On January 30, permits for Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) went on sale to the public through the national recreation reservation system (Recreation.gov). Soon after the permit reservation process opened, many users were not able to access the reservation system.
The Recreation.gov team, both agency and contractor staff, soon discovered a problem with how the national system servers were distributing the traffic to the web site, which resulted in the inability of many visitors to make reservations. Several people were successful in making reservations for permits while others could not access the system at all. Once the Forest Service became aware of the situation, the decision was made to interrupt the sale of BWCAW permits.
Superior National Forest staff worked closely with the contractor over the past year, including time during the recent government furlough, to ensure the system was ready and provided everything necessary to assure success.
Currently, the contractor and agency staff are diagnosing the exact cause of the technical difficulties, carefully identifying how to fix the problems, and developing a detailed strategy to reopen the permit process in the near future.
As soon as possible, we will identify a new date for BWCAW quota permits to become available for reservation, but only after we feel confident the malfunction experienced today has been corrected.
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