RE: pct-l-digest V1 #1327

Monte, I'm two weeks behind in the Digest but here goes:

NPs, Wild Lands and the UN: It's little-known because its not a fact. Go
back a re-read the All the wordage. The US ratified the eco-share section
and sponsored some of it. However, I'm embarassed as a citizen of a nation
that supposedly leads the world in environmental responsibility to admit
that our representatives think our sovereignty is more important than the
pollutants we allow to blow over the border into Canada, and over the pole
into Siberia. The US has not ratified the whole thing, or paid its full UN
dues for that matter. No the UN doesn't control how we manage our lands, we
have agreed to manage them in congruence with the accords (if it suits us to
do so).

My grand daddy was a FS supervisor in Washington, my daddy did some summers
in the lookouts and as a radio operator for the fire crews there before he
joined the Navy for the second half of WWII. I'm a 20 year veteran of the
USCG, and my hair has been both quite long and short, in both the near and
distant past.

The crux of the problem facing you and me is too many people. How we deal
with that equitably is the big question.
Back country access, recreational and commercial, will have to be
controlled - bio-diversity, not democan or republicrat politics demands
that.

Timber can and has been harvested sensibly. In the 30's Forest Service
timber cruisers were gods. They selected trees for harvest, preserving the
health and longevity of the forest as their primary concern. Local lumber
ops respected and trusted selective cutting practices. WWII corporations
waded into the old-growth with the 'clear-cut' mandate in the name of
'efficiency' and national needs. Big business still rules.

User fees? Yup, they oughta stay where they are paid, but does anyone know
how much of the total public lands budget your entrance fees actually cover?
Lot's of good people who have never been off a paved road are actually
paying for our 'right' to use the back country. I'm not complaining over a
few dollars here and there; I'm gonna throw out a figure of about $5,000
each to thru-hike the PCT if we were to pay our maintenance share based on
personal use.

I'm surrounded by BLM land, much of it scarred by 150 years of unchecked
commercial use. Look around anywhere in the Great Basin and see a tailing
dump. Cheat grass and sagebrush have replaced extensive grasslands,
primarily due to overgrazing in the 1880-1920 time-frame feeding miners from
Salt Lake to Sacramento. Folks, the footprints we leave behind last a LONG
time.

Good for those who worked so hard to nail down those 300 miles of private
property easements. They probably had to beg for every inch crawling on
hands and knees.

Some studies in trail use impact have been done, I just can't track down the
copy. For the record, non-profits are worse at record-keeping than the
government ever was, and many of the studies were done by foundations. For
instance I remember a study done a few years back in the East Bay Regional
Parks district, comparing foot/bike/hoof impact on a set of trails over
similar terrain. I distinctly remember two trails side by side for foot and
hoof traffic. All records/all data - collected by some foundation or other
with a grant to study the issue - now filed for posterity in some obscure
office or library.

Call me Coaster


* From the PCT-L |  Need help? http://www.backcountry.net/faq.html  *

==============================================================================
To:            PCT-L@backcountry.net
Cc:            "'tom@topo.com'" <tom@topo.com>