Forest Service and local authorities prepare to manage record crowds

Gainesville, GA - The Rainbow Family of Living Light has chosen a site on the Chattahoochee National Forest for its 2018 national gathering. The event will coincide with the Fourth of July holiday, and participants have already begun arriving. The forest will experience the highest concentration of visitors during the first week of July. They selected an area near Bull Mountain, just outside the community of Nimblewill, for their gathering.

The Rainbow Family is a loose-knit group of people from throughout the USA and other countries. Each summer they hold a national gathering to pursue social and spiritual activities and pray for world peace. Since 1972, the event has taken place on a different national forest each year. Crowds range from 2,000 to 10,000 forest visitors.

The USDA Forest Service manages the annual event in close coordination with state and local partners to protect the health and safety of everyone involved, and to lessen environmental impacts to the site by providing information and enforcing laws.

"We understand there may be impacts to our community, our neighbors and other forest visitors," Forest Supervisor Betty Jewett said. "We will work hard to minimize effects to our local communities and the environment. All national forest visitors are expected to obey federal, state and local laws and regulations, and we take the enforcement of these laws very seriously."

The forest resource protection plan addresses concerns about health and safety, watershed protection, natural resource protection and rehabilitation of the event site before the group leaves. The Forest Service is mobilizing a national incident management team with experience managing these types of events. The team is working in unified command with the Lumpkin County Sheriff's Office and other local authorities.

An event of this size can have significant impacts on traffic, communities, local resources, residents and visitors. Local businesses can expect to see large numbers of Rainbow Family participants visiting stores and buying food and supplies along routes to the gathering site. Forest and county roads in the Nimblewill area are expected to become congested during the event and road closures and/or traffic detours may occur.

For more information or to sign up for email updates about the Rainbow Family national gathering, visit http://www.fs.usda.gov/goto/conf/RainbowFamily.

To receive instant alerts and updates about the forest, follow @ChattOconeeNF on Twitter and Facebook or visit https://www.fs.usda.gov/conf. The Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests is known for providing outdoor recreation opportunities and protecting natural resources. Spanning 26 counties, this national forest is home for a diverse population of wildlife, thousands of miles of clear-running streams and rivers, about 850 miles of recreation trails and dozens of campgrounds and picnic areas. These 867,000 acres are rich in natural scenery, history and culture.