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As I've grown older I've noticed this, though at a slower pace than described in the article.
When I was younger and lived in the appalachians, there were countless of waterfalls, overlooks, and camping spots isolated and away from everyone. But as time went by, these places became less isolated and full of litter, even the more remote spots.
As much as I dislike Instagram and its effect on natural areas, I think another large factor is the population count. The US has 46 million more people than 20 years ago, and that's more people looking to get out and have fun in nature.
One hope is for state and federal conservation agencies to buy more private land and enter into more conservation land trusts. We need more public space for people to enjoy, hopefully with fewer ATVs and campsite garbage.
There's a great book called Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey where he talks about the old national parks that were free, and where driving was banned. You had to hike/bike/horse your way in, and people came to spend long periods traveling through the parks.
He watched as the park services started building roads through national parks, and more parking lots, and how that changed absolutely everything. It also has a lot of old stories about the area. It's an amazing book.
Friend of mine mentioned one place that used to be protected BLM land. To get there you needed to drive down a 10 mile dirt road. Usually there would be 0 to 2 cars/trucks parked there. It was handed over to the park service to 'protect it' now there is a paved road, a parking lot with pit toilets and two dozen cars and trucks.
This sort of thing is why I'm totally opposed to giving the park service more stuff. Park Service should stick to managing Public monuments and the half dozen national parks that serve as sacrifice areas that draw tourists way from everything else.
when i go for a hike i bring a trash bag and often come out with it full. maybe consider similar and convincing your social contacts to do so instead of deferring to some other authority? the commons are what we make of them, and “it’s someone else’s responsibility” is the heart of the tragedy.
> when i go for a hike i bring a trash bag and often come out with it full.
David Sedaris did this so much they named a garbage truck after him.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2014/jul/31/davi...
My family does this on state-owned park land near where they live, but it's never enough. A solution of hoping people see the error of their ways doesn't seem realistic to me.
As far as deferring to authority is concerned, there is some benefit. Hunters were the worst offenders for leaving garbage behind, but now with the state owning much of the land, hunting is no longer allowed. Now there aren't hunters leaving behind piles of trash and illegally built blinds but there are more people out enjoying nature.
Deferring to someone else isn't the solution, but it also isn't a tragedy.
>> We need more public space for people to enjoy, hopefully with fewer ATVs and campsite garbage.
While I agree that we need more land to be protected, I disagree that we need it for people to enjoy. Part of the problem IMHO is that camping has become too easy, too comfortable. We need to set aside land and keep it wild. That means not installing car camping luxuries, not paving every trail so as to accommodate as many people as may be physically possible.
The lack of understanding of Leave No Trace by the general public is pretty astounding. Even among people who self identify as hikers. Lately there have been a lot of instances of people painting on rocks or painting rocks and leaving them out there as well as stacking stones for aesthetic reasons instead of a navigational aid. Both of these violate Leave No Trace but I've seen a lot of people flamed for bringing it up in casual hiking groups. Neither of these have as much environmental consequence as littering for example, but it is still an eyesore and a reminder of human civilization when one is trying to get away from it.
If you really want to get away from civilization then you should consider remote backpacking trips. Wilderness backpackers, in general, are strict followers of Leave No Trace and unless it is a super popular trail there won't be too many.
I don't understand the painted rock thing. It's a new trend in my neighborhood and hiking trails around here. People paint "motivational" rocks and leave them for people to find. Things like "JOY" and "INSPIRE" etc, as well as "SMILE" etc etc etc.
I briefly considered painting "demotivational rocks" and leaving those around as a counter-prank but ruled it out after realizing I'd have to actually collect and paint the rocks, though it was an amusing thought for a few minutes!
LNT is too open to interpretation on some things. Personally, I don't mind painted rocks as long as they are hidden / turned upside down. I also don't mind cairn stones in backcountry paths. For me, it gives me a sense of belonging, but I can easily see how it would bother others and so I don't make them. But I also don't destroy them as others do.
I'm just pointing out that it's a fairly slippery slope for some on stacking stones at all.
We slipped down that slope long ago; stacking stones even as trail markers (“cairns”) is frequently prohibited in designated wilderness areas.
Eg.
> Do not build rock cairns or other trail markers
https://www.nps.gov/seki/planyourvisit/minimum-impact-restri...
I don't approve out of going out of your way to alter things but "Leave No Trace" and other Sierra Club-isms (yes I know they didn't come up with it) hinder people's enjoyment of the outdoors and taken to an extreme, which many organizations that own and operate trails do effectively gate keeps the outdoors. Sure hikers can pretty effectively practice it but anything with wheels is gonna wear in a trail and fishermen are gonna effect the brush where they access the water, kayakers are gonna effect the shoreline at the popular places to pull their boats out. These are all perfectly acceptable ways to enjoy the outdoors.
yes, i was climbing a couple days ago and some teenagers started stacking rocks right in the middle of the trail head for exiting the climbing area. i don't understand why stacking rocks is something anyone cares about.
It looks cool in photos. And some people egotistically want to mark their territory, like wild animals.
Back in 2014, I was hiking through Alligator Falls in Queensland, AU with a friend. We probably bit off a bit more than we could chew and started an 18km hike at 2pm. When we were making our way back, we were lucky the moon was out and bright. We were afraid we might be lost or off trail, but luckily we saw and recognized this Rock Totem:
https://journeyofkhan.us/photo/rock-totem/
It kept us on the path and we thankfully made it back out to the car.
My theory on people stacking rocks is that many people new to the outdoors are inspired/overcome with a feeling of reverence and they do not know how to express it. deep down in their DNA something tells them to build an alter. Right or wrong the stack of rocks is an expression of their love for the place.
If you're gonna be all snooty about LNT going as far as admonishing cairns, then hiking trails are aren't LNT either.
I just got back from a week of backpacking in a wilderness area in Wyoming and saw about 6 people over the course of the trip, and it was great. Unfortunately for the author, he's probably going to have to sacrifice the camper if he wants any immediate relief - if you have to get their on foot (or by horse), it drastically affects who is going to go there.
IMO the longer term solution is to educate people. One idea (not a cure all, but it might help): offer free classes on nature conservation, good camping practices, etc. Each person who hasn't taken the class in the past N years pays a much higher access fee to the campground.
the people who are blighting the wilderness are ignorant, uneducated urbanites who would never take a free course even if it were available
I share alot of the same feelings as expressed in the article. Parks, camping, and 'wild areas' are victims of their own success. Where I live the largest Provincial Park is an 8 hour drive away for me, but only 4'ish hours from Toronto. The article talks about car-camping and towed trailers but even areas that require a 2 hour canoe trip and multiple portages to get to and it is still decimated by tourists.
Even though the barrier to entry is high, and isn't in the same ball-park as these car-campers there are far too many people trying to spend some time under the trees, and the park is being damaged.
Contrast this period with the 1980's. Disposable income is (apparently) lower now then it was back then. Back in my childhood several of my neighbours would have campers, or boats, or snowmobiles; and many opportunities to use them throughout the year. Now when I look around I only see 1 on my entire block, and with entire segments of the economy closing for good, factories being emptied; I see the golden era of the union, and 'extra' money as a thing of the past.
So how are all these people able to afford crowding our parks? The article talks about this decline almost as if it's a recent thing, but I have seen this same pattern going back over 10 years.
The only way I can find a reasonable amount of peace and quiet is to goto Crown Land, and multi-day canoe trips into the wild.
>> So how are all these people able to afford crowding our parks?
It is younger people. Whereas young families might once have gone to places like disney world, provincial parks are now the cheap family vacation. Reliable GPS, weather forecasting and cellphones have also made previously "remote" areas very accessible. There are no secret places anymore.
Overall, disposable income is up significantly since the 1980s. Like about double. (Which isn’t to say we couldn’t do better with unions and increased minimum wage.)
https://mobile.twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/130337025075527...
Just an FYI, Algonquin is the third largest Provincial Park in Ontario. The largest is Polar Bear (3x larger than Algonquin), but it is only reachable by air and you need special permission to visit. Wabakimi is also a bit larger than Algonquin and has road and rail access.
It really is modern ORVs that have made this so much worse recently. It used to be 4-wheelers, but that's a rough and rugged form of travel. You're not going to get an entire family plus drinks and food loaded up on 4-wheelers the same way people do now with RZRs. RZRs and their like have made off-roading way more accessible. What used to be outdoor gear rental shops selling kayaks and mountain bikes have turned into snowmobile and RZR rental shops
In my experience it's the family who shows up at the trailhead with two trailers full of RZRs who are ignorant of LNT principles, not college students and young adults getting out to car camp with their REI gear.
I was easily 100 miles from any notable population center, and I figured I would have my pick of any number of dispersed camping sites along the upper river. But when I arrived on a Tuesday afternoon [...] Every wide spot in the road was occupied
I learned recently that some portion of these people are actually living in dispersed camping areas full-time, my guess being to avoid paying rent. The level of destruction I have observed, as well as the difficulty of finding sites even in remote locations in the middle of the week suddenly made a lot more sense.
I went to a small college town and there were some amazing wildlife areas that were not well traveled. Some were actual parks, but with poor signage and little parking. Others were private land with neighbors who were alright with people traveling in so long as we kept off the grass when parking.
I went back recently and those private areas were now public parks, the public parks had full parking lots, there were signs about dangerous cliffs everywhere, and it all felt very .. different. It was no longer exploring the frontier. I wrote about it a few years ago:
https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/perspective/exploration...
Cached version of the article since it seems swamped right now http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pyUsrEA...
east of the mississippi there's precious little open/public land; a few places I like to camp around the VA/WV line are often just fire roads that were abandoned. They're now most popular with poachers and teens looking to party without fear of the cops being called, along with a few campers like me.
and since Covid, everyone seemingly got into the "original socially-distanced recreation", because now formerly rather low-traffic sites are packed, with all the trouble that brings.
trash is often everywhere. beer cans, broken glass, shotgun shells, and spent brass abound. Once just a month ago I came across a loaf of bread and a Hank Williams, Jr. album (as in vinyl), just sitting next to a fire ring. I think I've seen a dozen shoes left along camp sites in the past month.
I think somehow it got into the cultural mind that the woods are somehow maintained by a janitorial staff. i have no idea how it got so bad.
this is exactly what I've noticed happening a lot more in the past 2 years.
I've shown up to unmarked campsites where people had clearly abandoned 80% of their new walmart gear, so much I physically couldn't carry it all out to trash.
finding a good drive up camp spot in the southeast is basically impossible unless you go in the middle of the week, especially if you wanna keep it 100% legal (no private land). Our few national forests and their few roads stay busy, always have.
I run at a nearby state park several times a week. After running past litter for months, but doing nothing about it, I decided to take two handfuls of trash to the trash bin during most visits. After barely inconveniencing myself by picking up trash on my way to the parking area, months passed and I've thrown away more than 500 pieces of garbage! Doing a little bit over a long period of time can really amount to something substantial. It barely cost me any effort. I've stopped collecting since the pandemic but it seems like others are doing their part and helping keep an understaffed, heavily used park clean.
> This is the kind of behavior that will reduce our dispersed camping opportunities...More damage will lead to more closures by land-management agencies, and rightly so.
What would banning people from these areas achieve? Sure, you'd have an unspoilt wilderness, but...for whom?
The easily accessible areas are a tiny part of America's public land. Litter and vandalism don't significantly damage the local ecology in somewhere you already have hundreds or thousands of people passing through even with a leave-no-trace policy: they mostly make it less attractive for other visitors.
I'm not arguing that people should vandalise or litter public areas, or that the likely practical response wouldn't be to close affected areas. Just challenging the assertion that this would be a useful thing for the likes of the BLM to do. One possibility is that by closing them to RVs you keep them available to walkers on day trips or camping in tents, who may cause less damage if only because they can carry less stuff.
> but...for whom?
I guess that for animals, and rightly so, I may add.
A long time ago I was flipping through very early morning local TV, and came across some sort of fishing program that was talking about a neat way to camp far away from other people.
They would get a float plane and fly deep into the Canadian wilderness and find a lake far away from any roads or trails. They would land there and then camp beside the lake for a week or two of fishing and hiking without another human anywhere within 50 miles, or without any signs than any other humans had been to that spot in years or decades.
For anyone else who was confused, BLM in this context stands for Bureau of Land Management.
This seems at first unlikely yet ATVs (even where not permitted) have made attractive places close to trailheads accessible. I used to think 10 miles in was enough to get away from most people, but like the author I have found some of those places colonized by modern life.
Fortunately the world is still large and a lot of places are only accessible by foot. But a lot of those ecosystems done recover quickly.
A few weeks ago I was up in the emigrant wilderness and it looked like a majority of the visitors were using brand new gear. I hope what this really means is we’ll have a greater appreciation of backpacking and more support.
I try to be tolerant of people who prefer more motorized recreation than I do. But ATVs (and dirt bikes) really tend to rip things up--to say nothing of the noise. There are one set of trails in my town forest that are basically unusable if it is at all wet because there are basically lakes where ATVs have ripped up the trail. One ATV can really rip up a trail at a wet time of the year.
The article raises some key issues regarding sustainable tourism. I recall some recent posts on here that had some great discussions in the context of high profile destinations (e.g. [0] and to a lesser extent [1]).
I think at the end of the day we need to reduce our BLM lands in favor of increasing our wilderness. The problems he describes are solved simply by not allowing people to RV, 4-wheel, or motorbike their way wherever they feel like. I run into trash in the more popular parts of the wilderness areas I love, but I have to look for it, and it's my personal offset for adding load to the wilderness with my presence.
Do you not understand that there is BLM wilderness? We don't reduce public lands to increase wilderness. Wilderness is designated on public lands by Congress and it can be BLM, USFS, USFWS or NPS lands.
This is not confined to camp sites, on sub reddit dedicated to our own city there are always pictures of trash left behind by people in our city parks.
I would just suggest the BLM apply a surcharge too all camping, they provide you two bags, one for trash and one for recyclable materials; labeled on the bag what is acceptable; and upon leaving and turning these over you get a refund on the deposit. Perhaps a bag per three days with a twenty dollar deposit.
BLM "campgrounds" are usually unstaffed, there's only a lockbox and some envelopes for you to leave the fee in.
Another contributing factor is the rapid growth of offroad capable campers like some of the popup style truck campers and rugged trailers. They allow you to go almost anywhere a Jeep can go, sometimes providing as much solitude as backpacking. I like to think this particular subgroup is more environmentally conscientious than the general vehicle camping crowd.
They're better in terms of impacting the immediate area around them than the RV/trailer/car-camping crowd but way worse than the actual off road "pitch a tent beside your Jeep" crowd because they go off the trail or stack rocks to avoid getting a scratch on the 4Runner they're still making payments on.
It's like they took every bad habit they could find from the '00s Landrover enthusiast crowd and unironically cranked it to 11
Frankly I like the car-camping crowd better because they don't tend to stray far from the road.
Link at archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/20200909133530/www.hatchmag.com/...
A little book called The Monkey Wrench Gang suggests this trend began 50+ years ago.
its like the eternal september. it has always been happening. I wonder if prehistoric man was like "man, do you remember when it was just us and the mammoths but now the mammoths dont even come here anymore because grog is always splashing in the water with his family."
Its inevitable, as population grows yet public lands remain a constant, that overuse becomes a problem.
Emigrate to Mars I guess?