How Low-Impact Camping Benefits California

Today's campers enjoy spending the night under the stars on unique, beautiful, and quiet land like yours. Fewer sites, more privacy, and a commitment to leaving the land better than you found it — this is what we consider low-impact camping.

Low-impact camping increases affordable access to California’s outdoor destinations, helps conserve land and biodiversity, supports California’s small farmers and ranchers, and drives economic development in our rural communities. Let's explore each of these benefits more.

Increasing affordable access to California’s outdoor destinations. 

Low-impact camping increases access to the outdoors for more Californians without impacting long-term housing availability. Here’s how:

• Providing an economical accommodation option: Low impact camping requires little or no infrastructure. This means Californians can experience our stunning – yet often expensive – outdoor destinations for as little as $5 per night.

• Increasing access to the coast: Affordable accommodations are especially important for increasing access to the coast. More than 150 low-impact camping areas offer access to California’s coast.

• Preserving long-term housing availability: Because low-impact camping sites aren’t suitable as long term residences, they add places for visitors to stay temporarily without putting additional pressure on the limited amount of long-term housing units. 

Conserving land and biodiversity 

Low-impact camping supports California’s objectives to protect and restore biodiversity and build resilience to climate change. Here’s how:

• Connecting more Californians to nature: When we get outside, we can’t help but fall in love with the natural world. Developing deeper connections to nature increases the likelihood that we’ll take action to protect it for the future.

• Creating a self-sustaining economic engine: Hosts use the income they earn from hosting to pay their property taxes and mortgages. This protects these natural areas from sale, subdivision, or commercial development. 

Supporting California’s farmers and ranchers 

The majority of low-impact camping areas in California categorize their land as a farm, ranch, and other working land. Agricultural lands are highly desirable locations for low impact camping, and they benefit our farmers and ranchers too. Here’s how:

• Promoting agricultural heritage: Low-impact camping directly connects Californians to agricultural lands and lifestyles. These opportunities are invaluable in educating the next generation about the importance of farming and ranching.

• Supplementing income: Low-impact camping provides sustainable revenue to keep working lands working and avoid land sale or subdivision.

• Diversifying revenue: Low-impact camping is an important diversification strategy for landowners who are working tirelessly to hedge against low commodity prices, higher production costs, drought, wildfires, and more. 

Driving economic development in our rural communities

Low-impact camping harnesses the financial power of outdoor recreation to create sustainable revenue for small businesses, farmers and ranchers, and other local landowners. Here’s how: 

• Supporting small businesses: During an average visit, low-impact campers spend $300 at local restaurants, cafes, gear shops, farm stands, and more. Taken together, campers spent $39 million at main street businesses in California in 2022 alone.

• Creating jobs: Hosts are job creators. They are employing local community members as cleaning staff, landscapers, gardeners, farm assistants, and more with the revenue brought in from hosting campers.