Title: Assistant Professor of Outdoor Recreation and Wildland Management
Institution: University of Montana
Address: 32 Campus Drive, Missoula, Montana 59812
Email: will.rice@mso.umt.edu
Phone: (406) 243-5477
Research Interests: As the head of the Wildland and Recreation Management Research Lab at the University of Montana, my research seeks to inform the management of shifting demand for wildland recreation in parks and protected areas. Core questions within the research agenda include:
What factors drive visitor demand?
How does shifting demand influence the ecosystem services attained by visitors?
How can we change visitor behavior in the face of increasing visitor use to meet management objectives and limit visitors’ ecological impacts?
How can wilderness managers best navigate trade-offs between wilderness character qualities in the face of changing use levels?
How can we fairly ration recreation in the face of use limits?
How are visitor norms changing across time and space?
Biographical Sketch:
Will is Assistant Professor of Outdoor Recreation and Wildland Management in the Parks, Tourism, and Recreation Program and Department of Society and Conservation at the University of Montana. He leads the Wildland and Recreation Management Research Laboratory. Will received a dual-title PhD in Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and the Environment & Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management from Pennsylvania State University in 2020.
His research focuses broadly on visitor use management in wildlands, with four sub-focus areas: recreation allocation, wilderness management, visitor use and health, and Leave No Trace. This research provides wildland recreation managers with social science to improve the experiences of all visitors while preserving the ecosystems that support those experiences.
Will's research has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, NPR's Science Friday and Planet Money, USA Today, and other international outlets. He has served as an invited lecturer in the National Academy of Sciences Distinctive Voices lecture series and represented the outdoor recreation research community as an invited witness providing testimony in a 2022 bipartisan congressional hearing on visitor use management in U.S. national parks.
Will previously served as a Directorate Fellow with the Alaska region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and as a trail crew member and ranger with the National Park Service in Wind Cave, Yellowstone, Cape Cod, the Missouri River, and Grand Canyon. In 2015, he became Clemson University's first recipient of the Udall Scholarship.
Education:
Ph.D. in Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and the Environment & Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management from Pennsylvania State University (University Park, PA), granted 2020
M.S. in Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management from Pennsylvania State University (University Park, PA), granted 2018
B.S. in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics and Policy from Clemson University (Clemson, SC), granted 2016