several companies, including the State of Montana, had been aware of the asbestos issue. Courts concluded that while in operation, BNSF knowingly exposed people to asbestos while railcars shipped the product out of Libby — though the company is currently appealing that decision.

There have been multiple avenues, sometimes separate from BNSF, that would have invalidated asbestos claims against the company. In early 2025, if bills introduced by former BNSF lawyer turned lawmaker, Anthony Nicastro, passed the Montana Senate, they could have allowed BNSF to point liability at W.R. Grace. BNSF claimed that these bills were written and introduced by their former lawyer independently; they did not comment on their legal practices or stance on the CARD clinic suit.

Roger Sullivan, who represents hundreds of Libby asbestos victims for McGarvey law, broke committee procedure to point out the direct implications of these bills for cases in Libby at one point during the 2025 legislative session. Sullivan had previously argued the case in front of the Montana Supreme Court that concluded that BNSF’s actions were abnormally dangerous. In court, Sullivan said that every day 500 tons of asbestos contaminated insulation were shipped through BNSF’s rail yard in downtown Libby. He said that the company knew of the dangers but allowed contamination levels to reach 150,000 times that of the EPA’s identified safe community exposure levels. Sullivan, and the precedent set by his argument’s legal success, helped establish that BNSF has an obligation to pay asbestos victims for the damage the company caused to people in Libby.

BNSF has accused Sullivan’s firm, McGarvey Law, of working alongside the CARD clinic to conspire against the railroad — going so far as to unsuccessfully subpoena McGarvey law during their 2023 suit against the CARD clinic. Additionally, victims like Clark pose a unique challenge, according to internal BNSF documents, leaked by a whistleblower.

Delaying and Defending Against Victims’ Claims

Non-malignant, or non-cancerous, cases like Clark may suffer from asbestos-related diseases that can take 30 years to develop into a disease that’s worthy of legal compensation. This comes with a steep price tag, as BNSF reported a predicted $359 million in environmental liabilities in 2024. And, BNSF’s filings assert that they expect asbestos claims to be made against the company until 2050. Many sources alleged that BNSF’s intent is to chill the clinic, or close CARD in order to stop the flow of asbestos diagnosis and the legal battle against the CARD clinic has certainly taken up a significant amount of the clinic’s time and energy. In early 2025 the fines levied against the clinic shut it temporarily and altered operations for the clinic. BNSF was able to sue CARD because the company filed a whistleblower complaint against the clinic. Initially, the U.S. government investigated the claim, but they decided not to act, which opened the door for BNSF to pursue the suit themselves.

The leaked BNSF documents suggest the company has studied efforts to “positively impact payout filings” — achieved by preparing cases for trial rather than settlement. According to a recent complaint filed by McGarvey law, this manifested as offering cancer victims $0 in settlements, forcing victims to go to trial. In 2024, two plaintiffs overcame what one complaint titled “scorched earth” litigation tactics by BNSF and their insurer, Zurich American Insurance, that slowed their case; though the victims ultimately won $4 million dollars each, with one plaintiff testifying against BNSF on their deathbed with their last words. Now, in 2025, BNSF is appealing that same court case — a decision that could imperil over hundreds of other cases against the company.

McGarvey alleges that while patients suffer from aggressive cancers, BNSF made no settlement offers to victims. Though BNSF declined to comment, it is a corporation that has duties to shareholders. McGarvey alleges that BNSF and Zurich’s tactics slow and overwhelm the legal system, equating to an “investment in human suffering.”

According to AM Best, a global credit rating agency focused on insurance, individual asbestos litigation has become more expensive as social inflation contributes to higher award amounts for victims. BNSF is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, a firm whose owner Warren Buffett proudly announced plans to buy asbestos liability reserves from other insurers and has accumulated $2,384,000,000 in reserves, known as “float.”

Buffett invests these liability reserves before they are paid out to victims, if they ever are. Buffett’s Hathaway purchased BNSF in 2009, long after the asbestos predicament in Libby had come to light and he touted his acquisition of long-lived reserves, many of them “potential” losses from asbestos claims, in a letter to shareholders.

“Simply put, insurance is the sale of promises. The ‘customer’ pays money now; the insurer promises to pay money in the future should certain unwanted events occur. Sometimes, the promise will not be tested for decades,” Buffett wrote to shareholders. “Therefore, both the ability and willingness of the insurer to pay, even if economic chaos prevails when payment time arrives, is all-important.”

A decade ago, the E.W Scripps Company accused BNSF’s parent company, Berkshire Hathaway, of the same bad faith reinsurance tactics. According to McGarvey Law, that is happening now, at BNSF, and the law firm alleged that BNSF benefits from a refusal to pay any medical bills or make reasonable settlements to its asbestos victims in Libby, Montana. McGarvey law alleged that BNSF invested its asbestos liabilities at an average return rate that’s in excess of 11%. BNSF and Zurich, allegedly earned hundreds of millions of dollars from invested Libby asbestos liability reserves over twenty years of litigation and allegedly intentionally delaying the payment of claims as a self-insurer, though Montana requires that insurers act fairly and promptly.

“BNSF’s profit-motivated, cruel strategy is a violation of Montana’s bad faith laws, and we will hold BNSF accountable,” Jinnifer Marimen, an attorney for McGarvey law, wrote in an email.

Legal Purgatory

BNSF has argued that its legal actions are not an attack on asbestos victims, but an effort to ensure that disability determinations and medical diagnoses meet federal standards. In court filings, the railroad has maintained that it does not dispute that asbestos exposure occurred in Libby, nor that some residents suffer from asbestos-related disease. Rather, the company contends that diagnoses used to support disability claims must be grounded in widely accepted medical criteria and objective radiographic evidence. BNSF has said that without consistent diagnostic standards, companies and federal programs alike are exposed to improper claims, and it has framed its litigation against the CARD clinic as a matter of regulatory compliance and fiscal responsibility on behalf of the United States taxpayer, rather than a challenge to individual patients’ experiences.

In Clark’s mind, his exposure history is obvious. His grandparents raised him in a home insulated with vermiculite; they died from asbestos, nine of his aunts and uncles contracted it, and six of them have since died. Before becoming one of the first confirmed deaths from asbestos in Libby, every day his grandfather went to work, he brought back asbestos fibers on his clothing. Near Clark’s childhood baseball field, vermiculite was loaded onto passing trains — so close that home runs sometimes landed in the asbestos-contaminated piles of vermiculite.

His lungs particularly trouble him at night; he said the humidity hurts his lungs. He rarely leaves the house while there’s dew dripping off the trucks outside. In the past, he worked in a nearby copper mine where the cold, damp air harmed his lungs. He worked as a supervisor, and though it wasn’t a physically demanding job, he frequently felt the urge to take breaks, leaving the mine in search of fresh air. Clark’s wife knew there was a problem early on, when she would look outside while he was mowing the lawn only to see him fall to the ground, gasping for air.

Clark maintains that he’s never questioned Dr. Black’s referral; he lives in pain but refuses to get a second opinion out of fear that he could lose his disability benefits — a fear that was reinforced by BNSF’s suit.

In the court system, a three-year statute has prompted hundreds of asbestos victims to file suits before they have experienced symptoms worthy of actual compensation — a predicament caused because asbestos-related diseases have a long and unpredictable maturation.

“Further complicating the diagnosis is the fact that the latency period appears to extend well past 40 years, and even after a diagnosis, there is no way to predict whether the patient will develop symptoms and/or any impairment related to the disease” wrote judge Amy Eddy.

Eddy singled out Jason McDonald as a case representative of many in Libby. McDonald grew up in Libby and like Clark he was diagnosed with what’s known as “lamellar pleural thickening.” The early stages of the disease affect victims in a number of ways. McDonald claims that swimming hurts his lungs, but unlike Clark, he has no changes in breathing. According to the court, McDonald argued that he “has suffered and will suffer.”

Legal debates over the condition began with a 2018 workman’s compensation case, where a court concluded that a particular case of lamellar pleural thickening did not meet the court’s burden of proof. The court decided that in these cases, the best option would be for the legal system to wait and see if lamellar pleural thickening advanced into more serious forms of asbestos-related disease.

McDonald told the court that he filed a claim against BNSF because he suffered a loss of enjoyment of life, of services, earnings, physical and mental health, and emotional pain, medical expenses, rehabilitation expenses, the loss of insurability for medical coverage, and he feels great grief and sorrow — all predicaments seconded by Clark. He told the court he suffers all these things, but he realizes that lamellar pleural thickening is not enough to win against BNSF — though it causes him great pain.

Because of that, McDonald asked the court to wait until his asbestos-related disease reached a point that would legitimize a legal claim for damages. Like McDonald, many victims are waiting out legal purgatory, suffering the whole time from what is sometimes known as “Libby Disease,” the same as Clark.

While Clark walks, his toddler grandson easily outpaces him and he leans far to one side while hobbling, gritting through the pain. Clark still suffers, and his world is so reduced by his disability that he often uses walks to his shop as a cue for his abilities or a test of his well-being. He said that before he used painkillers, he needed chairs to rest halfway between the house and the shop, which are about 150 feet apart. Clark said that before being medicated, the walk to his shop left him feeling squeezed around the chest. Clark’s shop is typical of many in the West. Inside the large barn-style garage, there is a camper and a bed of gravel. He wanted to cement the floor since the dust aggravates his lungs, but instead, he used the funds he had on hand for a small patio. That way, his grandson can play without disturbing the lawn, which, like much of Libby and the surrounding area, the EPA came to say was contaminated by asbestos — a pollutant that doesn’t break down in the environment over time.

There’s a black Chevy truck in his garage which he spends a few hundred dollars a year on. When he can, Clark attends car shows where he struggles to walk from car to car, and in the park where car rallies are held in Libby is a memorial for asbestos victims. Before the EPA reclaimed the site, it was used to load asbestos-contaminated vermiculite onto passing BNSF train cars and shipped to nearly 250 locations across the U.S.

A private company operates the reservation system used to distribute access to federal lands, known as Recreation.gov (Rec.gov). Meanwhile, many would-be public land users lament the hurdles to public access — where tech-savvy users outperform with software that automatically adds a permit to carts, known as a “bot.” A bot will not check out or fully book a permit, but it’s advantageous when lotteries face odds as low as 1.7%. Bot use may not be fully legal, and it goes against Rec.gov’s terms and conditions. Using a bot changes the fundamental structure of permit allocation, especially when used during one of Rec.gov’s first-come, first-served releases.

While the contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, has historically denied bots’ existence and instructed land managers to deny widespread activity on the website, I have experimented with a bot that recently added nearly 17% of the Selway River permits for 2025 to a cart, without trying especially hard to book them, and while still leaving them available for others.

According to Kevin Colburn, National Stewardship Director for American Whitewater, knowing more about Rec.gov’s finances and marketing strategies could improve how reservation systems work for the public. Colburn explained that the way Rec.gov operates, you need to pay a fee if you want any chance of winning a lottery for public land access.

“For the Selway in Idaho, the odds were about one in six lifetimes,” Colburn said, adding that the Selway is a classic wilderness run in Idaho. “If you apply for six lifetimes, you’ll get a permit. On average.”

The lottery is not the last chance for users to win a permit, but bots can’t game the lottery.

During the 2024 March Madness release, I observed a user successfully using multiple accounts to obtain river permits. I watched the user pick up permits for the Yampa, the Middle Fork Salmon, and the Salt. These permits weren’t being botted a week before the trip was scheduled; this was months beforehand, during the free-for-all release in March -- when, in lieu of the lottery, remaining river permits are released the same way many campsites are.

When it comes to permits distributed outside of the lottery, the people who win are different than those who join the initial lottery. Whether it’s a combination of things like internet speed, third-party alert services or even a user’s occupation, there is a difference in who wins the second round of permits, said Jonathan Hughes, an environmental economist at the University of Colorado Boulder.

As these permits are distributed outside the lottery system, it’s important to note that bots are not stealing all sites or permits on Rec.gov. However, using a bot can essentially guarantee access for some, while botters avoid paying to participate in the initial lottery and its long odds. This, while some go for over a decade straight without winning a permit for public access.

Hughes hasn’t published his work yet, but he’s been quantifying the Rec.gov data he can access. By comparing the price of commercial trips — guided raft trips down the same rivers — to private ones, Hughes estimated a price range for private river permits. These permits are not trivial, as Hughes estimated a private permit could be worth $6,000 for a trip down the Selway. By quantifying the most coveted dates and comparing them to the rest of the season, he found that lower-income zip codes receive 25 percent less valuable trips.

A unique feat of bots is the ability to set them to book a desired permit, essentially choosing a prime date. Additionally, it’s possible to set up multiple bots on multiple accounts and to transfer permits between accounts. Fierce competition for permits was further evidenced by observations I made using an alert service for the Selway. Multiple instances during the 2024 and 2025 seasons revealed that cancellation permits would appear at random and then disappear within less than one minute.

There is evidence of other users adding permits to carts with automated software. Bots were singled out by one person who claimed to have logged a complaint with the Forest Service, and who had unofficially organized with the Selway’s ranger office to transfer a permit to a friend -- an action that was only possible because of a recent change during the 2025 season, where permits for this river were released immediately instead of at random, according to background communications. When the user canceled the permit, it disappeared immediately.

“Nobody will ever convince me that there was some random guy sitting at his computer in the pre-dawn with the Selway permit page opened and his finger on his mouse button,” said Rob Grey in a Facebook post.

Some commented that they often check the page and that it is possible. While this is true, there is software that does precisely what Grey described. Some bots alert users that a permit is available, but others will automatically add it to a cart for the user to book. In 2025, I watched a user book five permits for the Yampa and Gates of Lodore. Due to a software glitch on Rec.gov, permits can be held in a cart for several hours, when prompted by specific software, at which time most people waiting to click on the permit have long abandoned their hopes for success.

The Yampa and Ladore permits were released, one by one, and a permit should appear immediately when dropped from a cart as opposed to being cancelled. As a third person tried to book them, none of those attempts were successful; the permits disappeared immediately. The user who had secured the slew of permits initially then set up a separate bot to try and bot the permits as they were released. This was only successful 50% of the time, a scenario that could imply that, at times, the only competition for permits is between bots. Of course, someone could have lingered, waiting to book a permit and continually refreshing the page.

After several years of monitoring how long Selway permits are live online, I decided to drive to the Selway put-in this past June. I was searching for a permit holder, as I’d seen that one permit had been in a cart before being dropped and sitting for a few minutes, and then picked up by another cart roughly 20 seconds later. At the put-in, I waited until a truck loaded with cat rafts drove down the narrow dirt road towards a small boat ramp.

The man who exited the truck carried its momentum with it, strode within feet of me without so much as a nod, and headed down to a river gauge, hidden down a hill and behind several bushes. On his way back up the hill, I caught his attention. He told me that the permit holder was on his way. Interestingly, the man said that he’d been down the Selway about 20 times. In fact, he’d been down permitted rivers about 50 times, but only once on a lottery drawn permit. In time, his trip leader arrived. They spoke to me briefly but soon asked to be anonymous and only said that they had a desk job looking at a computer, and that “sometimes you get lucky.” The leader did ask me how I’d known they were coming, inquiring if I had used a “scraper,” which is a common name for a bot that alerts people when a permit is available — something that suggested a familiarity with bots.

A lack of equitable access should not override the need to regulate use, as Linda Reich, a volunteer at the Selway put-in, told me. Reich pointed to several apple trees growing near the river and explained that human impacts are inevitable. She recounted how, even though there is only one launch a day, she’d heard of congestion downriver when groups’ camping timelines matched up wrong.

Opening the river up for more use may sound compelling, she said. But, she also noted that, despite never having floated the river herself, to her own consternation, somewhere in our world should be this coveted and secluded, and that maybe that’s part of the point.

“Do we want this to be like every other place?” she asked. “You are about to enter one of the most remote places in the lower 48.”

What’s being done?

While the contractor that runs Rec.gov and the federal government are aware of the bot problem, it is unclear what steps have been taken to find a solution. Recently, there was a bipartisan effort to create greater transparency of Rec.gov’s systems and to establish a higher standard for reservation systems that allocate public access. In December 2024, the Senate passed the Review and Evaluation of Strategies for Equitable Reservations for Visitor Experiences Federal Land (RESERVE) Act, introduced by Senator Alex Padilla of California.

The act passed its Senate Committee with bipartisan support, but it was eventually tabled in the House of Representatives. Additionally, a recent Freedom of Information Act request revealed that in the months following the introduction of federal legislation aimed at reducing the use of bots on the site, there was no correspondence between the U.S. Forest Service and the contractor regarding bots.

The unfortunate reality is that while thousands pay, others circumvent the an initial lottery fee and obtain permits at a much higher rate, competing for the most sought-after dates. Among access issues, such as bots, the RESERVE Act would have established a study to evaluate how Rec.gov allocates customer fees between public lands and Rec.gov. According to plaintiffs in a 2023 lawsuit against Booz Allen Hamilton, the contractor for Rec.gov:

“[I]n just one lottery to hike Mount Whitney, more than 16,000 people applied, and only a third got in,” the suit stated. “Yet everyone paid the $6 registration fee, which means the gross income for that single location [and single lottery] is over $100,000.”

In 2023, an unsuccessful lawsuit against Rec.gov alleged that the parent company, Booz Allen, implements Ticketmaster-style junk fees -- collecting a percentage of the booking and lottery fees. Meanwhile, land managers rely more on Rec.gov than ever, and it hosts 103,000 sites across 14 agencies. This windfall constitutes tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars in profit, alleged the complaint.

“From 2002 until 2018, recreation.gov was run by the United States government and efficiently facilitated millions of reservations to National Parks and other federal lands,” the suit stated. “Beginning in October 2018, Booz Allen took over the operation of Recreation.gov and immediately began running the website for its own benefit, charging consumers Junk Fees in the form of “processing fees,” “reservation fees,” “lottery fees,” “cancellation fees,” and other bogus fees designed to line its own pockets.”

The bot issue was present at a November 2024 Rec.gov user conference. To the tune of game-show music, a speaker told land managers that the public’s concerns about bots were overblown, and the screen hosted a robot pointing to a slide that read:

“We understand how visitors feel, but that situation isn’t real.”

Brian Davis, a Booz Allen Associate, hosted a Rec.gov conference, where he conducted a game show called “Misperceptions.”He asked federal land managers if they thought there were bots on Rec.gov. The resounding answer was yes; they believed there were bots on Rec.gov.

When I asked whether allowing singular actors to obtain a permit was a concern for Rec.gov, Davis answered that it was not. Rec.gov’s website states that “bots may be helping a visitor secure a single reservation, this is not happening at a large scale and we are continually assessing and implementing new countermeasures and defences to mitigate these bots when they are detected.”

There is a security feature that prevents requests from being made at a certain speed, which is somewhat faster than 20 seconds. There is also an invisible reCAPTCHA, or software that stops automated software, such as bots. This is circumnavigatable with industry-standard tools like Selenium, which emulate desktops.

For several years, these bugs have been exploitable, and there are other bugs, which are less publicized but still impact users. Before river permits are released in Rec.gov’s March release, there is a bug where users are able to see data on which permits will become available. This does not require any advanced computer software or programming; it only takes a left-click on Rec.gov’s permit page, selecting “Inspect Element,” and a brief scroll through the page’s code. If paired with a bot, this bug would enable a user to pinpoint prime dates with an even higher chance of success.

This type of bug is of particular concern to Steve Groetzinger, a former IBM employee with experience in government contracts. Groetzinger expressed concerns about Rec.gov’s compliance with federal security obligations like FISMA and FedRAMP. He also noted that it’s likely that Booz Allen owns the Rec.gov code, rather than the Federal Government.

“Humans cannot compete with a bot that runs 24/7, 365 days a week,” Groetzinger wrote in one email to the USDA. “Paying a company to run one for us just rewards the wealthy and, more importantly, we see this is headed to becoming an ‘arms race’ for the fastest bot.”

Groetzinger wrote multiple complaints to federal employees. He noted that it would likely cost Booz Allen time and energy to fix this problem. Currently, Booz Allen Hamilton is on track to recompete for the next USDA contract, and it may be awarded as early as 2027. The company has expressed several times, in multiple communications, that they are performing several actions to combat bots. Those actions appear to fulfill their security obligations, and it is unclear whether the current Rec.gov contract mandates any further action. It’s possible that there is no current remedy for this issue. Perhaps that is why the RESERVE Act sought to compel a congressional investigation of how Federal reservation systems incorporate and adapt to emerging technologies such as geofencing, bots or other third-party websites monitoring and reselling reservations.

What’s lost?

After a warm spring rain in April 2024, a boater named Mho Salim prepared dinner for his group of half a dozen friends along the banks of the Yampa River. Nearby, a woman used her scarred, working hands to draw lines in the sand through imaginary rapids. Salim was assembling a Persian dish made of chicken, rice, lentils, dates and raisins at the camp table. He doesn’t use bots to float the Yampa River, but he has less than a three percent chance of winning a lottery for that access, so he treats each multi-day float as if it were his last.

Salim, a computer scientist based in Boulder, Colorado, has returned to this high-desert canyon time and time again using cancellation permits, which require him to be flexible and go during inopportune dates. For river trips, cancellation permits are released all at once at 8 a.m. in March each year and then individually after each successive cancellation -- the same way that many campsites are distributed. He is no stranger to reservation systems. For Salim, the problem goes beyond bots; it’s about holding reservation systems that distribute public access to a high standard.

“They’re selling gold bars online,” he said. “Like they’re chewing gum.”

Salim didn’t use a bot to book his permits, but he doesn’t need one. He’s only run the river during prime dates a handful of times. He’s used to being snowed on because he uses cancellation permits that pop up during March Madness and then at random throughout the season — often taking trips when no one else wants to be on the river. Land managers designed those permit opportunities for users like him so they don’t go unused.

It’s essential to note that Rec.gov does not control every aspect of permit allocation, only the software used to allocate public access. Permit allocation methods are often a regional decision, and there are multiple ways to distribute permits, according to Will Rice, assistant professor of outdoor recreation and wildland management at the University of Montana. Rice collaborated with other researchers to publish a river permit handbook in the fall of 2024.

The guidebook suggests that weighted lotteries are a potential solution to users’ frustration with such a competitive system, and a survey by American Whitewater highlights their popularity in the river-running community. This system could benefit users who apply year after year, in opposition to an equal-odds lottery. Though land managers have not implemented this system on Rec.gov, a weighted lottery would help ensure that users who consistently apply for a particular lottery build up a greater chance of winning.

Land managers set the quotas for the number of people who can access a river at once and establish the frameworks for how Rec.gov distributes permits, including cancellation policies. Rice’s work highlights areas of the system that land managers can improve. Some of those changes are already being implemented at Colorado National Monument’s Saddlehorn Campground, where Kait Thomas, the monument’s public affairs specialist, said that there is no standard “one-size-fits-all” booking window.

“It’s important for us at this monument to offer that flexibility so that a wide range of travelers have the opportunity to make reservations,” Thomas said.

Thomas explained that opening reservations six months out can limit campground use to people who can successfully prepare that far out. Young people or those with flexible lifestyles may not be able to access those sites in the same way. After seeing Rice’s work, the monument shortened how far out people had to book their campsites. Now, they offer multiple booking windows to accommodate other users. Working with Rec.gov, managers created several different time frames, one at six months and another at two weeks. They also added same-day reservations to Rec.gov so that users have a spontaneous option.

The addition of multiple booking windows has already garnered positive feedback at Colorado National Monument. Colorado National Monument made these changes with the help of Rec.gov, but some access considerations, like bots, are out of land managers’ control.

In the world of river permits, cancellations are intended to favor flexible individuals or those who live nearby. However, bots enable people to prospect, selecting the best dates months in advance or holding onto a permit until a better one becomes available; they have more options because they have a greater chance of securing reservations.

“For those who want to book a campsite in the Yosemite Valley, the conversation has been co-opted by the technologically literate,” a person who used bots to book a site in the Upper Pines Campground wrote on their personal blog.

Salim, who uses cancellation permits to access the Yampa, is familiar with online reservation systems. In fact, he coded the lottery system that the National Park Service used for the Yampa before they switched to Rec.gov. Small-scale reservation systems like what Salim wrote for Dinosaur are disappearing—the Grand Canyon River permits, run by the National Park Service, represent one of the last vestiges of river access not distributed by Rec.gov.

Though it is impossible to quantify how widespread bots are on Rec.gov or how useful they are, it may be a valuable reference for river runners to know that I would be certain of acquiring a permit for the Grand Canyon using a bot if Rec.gov’s current system distributed it. Meanwhile, Salim waited nearly thirty years to access that stretch.

He said that people making decisions about the Yampa may not be in a position to appreciate the river’s value to users. For years, he’s watched as fracking, climate change, and dam proposals have threatened Colorado waters. But there’s something else that he fears: commodification.

There are permits that people can simply pay for. They are allocated to outfitters. Jake Baker, co-owner of Solitude River Trips, said outfitters feel they are at a loss, competing in the current permit allocation system. Baker guides on the Middle Fork of the Salmon, a remote wilderness run in Idaho, and he said that fishing is the main draw for customers in September. In the spring and summer, the river’s reputation as a whitewater run draws people from all over the world. To supplement his income, he competes with private boaters for cancellation permits.

Finding extra permits makes him nervous, as it could mean the difference between living off of ten trips a year or building up to 13. Though he’s guaranteed permits for parts of the Middle Fork season, he doesn’t know what to expect for business year over year because of the cancellation process. He said some outfitters were finding cancellation permits while others had never been able to book a single trip. He would never use a bot, as it would jeopardize his business dealings with the Forest Service, and so he’s at a disadvantage.

“Running a six-day trip in the middle of the wilderness on the Middle Fork of the Salmon takes a lot of money and equipment; it takes a lot of logistics, it takes a lot of experience knowing how to run a class III or IV river,” Baker said. “The majority of the people in this country and in this world are never going to have the experience or the equipment or the time or the money, but the resource is for everybody.”

By Hayden Blackford

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