The US Built a Site to Ensure Fair Access to Public Lands. Then Everything Went Wrong

A report says bots may be gaming Recreation.gov, the federal reservation site for public lands, to grab scarce permits and campsites.

A tester built bots and fake accounts to probe the system, and found evidence that automated scraping and permit snatching can work.

Forum posts and developer discussions suggest this kind of abuse may already be widespread across popular trips and destinations.

The concern is that bot-driven reservation grabbing could undermine fair access to national parks and public lands.