M
Mike Romain
Guest
Jeff Strickland wrote:
>
> "David Kritzberg" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> > Thanks Jeff for giving your perspective. I don't have any strong views about these issues right
> > now but what you wrote sounded pretty reasonable.
> >
> > My understanding is that park management lack good tools to measure, the benefits and costs of
> > keeping trails open. Like you suggested there are questions about who deserves the funds -- the
> > casual visitors v. the more intrepid users, and then also a tension between the ecosystem and
> > human use, played out as a battle between activists and some of the visitors. I don't have any
> > strong feelings about this other than to say it should be possible to build better tools to
> > gauge how scarce budget resources should be spent, and which trails should be open and when.
> >
> > The way I see it, a forest has a constrained ability to provide an array of services to humans
> > and other inhabitants of the ecosystem. Constrained by a monetary budget, and constrained by
> > nature, and by our technology or knowledge of what plants and animals need and so on.
> >
> > I would expect that over time, environmental economists and various scientists will develop
> > better advice for the management of places like your forest, and some of your concerns will be
> > given more attention.
>
> The idea behind Adopt-A-Trail is that the forests and parks suffer fromt he
> 80/20 Rule, 80% of visitors visit 20% of the space, and the remaining 20% of visitors go to the
> 80% that is commonly called backcountry. The issue before the rangers is, how do we justify
> spending budget dollars on areas where the vast majority of the public never goes? The
> Adopt-A-Trail Program has the uses of these backcountry areas get together once a year to
> perform a day of maintenance activity under the supervision of a single ranger. This approach
> leaves the other rangers to patrol the areas where the most visitation takes place, instead of
> deploying those rangers to the remote sections of the park or forest to do stuff that benefits
> a small number of visitors. This is not really about knowledge of what the plants and animals
> like, in most cases the rangers already know this. It is primarily about funding and puting
> public dollars to work in the publis arean where the public is most likely to be. If the
> rangers spent the dollars and manhours provided by the volunteers, the main visitation areas
> would suffer significantly.
>
> The way I see it is that I am a backcountry visitor to nearly every park of forest that I enter,
> so I am compelled by my ethics to perform volunteer services somewhere so that the areas I like to
> visit can remain open, and not be closed due to budget contraints. It makes me happy to do work on
> a trail that you might want to visit, my work keeps that trail open and without me you would be
> denied entry to my part of the forest. I appreciate the volunteer work of the others like me
> because I can then visit the trails they work to keep open.
I agree 100% Jeff!
Even up here in Canada the trails are getting congested and some areas are in bad need of an
adopt-a-trail program.
I have organized a large group of Jeepers from one internet group and Land Rover folks to help one
local township and one other Jeep club, a bunch of ATV'ers and land owners in a massive 3 weekend
cleanup of a local trail network. We averaged 20 Jeeps showing per weekend!
We volunteered the time, gas, vehicles and winches and the township only had to have the
garbage/dump trucks and a loader waiting at a drop point. The auto recycle guy took the vehicles,
we dragged out a dozen or so, the tire recycle folks took the 100's of tires, scrap guy took all
the steel bits and there was 3.5 metric tons of plain garbage the township had to pay for to send
to the dump.
We pulled everything from cars to boats to roofing shingles out of there.
This clean up might be happening again this year. It 'certainly' has eased the pressure for the area
to be closed down.
We got great local press coverage and a wicked write up in the Land Rover Magazine.
If more local groups of off roaders of all flavors helped out this way at their local favorite spot
and got a bit of press on it, people's impressions of off roaders would improve.
Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's
>
> "David Kritzberg" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> > Thanks Jeff for giving your perspective. I don't have any strong views about these issues right
> > now but what you wrote sounded pretty reasonable.
> >
> > My understanding is that park management lack good tools to measure, the benefits and costs of
> > keeping trails open. Like you suggested there are questions about who deserves the funds -- the
> > casual visitors v. the more intrepid users, and then also a tension between the ecosystem and
> > human use, played out as a battle between activists and some of the visitors. I don't have any
> > strong feelings about this other than to say it should be possible to build better tools to
> > gauge how scarce budget resources should be spent, and which trails should be open and when.
> >
> > The way I see it, a forest has a constrained ability to provide an array of services to humans
> > and other inhabitants of the ecosystem. Constrained by a monetary budget, and constrained by
> > nature, and by our technology or knowledge of what plants and animals need and so on.
> >
> > I would expect that over time, environmental economists and various scientists will develop
> > better advice for the management of places like your forest, and some of your concerns will be
> > given more attention.
>
> The idea behind Adopt-A-Trail is that the forests and parks suffer fromt he
> 80/20 Rule, 80% of visitors visit 20% of the space, and the remaining 20% of visitors go to the
> 80% that is commonly called backcountry. The issue before the rangers is, how do we justify
> spending budget dollars on areas where the vast majority of the public never goes? The
> Adopt-A-Trail Program has the uses of these backcountry areas get together once a year to
> perform a day of maintenance activity under the supervision of a single ranger. This approach
> leaves the other rangers to patrol the areas where the most visitation takes place, instead of
> deploying those rangers to the remote sections of the park or forest to do stuff that benefits
> a small number of visitors. This is not really about knowledge of what the plants and animals
> like, in most cases the rangers already know this. It is primarily about funding and puting
> public dollars to work in the publis arean where the public is most likely to be. If the
> rangers spent the dollars and manhours provided by the volunteers, the main visitation areas
> would suffer significantly.
>
> The way I see it is that I am a backcountry visitor to nearly every park of forest that I enter,
> so I am compelled by my ethics to perform volunteer services somewhere so that the areas I like to
> visit can remain open, and not be closed due to budget contraints. It makes me happy to do work on
> a trail that you might want to visit, my work keeps that trail open and without me you would be
> denied entry to my part of the forest. I appreciate the volunteer work of the others like me
> because I can then visit the trails they work to keep open.
I agree 100% Jeff!
Even up here in Canada the trails are getting congested and some areas are in bad need of an
adopt-a-trail program.
I have organized a large group of Jeepers from one internet group and Land Rover folks to help one
local township and one other Jeep club, a bunch of ATV'ers and land owners in a massive 3 weekend
cleanup of a local trail network. We averaged 20 Jeeps showing per weekend!
We volunteered the time, gas, vehicles and winches and the township only had to have the
garbage/dump trucks and a loader waiting at a drop point. The auto recycle guy took the vehicles,
we dragged out a dozen or so, the tire recycle folks took the 100's of tires, scrap guy took all
the steel bits and there was 3.5 metric tons of plain garbage the township had to pay for to send
to the dump.
We pulled everything from cars to boats to roofing shingles out of there.
This clean up might be happening again this year. It 'certainly' has eased the pressure for the area
to be closed down.
We got great local press coverage and a wicked write up in the Land Rover Magazine.
If more local groups of off roaders of all flavors helped out this way at their local favorite spot
and got a bit of press on it, people's impressions of off roaders would improve.
Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's
