William T. Borrie

Bill Borrie received a Ph.D. from the College of Natural Resources, Virginia Tech and has masters and bachelors degrees from the School of Forestry, University of Melbourne, Australia.

Bill has conducted research in Yellowstone National Park; the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex; the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Minnesota; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia; Region 1 of the US Forest Service, Oregon and Washington; Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona; the Gila National Forest, New Mexico 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. Bill’s research teams have twice received an award from the Chief of the U.S. Forest Service for Excellence in Research (2012 and 2018).

Bill served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Leisure Research and the Journal of Forestry, was co-chair of the 2003 and 2004 Leisure Research Symposiums.  

He has published over 50 articles, including in the International Journal of Wilderness, Environmental Management, Conservation and Society, Human Ecology Review, Tourism Analysis, Loisir et Societe, Leisure Sciences, the Journal of Park and Recreation Administration and the Journal of Leisure Research.   Bill’s writings on wilderness have raised issues of technology and wilderness, the ‘disneyfication’ of wilderness, the difficult notion of primitiveness, the role of wilderness as a sanctuary, and on the measurement, monitoring and management of quality wilderness experiences.

Expertise: outdoor recreation, meanings of parks and wilderness, conservation social sciences