4 ms·

A great loss to the outdoors industry, and anyone who cares about being able to escape civilization and enjoy communing with the nature we have left. America wi

A great loss to the outdoors industry, and anyone who cares about being able to escape civilization and enjoy communing with the nature we have left. America will never have "right to roam" that European countries have, but National Forests and other BLM lands that let you pitch anywhere are a workable substitute.

technothrasher 2y ago
There is actually no trespass law in Massachusetts for unimproved land, even if posted with signs. So we theoretically have "freedom to roam" in wilderness areas, even if privately owned. However, nobody I've ever talked to seems to know this, including various police officers, and so there seems to be a 'folk law' understanding that you cannot freely roam in such places.
- dTal 2y ago
  Side note: Call me a treehugger but the use of the word "unimproved" to refer to the last remaining shreds of wildlife not yet paved over and replaced with Starbucks strikes me as the most dystopian fucking shit.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Yeah, I'd call it unspoiled or pristine instead of unimproved.
- nkurz 2y ago
  Can you point to a source for your belief? Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but it seems legally improbable.
- noahjk 2y ago
  The large swaths of seldom-used private land in the US really grind my gears. It’s the perfect example of the “I’ve got mine” mentality that a lot of Americans have. Visiting Europe, where most private land has access ways (and I believe laws regarding shared use, in some cases) gives feelings of respect towards both neighbors and the earth, which should (in my and woodie guthrie’s opinion, at least) be a shared experience. I’m not sure if it’s at all related to the first point, but in America, it would probably be more common for visitors (or ‘trespassers’) to leave someone else’s land worse than they found it (when compared to the shared respect generally found in Europe). Speaking in broad strokes, of course.
- rsanek 2y ago
  Looks like MGL c. 266, § 120 is the source here. It does say that as long as the land is "improved or enclosed" and has signs posted, you still can't trespass. It's unclear to me if "improved or enclosed" is meant to be exhaustive or is illustrative -- I think that in effect, this would come down to the court's interpretation. https://malegislature.gov/laws/generallaws/partiv/titlei/chapter266/section120 https://malegislature.gov/laws/generallaws/partiv/titlei/cha...
CapricornNoble 2y ago
> and anyone who cares about being able to escape civilization and enjoy communing with the nature we have left. Shouldn't that elevate property values in rural areas? Being able to buy a get-away property with a large tract of land and its own forest/lake/mountain/whatever.
- Geezus_42 2y ago
  So then the only people who get to enjoy nature are those who can afford to pay for it...
- pjc50 2y ago
  It's a great place to visit but you wouldn't necessarily want to live there. Thinking about comparable situations in Scotland, you can get a rural property cheaply, or even a spare castle, but .. that's not where the jobs are, that's not where people's friends or social scenes are, there's no shops, and often the weather isn't on your side. What people want is parks as an amenity they can visit. I suppose they'll be privatized and people will be charged to visit them. They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them -- Joni Mitchell
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - RichardCA 2y ago
    Tears of sorrow running deep Running silent in my sleep -- Joan Baez https://youtu.be/6B2pfSelIKo https://youtu.be/6B2pfSelIKo
lowken10 2y ago
[dead]
EA-3167 2y ago
I think a lot of people here are conflating the Forest Service with the Park Service. The Park Service is one of the most successful, most universally beloved government agencies we've ever had, they run the national parks and are a boon to lovers of the outdoors. The Forest Service has one of the most checkered pasts you can imagine, they're in many ways the opposite of what people imagine when they hear the name. To quote Bill Bryson: > “In fact, mostly what the Forest Service does is build roads. I am not kidding. There are 378,000 miles of roads in America’s national forests. That may seem a meaningless figure, but look at it this way—it is eight times the total mileage of America’s interstate highway system. It is the largest road system in the world in the control of a single body. The Forest Service has the second highest number of road engineers of any government institution on the planet. To say that these guys like to build roads barely hints at their level of dedication. Show them a stand of trees anywhere and they will regard it thoughtfully for a long while, and say at last, “You know, we could put a road here.” It is the avowed aim of the U.S. Forest Service to construct 580,000 miles of additional forest road by the middle of the next century. The reason the Forest Service builds these roads, quite apart from the deep pleasure of doing noisy things in the woods with big yellow machines, is to allow private timber companies to get to previously inaccessible stands of trees. Of the Forest Service’s 150 million acres of loggable land, about two-thirds is held in store for the future. The remaining one-third—49 million acres, or an area roughly twice the size of Ohio—is available for logging. It allows huge swathes of land to be clear-cut, including (to take one recent but heartbreaking example) 209 acres of thousand-year-old redwoods in Oregon’s Umpqua National Forest.” That is the USFS. The guys who help loggers. The fools who so often mismanaged forest management based on Victorian ideas about "the woods". These are the geniuses who kill off fish in large waterways with rotenone. A lot of what Trump is doing is highly questionable or outright terrible, but I don't shed a tear for this agency, and you shouldn't either. The wilds would be better without them.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  That is a gross mischaracterization of what the USFS does.
  - EA-3167 2y ago
bufferoverflow 2y ago
Who is stopping you enjoying the nature?
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  Nature has to be _preserved_ if it is to be enjoyed by all.

technothrasher 2y ago

There is actually no trespass law in Massachusetts for unimproved land, even if posted with signs. So we theoretically have "freedom to roam" in wilderness areas, even if privately owned. However, nobody I've ever talked to seems to know this, including various police officers, and so there seems to be a 'folk law' understanding that you cannot freely roam in such places.

dTal 2y ago
Side note: Call me a treehugger but the use of the word "unimproved" to refer to the last remaining shreds of wildlife not yet paved over and replaced with Starbucks strikes me as the most dystopian fucking shit.
- fragmede 2y ago
  Yeah, I'd call it unspoiled or pristine instead of unimproved.
nkurz 2y ago
Can you point to a source for your belief? Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but it seems legally improbable.
noahjk 2y ago
The large swaths of seldom-used private land in the US really grind my gears. It’s the perfect example of the “I’ve got mine” mentality that a lot of Americans have. Visiting Europe, where most private land has access ways (and I believe laws regarding shared use, in some cases) gives feelings of respect towards both neighbors and the earth, which should (in my and woodie guthrie’s opinion, at least) be a shared experience. I’m not sure if it’s at all related to the first point, but in America, it would probably be more common for visitors (or ‘trespassers’) to leave someone else’s land worse than they found it (when compared to the shared respect generally found in Europe). Speaking in broad strokes, of course.
rsanek 2y ago
Looks like MGL c. 266, § 120 is the source here. It does say that as long as the land is "improved or enclosed" and has signs posted, you still can't trespass. It's unclear to me if "improved or enclosed" is meant to be exhaustive or is illustrative -- I think that in effect, this would come down to the court's interpretation. https://malegislature.gov/laws/generallaws/partiv/titlei/chapter266/section120 https://malegislature.gov/laws/generallaws/partiv/titlei/cha...

CapricornNoble 2y ago

> and anyone who cares about being able to escape civilization and enjoy communing with the nature we have left. Shouldn't that elevate property values in rural areas? Being able to buy a get-away property with a large tract of land and its own forest/lake/mountain/whatever.

Geezus_42 2y ago
So then the only people who get to enjoy nature are those who can afford to pay for it...
pjc50 2y ago
It's a great place to visit but you wouldn't necessarily want to live there. Thinking about comparable situations in Scotland, you can get a rural property cheaply, or even a spare castle, but .. that's not where the jobs are, that's not where people's friends or social scenes are, there's no shops, and often the weather isn't on your side. What people want is parks as an amenity they can visit. I suppose they'll be privatized and people will be charged to visit them. They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them -- Joni Mitchell
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- RichardCA 2y ago
  Tears of sorrow running deep Running silent in my sleep -- Joan Baez https://youtu.be/6B2pfSelIKo https://youtu.be/6B2pfSelIKo

lowken10 2y ago

[dead]

EA-3167 2y ago

I think a lot of people here are conflating the Forest Service with the Park Service. The Park Service is one of the most successful, most universally beloved government agencies we've ever had, they run the national parks and are a boon to lovers of the outdoors. The Forest Service has one of the most checkered pasts you can imagine, they're in many ways the opposite of what people imagine when they hear the name. To quote Bill Bryson: > “In fact, mostly what the Forest Service does is build roads. I am not kidding. There are 378,000 miles of roads in America’s national forests. That may seem a meaningless figure, but look at it this way—it is eight times the total mileage of America’s interstate highway system. It is the largest road system in the world in the control of a single body. The Forest Service has the second highest number of road engineers of any government institution on the planet. To say that these guys like to build roads barely hints at their level of dedication. Show them a stand of trees anywhere and they will regard it thoughtfully for a long while, and say at last, “You know, we could put a road here.” It is the avowed aim of the U.S. Forest Service to construct 580,000 miles of additional forest road by the middle of the next century. The reason the Forest Service builds these roads, quite apart from the deep pleasure of doing noisy things in the woods with big yellow machines, is to allow private timber companies to get to previously inaccessible stands of trees. Of the Forest Service’s 150 million acres of loggable land, about two-thirds is held in store for the future. The remaining one-third—49 million acres, or an area roughly twice the size of Ohio—is available for logging. It allows huge swathes of land to be clear-cut, including (to take one recent but heartbreaking example) 209 acres of thousand-year-old redwoods in Oregon’s Umpqua National Forest.” That is the USFS. The guys who help loggers. The fools who so often mismanaged forest management based on Victorian ideas about "the woods". These are the geniuses who kill off fish in large waterways with rotenone. A lot of what Trump is doing is highly questionable or outright terrible, but I don't shed a tear for this agency, and you shouldn't either. The wilds would be better without them.

insane_dreamer 2y ago
That is a gross mischaracterization of what the USFS does.
- EA-3167 2y ago

bufferoverflow 2y ago

Who is stopping you enjoying the nature?

insane_dreamer 2y ago
Nature has to be _preserved_ if it is to be enjoyed by all.