Recreation without Consequences?

[Irrelevant]

Great article by an author we all know and love. I wish it was front page in every major publication on the planet.

Hiking Needs New Rules

We need to restrict outdoor recreation to certain places during certain parts of the year for the well-being of wildlife.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[mtnkid85]

Dang pay wall, Id like to read that one!
More and more we are seeing the impacts of "loving it to death".

 

[Irrelevant]

Man there are apparently a plethora of closet liberal rag readings on here. For those that have already hit your allotment of Atlantic articles:

 

[Irrelevant]

 

[Guy]

Thanks neffa3. I posted this on my FB page as well.

I suspect that "overlanding" and off-pavement motorcycling also negatively affect wildlife. And wildlife photography.. As a photographer I try to minimize my impact on wildlife, but I know that birds and wildlife have fled time to time when I've been photographing them.

Regards, Guy

 

[Irrelevant]

Thanks neffa3. I posted this on my FB page as well.

I suspect that "overlanding" and off-pavement motorcycling also negatively affect wildlife. And wildlife photography.. As a photographer I try to minimize my impact on wildlife, but I know that birds and wildlife have fled time to time when I've been photographing them.

Regards, Guy

They absolutely do, I think those impacts are both bigger and also better defined, versus non-motorized recreation which has often been thought of, and called, non-consumptive, when in reality the impacts are still there, still tangible, though smaller. Death by a thousand cuts and all.

It's a struggle to find a "use" of nature that doesn't impact it to some regard.

 

[marshman]

Thanks neffa3 for posting the whole article, I'm one of those guys.
I do agree with the thought process on this topic, people are everywhere all the time.
But man, I do not know if my rear view mirror - dashboard has the room for another permit. Got a discover pass for state land, a permit called Skidmore for some of the private timberland in my area, and a Lewis and Clark permit for some of the other forestland. Not counting the two permits I did not get because I'm too damn slow on the computer!
A regular permit party on my dashboard. Sorry for the diversion from your topic.

 

[Nameless Range]

Thanks for sharing Neffa. My ability to think robustly on this topic is pretty poor anymore, as I almost have a burnout about worrying about it locally - geographies getting used to death. That said, some things I think:

-The logical conclusion of this is a sort of further limitation on disturbance - could be permits, windows of time of day, windows of time of year, a combination of em all. But then again, we ain't logical. I do think the most pallatable way to reduce disturbance is to increasingly only allow those types of outdoor rec which disturb the least per unit time on the landscape. That topic alone is a dozen threads already gone off the rails.

-The effect of moving pressure elsewhere and how to calculate for it. I hear it all the time from our local game agency: "If we were to restrict harvest at location x, it would simply move that pressure to location y". Sometimes dubious sometimes not. Will we be kicking a can down the gulch? Folks restricted somewhere will just hammer the next closest place until we daisy chain our way into widespread restriction?

-Enforcement. Without enforcement - any policy, guidelines, permitting, windows of use - they're just suggestions.

-Cross agency coordination and the inefficiencies that currently exist. A while back, I mused about something like a Department of Public Lands. Totally near impossible of course, but as I am further involved with local landscape level issues, one of the real points of problems is that agencies too often work within silos. Most places aren't a monolith of management, and have BLM, USFS, maybe city/park land, etc. I'm finding that getting them all on the same page in a geography is very very difficult - could be different missions, different funding sources, could be the seemingly absurd amount of job hopping/turnover in those outfits, loss of institutional memory, etc.


Moving forward, I think we are obviously headed toward restrictions/limitations in what we have previously enjoyed, but it will be dinks and dunks, and maybe too late in a lot of places, and much of the public will act as if you are pullin out their fingernails.

 

[Hem]

Too many people with time on their hands.

 

[Mallardsx2]

Too many people with time on their hands.

My thoughts exactly.

 

[one ate E grain]

Whenever I read these things it always seems to come down to not sharing the resource, keeping the riff raff out. I've heard of ATVs scaring off elk less than hikers. ATVs can be located via sound every moment they are out there, no surprises, a quiet hiker is indistinguishable from the most deadly predator in the woods, a human hunter.

A method I've heard of from other pursuits where there is a limited resource is to make it harder to use. No roads means one must bike or walk or ATV, no ATVs means one must bike or walk, no bike trails means walk, ultimately no trails would severely limit usage, but not end it. Anyone with any woods sense can walk around without trails forever. It's a little slower but who is in a hurry. A GPS means people don't even have to know how to walk around.

I'd be way happy with many fewer trails.