Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity of reading and reviewing your interesting manuscript.

The paper discusses the case of Zion National Park, which has experienced a surge in visitors, creating management challenges, particularly on the Angels Landing trail—a steep, popular hike linked to safety concerns.

The author invetsigates sixteen documented fatalities prompted research into crowding and risk management using park and media reports. The analysis revealed most deaths did not occur on the trail’s riskiest sections where safety measures exist, nor were they related to crowding or high visitor use. Patterns in age, gender, time, and location were noted.

The paper is generally well structured and well written. The gap is correctly identified and indeed the topic worth a closer invetsigation, drivind to relevant findings. The findings suggest managers should separate crowding from risk considerations when implementing strategies like permits and hiker limits for Angels Landing.

I have the following comments:

• the paper seems to be underdeveloped due to its limited size, but the size is fine given the limited number of cases anayzed.
• in the Materials and methods section, please add all details about the time and method of the investigation
• in the Discussion section please try to strenghten the scientific aspect, now it lookd more like a descriptive report
• the Conclusions section should be separated from the Discussion and made as a separate section, including limitations and other similar cases

Good luck!

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Author Response

Please see attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript on crowding and risk management, focusing on Zion National Park. Below are my comments.

Overall, please keep in mind that the readers would want to see the theoretical contribution of the manuscript. 

 

Abstract:

- The background information is relatively long, and the explanation of this study appears relatively late. You could consider shortening the background.

- The phrases “connects literature” and “using…reports concerning, noting trends” are somewhat vague in illustrating the methodology.

- The expression “other factors” is vague.

- Consider including “crowding” and “Zion National Park” as keywords.

- Since this is an academic article, theoretical implications could be highlighted in the abstract as well as in the main body.

 

Introduction

- A detailed description of Zion National Park and Angels Landing in particular occupies the first part of the introduction. Considering that this is an academic work rather than a descriptive overview of the national park, it may be a better strategy to introduce the themes of the article before presenting the case area in such detail. Readers may have difficulty identifying the actual topic of the study.

- Please consider including some graphical illustrations of the study area. (Maps or pictures might be helpful.)

- Just above Section 1.1, the author states, “Therefore, the purpose of this research is to build upon the literature concerning crowding and risk management in park and protected areas, before analyzing the specificities of fatalities associated with Angels Landing.” However, before this point, the manuscript discusses Angels Landing extensively without explaining why the literature on crowding and risk management in parks and protected areas should be reviewed, why only fatalities, rather than injuries or other indicators, are the focus, and why only media sources are used to supplement the official information source by the National Park Service to reveal dangers associated with hiking in the study area.

- Section 1.1 consists of a single paragraph that contains several different ideas. It would be helpful to keep paragraph structure in mind. Literature addressing each aspect—“understanding crowding, its response, and its measurement”—may be worth independent paragraphs.

- The meaning of “visitor use management” should be clarified. The term, which is also used in the title, appears sporadically without a clear conceptual relationship to crowding management or risk management.

- For the paragraph starting with, “In general, national park visitors tend to perceive themselves as responsible for their own safety, and perceptions of the uncontrollability of risks are positively associated with these attributions [31]” in Section 1.2, the logical flow needs improvement. The first sentence concerns visitors’ perceptions, yet the citation of [31] is not clearly connected to risk management. The subsequent discussion of increased visitation and risk management is vague. The paragraph jumps from complex risk management associated with increased visitation to examples from Zion National Park and Angels Landing, focusing on increased visitor numbers and support services. The implications of “numerous information resources” for risk management remain unclear. How do such resources contribute to risk management, and why is the increase in visitors emphasized in this context?

- Section 1 concludes with the statement, “Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand if fatalities associated with the Angels Landing hiking trail in Zion National Park are associated with crowding and risk management strategies implemented by the National Park Service.” The causal reasoning that justifies beginning with “therefore” is not clear. The preceding paragraphs do not adequately explain why examining fatalities in relation to crowding and risk management strategies is important or overlooked. Section 1.1 ends with, “there are no empirical studies on perceptions of crowding in Zion National Park, nor at Angels Landing, more specifically.” This gives readers the impression that the study will address perceptions of crowding, rather than the relationship between fatalities and crowding (or crowding management).

 

Materials and Methods:

- Please specify exactly what information you requested from the National Park Service. Was the requested information limited to “date, time of day, gender, age, home location, environmental conditions, whether the death actually occurred on the Angels Landing trail, how the death occurred, and where on the trail it occurred”? Was your dataset a synthesis of case reports, or was the information provided in spreadsheet form?

- Please also clarify what you mean by “media coverage” and how this information was systematically collected, synthesized, and analyzed. Did you use any databases or specific keywords? Please specify the purpose and role of the media coverage information.

- It appears that National Park Service reports failed to include all death cases. Could you explain why official information does not include every case?

 

Results

- Please consider adding IDs for each case in Table 1.

- Is it correct that you attempted to include all fatality cases? If so, could you explain why there are no records between 1990 and 1999? Does this reflect the absence of fatalities or gaps in data collection? Is there a reason the study focuses on cases between 1989 and 2021 (and not earlier than 1989 or after 2021)?

- The author states, “These people came from all over the world,” but only one victim from Germany appears to be international; all others seem to be from the United States.

 

Discussion

The author may need to consider the following points.

- The study uses fatality data. To support the claim that “there is little support…as in the case of the Angels Landing trail, there is also little empirical support” for a link between crowding and risk, the author should first establish why fatalities are the best proxy for measuring risks associated with crowding. Injuries or other types of accidents might reflect crowding effects more accurately than fatalities, which are extreme outcomes. Although the author acknowledges this limitation, the usefulness of fatality data should be argued from the outset, with justification for why fatality data make sense in this context.

- Outdoor settings differ widely. The assumption that crowding is associated with fatalities in this specific hiking environment needs stronger support through a review and discussion of additional empirical studies involving similar types of national parks—those with comparable natural and managerial characteristics and similar visitor profiles.

- Section 4.1 is too short, while the introductory paragraphs of Section 4 are very long. Please reconsider the proportional length of the main section and its subsection. Furthermore, if there are no additional subsections (e.g., 4.2 or 4.3), it does not make sense to include a subsection at all in this case.

 

Author Response

Please see attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper is nicely written and presented and easy to understand. Unfortunately it  has little to say because that is the nature of the "problem" examined. There is not really a problem, sadly 16 or so people have died  in the park, details for all deaths are not available and most seem to have arisen from inappropriate behaviour/actions on the part of the deceased. That is about it. As one might anticipate, crowding was not an issue and there appears no negligence on anyone's part in the NPS.

More detailed comments:

The last two sentences of the abstract are unrelated and not relevant to the topic

lines 92-3  It is possible to find specific measures for crowding but that issue is irrelevant here. Lucas 1962 did so and it would be quite possible in this situation.

It notes line 137 data came from Park sources and the media, thus nothing really added in terms of anything new, and there is no statistical analysis, not that any would be needed in such a case with too few cases.

Why start in 1989, is that the date of the first fatality?

It is not clear why crowding is introduced, there is not really any justification given, for example, high numbers of deaths in crowded situations, eg OldFaithful etc. The two are not related.

The section from 221-8 is irrelevant and has nothing to do with the subject matter, it seems to be "covering one's..." to mention it.

There is really nothing that could have been done in the fatality cases and nothing new to discover or recommend.

Unfortunately the paper is really "much ado about nothing" although nicely stated

Author Response

Please see attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

My comments were addressed

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have decently addressed my comments. I don't have any further comments.  

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Revisions and additions make the paper more meaningful and relevant and of greater potential interest to readers.