As visitation to parks and protected areas in the USA continues to increase, many federal land management agencies have implemented visitor use limits within their respective management areas to protect the environment while also providing for visitor enjoyment. The rationing of use has become a complex task, with managers having to balance system efficiency with equality and equity concerns on numerous levels. Rationing systems such as lotteries, reservations, first-come first-served and pricing mechanisms have all been used in different contexts, with trade-offs existing within each of these systems. In February 2023, Glacier National Park (Montana, USA) proposed to transition their online backcountry permitting system from a manually-administered lottery to a non-lottery reservation system. This study uses the theory of distributive justice to deductively code public comments related to the pro-posed transition in order to determine how a sample of the public perceives changes in rationing, and how their comments are distributed amongst competing social goals. Many of these comments contain nuance, adding to a wide array of senti-ments that will provide managers with a public perspective on this multifaceted issue.