Lets talk a'bot it

With new reservation systems, public access has become a commodity

In a new era of public land access, bots enable tech-savvy individuals to game an online reservation system, while a lucky few secure coveted permits and the less fortunate pay to lose in long odds lotteries or scramble for inopportune dates.

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