One wonders how long it will take for land management agencies to adapt.
In my estimation, the first thing that will need to happen is that a significant number of cherished places will have to be largely damaged or destroyed. This may prompt enough public outcry (we can hope) where politicians will be forced to support the additional funding that agencies will need to manage the visitation. Use/entrance fees will likely be an intermediate step and will be introduced where they currently do not exist and increased where they do.
And for many places, it will be too late anyway. I just don't realistically see an alternative which provides a positive outcome.
Mora is far from the only one to witness worrying changes in national and state parks. Many of these spaces, supposed to be untouched swaths of time-proof wilderness, have been overrun by first-time visitors seeking refuge from quarantine, joblessness, or the inability to take far-flung vacations. And as people have flooded into the parks, new crises have arisen for rangers and nearby communities
rangers ... said they have all seen increases in visitation following COVID-19, particularly from first-timers. RV and camper sales have surged; so have campground reservations across the country. With travelers still leery of airplanes, and most indoor entertainment options closed, many families seem to be embracing a relatively cheap getaway option where the risk of catching the virus is much lower than it is indoors.
At Arizona lakes, visitors have left behind dirty diapers, shoes, broken glass and entire grills
@chumley
On Friday May 1st I was camped about 7 miles in on WCC #17, staged for Maiden Falls the next day. 42 people passed me heading upstream between 7PM Friday and 10:30AM Saturday morning. It's a problem out there for sure. The most I've ever seen in these parts on any trip is maybe 5-6 people.
Jim_H wrote: It isn't that hard to go 3 feet off the trail!
One time when I was at Canyon de Chelly sometime in the spring of 1995 I was stopped at one of the overlooks on the north side road. As I got out of my car, I noticed that the blanket spread out with indian jewelry on it for sale had been left unattended.
As I went up the short trail to the overlook, I saw ahead of me a Navajo woman seemingly sitting in the dirt next to the trail in a long skirt. The long skirt and the way she was there sort of motionless meant that it didn't click in my mind what she was doing. In my younger, naive mind I thought she was probably taking a contemplative moment to meditate or something. Soon enough, she got up and started walking toward me and I said hello as she passed.
Mere seconds later, I passed her #2 maybe a foot or so off of the trail.
@chumley
I hike during the week, M-F. I hunker down inside the bunker & leave all trails to the weekend hoards. This just seems like a prudent way to maintain "social distancing" from others, most of whom aren't wearing masks when passing others on the trails.
It’s unclear why people continue to leave trash in the water, deface rocks by the creek with graffiti and damage trees by carving into them in Oak Creek Canyon.
Kollus said the groups are also try to work together and re-imagine their messaging techniques.
Does anybody really believe that the problem is messaging?
I'm not sure what my spirit animal is, but I'm confident it has rabies.
My assumption, the perpetrators are roughly aged 15 to early, maybe mid-30s, and all from the Valley, or other urban areas. It isn't even really ignorance, because if you guided them through the logical steps of not trashing a place, they would intuitively know not to do these things, but simply do not care.
The only solution is heavy handed enforcement, fines, and fairly draconian punishments for things like carving into trees and defacing rocks. 10,000 hours of community service on the Forest? There is really no excuse for this. GenZ and Millennial babies are showing us their true colors these days, Mommy didn't discipline them, so it is up the public to it.
@friendofThundergod
The trash along the creek will eventually get to Phoenix, and the lower Verde, too.
Also, I propose a $10,000 fine for an infraction of vandalism. Foreign tourists caught violating the law must be kept in jail until posting $100,000 bail, or paying the hefty fine, in cash. Just in case. Maybe the same for citizens, too. we can post this at trailhead and have cameras with facial recognition AI to comb social media and twitter shares, looking to identify these people, and enact our harsh punishment. Corporal, if need be.
This last Saturday while we were up in Oak Creek our son says lets take a drive on FR 535 which is off 89A going west about a mile after you get out of the canyon. He said the road is nice and there is a huge meadow we can wander. Right away we were all appalled at the trash. I've seen photos online, but to see it in person was sickening, plus all the 5 gallon buckets away from the fire pits and we know what they are.
It’s unclear why people continue to leave trash in the water, deface rocks by the creek with graffiti and damage trees by carving into them in Oak Creek Canyon.
Kollus said the groups are also try to work together and re-imagine their messaging techniques.
Does anybody really believe that the problem is messaging?
The typical fallback response is to encourage desired behavior through education. In this case, promoting wilderness ethics (though I question whether the idea of littering is even wilderness, or basic human societal ethics.) Messaging is the basic approach - get your message to everyone, repeat it as often as possible until it sinks in.
What is your proposal? Educating people unwilling to listen is a difficult problem.
Hike Arizona it is full of sharp, pointy, ankle-twisting, HAZmaster crushing ROCKS!!
Hike Arizona it is full of sharp, pointy, shin-stabbing, skin-shredding plants!
Hike Arizona it is full of striking, biting, stabbing, venomous wildlife!
Restrict access. Let people access it with a permit and make them responsible for the site they occupy. Require a permit for campfires. Require video proof of it being extinguished. Require photos of you putting trash bags into your vehicle or into an approved receptacle. If you don't have photos of that you get the firing squad. Welcome to the new North Korea.
I'm not sure what my spirit animal is, but I'm confident it has rabies.
Hike Arizona it is full of sharp, pointy, ankle-twisting, HAZmaster crushing ROCKS!!
Hike Arizona it is full of sharp, pointy, shin-stabbing, skin-shredding plants!
Hike Arizona it is full of striking, biting, stabbing, venomous wildlife!
@nonot
Somewhere I’ve been where it seems strict enforcement and policing of a permit system actually works is the Enchantments in Washington. There were a ton of rangers out looking for permits, everyone had to have their permit showing on their bag, and I don’t think I honestly encountered any trash while I was on the trail.
I think extremely strict permitting and enforcement is the only way we are going to be able to control it, unfortunately.
It's quite a shame. The books I'd read as a kid suggested by this time we'd have flying cars and robots to take care of everything for us, and what is our society today actually doing? Struggling with fundamental issues like picking up your trash and not drawing graffiti everywhere... Where did we go wrong as a society?
Perhaps I read the wrong books. Wall-E seems to have gotten it right, seems we are doomed to let the earth fill so high with garbage that humankind can no longer live on the planet.
The issue I have with permits is that the younger your are (or if unfortunately you lose your job) the more the "minimal" permit fees become a detractor. On an adult salary most won't struggle to pay a 20-50 dollar permit fee, but when you're a young kid with a part time job, or out of work, that's a lot for many to cough up.
If you don't learn to appreciate the wilderness when young, it seems less likely you'd support it when older, and thus the population base of people that support environmental preservation and whatnot diminishes. Permits may be a temporary answer to the trash issue but not for cultivating longer term environmental preservation. There is value in education vs solely slapping down access restriction on everything. I wonder how many HAZ'ers had their first wilderness experience when only a child? Or in their teens?
Hike Arizona it is full of sharp, pointy, ankle-twisting, HAZmaster crushing ROCKS!!
Hike Arizona it is full of sharp, pointy, shin-stabbing, skin-shredding plants!
Hike Arizona it is full of striking, biting, stabbing, venomous wildlife!
@Ashleyannmarie Same with fiery furnace in Utah. Permit required visible on your backpack and you had to watch a video on LNT to even get your permit! Zero trash or overcrowding there.
People who make grand predictions of almost pure unbridled optimism clearly don't understand humans beings, for which a new generation can be expected every 20 to 30 years, or so, to repeat the experiment with lots of reoccurring problems. Our desires, our needs, or our internal programming is not flying cars or some distant imagining of Star Trek or whatever. Its what we see right now in society, and humans have struggled with since our populations became large enough that most of us would refer to these early iterations of humans as a civilization. The naive seem to think we, as a species, are headed somewhere, and that it is lofty and grand. A significant portion of the US population today currently believes the reason they aren't rich is because of "systemic" nonsense, and the numbers of people who use drugs is something like 20%. Having spoiled losers leave piles of trash and feces someplace public, or carving into trees, or painting rocks, is just how a careless, selfish animal with no connection to something, or use for these places behaves.
This is why harsh draconian measures are necessary to exact a brutal, cruel form of discipline! To spread the message, and make examples of those who dare to violate the wilderness! Think I'm wrong? Pay attention to Portland, Oregon.
—8.1 million more Americans went hiking in 2020 compared to ’19.
— 7.9 million more went camping last year.
— 3.4 million more participated in freshwater fishing.
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