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We can have wilderness. The eliteness of this article really bothers me. Why should we be trying to make parks less appealing to people. Again we have wildernes

We can have wilderness. The eliteness of this article really bothers me. Why should we be trying to make parks less appealing to people. Again we have wilderness preserves in which we preserve wilderness, letting people experience natural beauty is a different but also good thing

andrewzah 6y ago
Putting asphalt roads and hotels in Yellowstone for example isn't really preserving the wilderness. Having hordes of people walk around and cause issues with bears/wolves/other local species isn't really preserving the wilderness. Etc. In my experience people don't treat national parks with much respect.
- mjevans 6y ago
  I can't recall a time in my adult life when it was reliable and reasonable to expect respect as a norm. However the vitriol in the US seems to have risen over the last 20, maybe more, years. These days I really do expect disrespect, at least to stand out as the perceived norm due to how much more common it seems to be. (It isn't really that common, but if you're in a crowd every day over a year, several hundred different people across a couple hundred days, statistics catches up!)
- refurb 6y ago
  Go to any national park and you’re lucky if 2% of tourists venture further than 5m from any road or maintained path. You can have millions go through a a national park every year and 98% of the park will still be preserved with harmless any humans passing through.
  - alistairSH 6y ago
    Certainly true, but we now have roads to all the "best" spots, sometimes with parking lots and paved trails. And long lines of cars waiting to get into the parks. There has to be a better way. Local example - Great Falls National Park (VA side). Proximity to DC means it's a popular place. Fine, the NPS keeps it pretty tidy. But, there are often cars backed up for a mile in every direction - the single entrance is a major choke point for traffic. This is despite the pay booth being a good ways down from the intersection - the cars just back up onto surrounding roads. The park is often full, so lots of visitors end up turned away (where they then move to one of 2-3 nearby parks with less facilities and ruin those with trash and feces).
- vkou 6y ago
  > Putting asphalt roads and hotels in Yellowstone for example isn't really preserving the wilderness. Compared to normal patterns of human land use (agriculture, living space, resource extraction), national parks, inundated-with-tourists-or-not certainly qualify as preservation. As another poster said, 50 yards from the trails lie hundreds of square miles of wilderness that few visitors venture into.
prawn 6y ago
There are also absolutely massive portions of most national parks that are effectively wilderness. You barely have to stray far from a major trail to see no one at all. Go look at satellite maps of Yosemite as a common example - huge sections would be an ordeal to even reach on foot.
EdwardDiego 6y ago
The difficulty is always balancing accessibility to beautiful areas for people who don't have the wherewithal to hike for 2 days in rough terrain, with preserving the wilderness aspect for those who can. I've found the biggest issue in preserving wilderness is helicopters and planes - they can easily cover large amounts of terrain in short time in a very noisy and intrusive manner. In NZ, we try to a) ensure the 'front country' has facilities for easy access by day trippers and that b) the 'back country' is not disturbed by commercial operations. In some parts, the balance tips further in one direction than the other - as an example, while walking the Milford Track[1], hardly a backcountry experience due to the very well developed tracks and facilities to cope with huge numbers of visitors, I still found the very frequent overflights by tourist charters detracted from the overall experience. It was still gorgeous, but the continual drone of tourist flights for people who didn't want to, or couldn't walk the track, detracted significantly. In my usual stomping ground national park, no commercial flights or landings are allowed, you can't even lead a guided walk. You still get the occasional private pilot flying through, and of course can't really do anything about the airliners flying to Australia, but the frequency is far lower than you find in the more commercialised areas like Fiordland or Aoraki Mt Cook. The Department of Conservation has a policy of focusing commercial activity in areas tourists want to be in anyway, so that the rest of the conservation estate is largely preserved for NZ citizens undertaking recreational activities. [1]: https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-go/fiordland/places/fiordland-national-park/things-to-do/tracks/milford-track/ https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-go/fi...
- hinkley 6y ago
  In a large enough park, you could have several “front countries” for attractions near the edge of the park without upsetting the interior with roads. Roads through a park have all the same problems as logging roads for habitat disturbance, plus having people who like to stop or throw shit out the window.

andrewzah 6y ago

Putting asphalt roads and hotels in Yellowstone for example isn't really preserving the wilderness. Having hordes of people walk around and cause issues with bears/wolves/other local species isn't really preserving the wilderness. Etc. In my experience people don't treat national parks with much respect.

mjevans 6y ago
I can't recall a time in my adult life when it was reliable and reasonable to expect respect as a norm. However the vitriol in the US seems to have risen over the last 20, maybe more, years. These days I really do expect disrespect, at least to stand out as the perceived norm due to how much more common it seems to be. (It isn't really that common, but if you're in a crowd every day over a year, several hundred different people across a couple hundred days, statistics catches up!)
refurb 6y ago
Go to any national park and you’re lucky if 2% of tourists venture further than 5m from any road or maintained path. You can have millions go through a a national park every year and 98% of the park will still be preserved with harmless any humans passing through.
- alistairSH 6y ago
  Certainly true, but we now have roads to all the "best" spots, sometimes with parking lots and paved trails. And long lines of cars waiting to get into the parks. There has to be a better way. Local example - Great Falls National Park (VA side). Proximity to DC means it's a popular place. Fine, the NPS keeps it pretty tidy. But, there are often cars backed up for a mile in every direction - the single entrance is a major choke point for traffic. This is despite the pay booth being a good ways down from the intersection - the cars just back up onto surrounding roads. The park is often full, so lots of visitors end up turned away (where they then move to one of 2-3 nearby parks with less facilities and ruin those with trash and feces).
vkou 6y ago
> Putting asphalt roads and hotels in Yellowstone for example isn't really preserving the wilderness. Compared to normal patterns of human land use (agriculture, living space, resource extraction), national parks, inundated-with-tourists-or-not certainly qualify as preservation. As another poster said, 50 yards from the trails lie hundreds of square miles of wilderness that few visitors venture into.

prawn 6y ago

There are also absolutely massive portions of most national parks that are effectively wilderness. You barely have to stray far from a major trail to see no one at all. Go look at satellite maps of Yosemite as a common example - huge sections would be an ordeal to even reach on foot.

EdwardDiego 6y ago

The difficulty is always balancing accessibility to beautiful areas for people who don't have the wherewithal to hike for 2 days in rough terrain, with preserving the wilderness aspect for those who can. I've found the biggest issue in preserving wilderness is helicopters and planes - they can easily cover large amounts of terrain in short time in a very noisy and intrusive manner. In NZ, we try to a) ensure the 'front country' has facilities for easy access by day trippers and that b) the 'back country' is not disturbed by commercial operations. In some parts, the balance tips further in one direction than the other - as an example, while walking the Milford Track[1], hardly a backcountry experience due to the very well developed tracks and facilities to cope with huge numbers of visitors, I still found the very frequent overflights by tourist charters detracted from the overall experience. It was still gorgeous, but the continual drone of tourist flights for people who didn't want to, or couldn't walk the track, detracted significantly. In my usual stomping ground national park, no commercial flights or landings are allowed, you can't even lead a guided walk. You still get the occasional private pilot flying through, and of course can't really do anything about the airliners flying to Australia, but the frequency is far lower than you find in the more commercialised areas like Fiordland or Aoraki Mt Cook. The Department of Conservation has a policy of focusing commercial activity in areas tourists want to be in anyway, so that the rest of the conservation estate is largely preserved for NZ citizens undertaking recreational activities. [1]: https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-go/fiordland/places/fiordland-national-park/things-to-do/tracks/milford-track/ https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-go/fi...

hinkley 6y ago
In a large enough park, you could have several “front countries” for attractions near the edge of the park without upsetting the interior with roads. Roads through a park have all the same problems as logging roads for habitat disturbance, plus having people who like to stop or throw shit out the window.