Bill Borrie

Bill Borrie was born in Melbourne, Australia and received his Ph.D. from the College of Natural Resources, Virginia Tech and masters and bachelors degrees from the School of Forestry, University of Melbourne, Australia. He has been with the faculty at the University of Montana since 1995, and before that taught at the University of Melbourne and Bendigo College, Australia. Bill has conducted research in Yellowstone National Park; the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex; the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness; the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia; Region 1 of the US Forest Service, Oregon and Washington; Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona; and with the Bureau of Parks and Recreation, Portland, Oregon. He has worked in National Parks and protected areas in Australia and Germany, as well as with the Pacific Crest Outward Bound School. His research interests are focused on the outdoor recreation experience, and on the meanings of parks and wilderness. Bill is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Leisure Research, and was co-chair of the 2004 and 2005 NRPA Leisure Research Symposium.

Bachelor of Forest Science; The University of Melbourne, Australia
Master of Forest Science; The University of Melbourne, Australia
Doctor of Philosophy; Virginia Tech, USA

RECM 110 - Introduction to Parks, Tourism and Recreation Management

RECM 482 - Wilderness & Protected Area Management

RECM 500 - Research Methods

RECM 582 - Conceptual Foundation of Wilderness & Protected Areas

Park & Recreation Management
Visitor Experiences
Perceived Notion of Wilderness
Trust in Government

Determinants of Trust for Public Lands: Fire and fuels management. (written with Adam Liljeblad and Alan Watson)
The trust by the public in the management of public lands is an important indicator of likely success for the U.S. Forest Service. This paper looks at the components most likely to influence that trust, and measured 14 attributes that were hypothesized to contribut to it. [Paper]

Winter Visitors to Yellowstone National Park: Their value orientations and support for management actions.
National Parks embrace a diversity of values, and it is suggested that those values underlie conflicting attitudes towards park management actions. [Paper]
 
Public Purpose Recreation Marketing: A focus on the relationships between the public and public lands.
Public purpose marketing emphasizes factors such as trust, commitment and social responsibility that recreation managers need to consider in relating and communicating with the public. [Paper]
 
The Dynamic, Emergent, and Multi-phasic Nature of On-site Wilderness Experiences.
The wilderness is not a single, coherent experience, but rather a multi-faceted experience that ebbs and flows across time. Describes ten dimensions of the wilderness experience and shows how they change across the course of wilderness experiences in the Okefenokee Wilderness of southern Georgia. [Paper]
 
Approaches to Measuring Quality of the Wilderness Experience.
Setting standards for the maintenance of quality wilderness experiences will require sophisticated measurement techniques. This paper describes four main approaches. [Paper]
 
Why Primitive Experiences in Wilderness? 
The U.S. Wilderness Act of 1964 calls for “outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined experience”. As part of an effort by the USDA Forest Service Wilderness Monitoring Committee to understand wilderness character, this paper examines the intellectual origins and problematic ideals of the notion of primitiveness.   They may not be as politically appropriate and benign as when they were first suggested. [Paper] 

Crossing Methodological Boundaries: Assessing Visitor Motivations and Support for Management Actions at Yellowstone National Park Using Quantitative and Qualitative Research Approaches (written with Mae Davenport, Wayne Freimund and Bob Manning).
A quick description of winter visitor experiences and attitudes towards management options designed to protect wildlife in Yellowstone National Park. [Paper]
 
Women, Wilderness, and Everyday Life (written with Sarah Pohl and Michael Patterson).
Examines the connection between wilderness experiences and social change for women. [Paper]
 
Disneyland and Disney World: Constructing the environment, designing the visitor experience.
Disney is the expert at providing locations and experiences for the recreational visitor. As managers move more towards a customer-driven approach, will Disney become the standard against which they are judged? [Paper]
 
The Impacts of Technology on the Meaning of Wilderness (written with Wayne Freimund)
Technology not only changes the wilderness experience, but it has the potential to change the very meaning of wilderness. Technology can manipulate our wants, needs, and expectations. Technology raises a particular view of wilderness to greater prevalence. And technology may mask our ability to distinguish and determine what is lost in so doing. [Paper]
 
Protected Area Planning Principles and Strategies
Discusses the need for planning frameworks for the management of protected areas and some principles of visitor management. The use of carrying capacity approaches is critiqued, and the advantages of the Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) system are discussed. [Paper]