Oregon Hikers

Don Nelsen wrote: ↑

April 28th, 2020, 3:42 pm

Jerry, that would require common sense on the part of the FS. Good luck with that.

It would require something entirely different than common sense to reverse this process. It is well beyond that stage. Now that the FS has taken all the legal and institutional steps to create this new system, no individual has the personal authority to simply wipe it away; it has become a legal requirement for the FS to carry it out. And as little as we may like that, it is better that way. Imagine if all environmental regulations were subjected to the whims of every District Ranger's "common sense", which in practice would just mean whatever that District Ranger preferred to do that day.

If this pandemic has demonstrated anything, it is that people are going to ignore the permit requirement just as they are currently ignoring the closed signage across state parks and national forests. Without an enforcement plan it is a complete waste of time and resources.

I dunno

Are people really violating closures that much now? And especially, are people doing it in a way inconsistent with social distancing?

And maybe most people would follow the central cascades wilderness permit so it would accomplish it's goal of reducing crowding?

(Which is totally B.S., there is no huge overcrowding problem to solve but that's another story )

I think there can be a societal problem if there are a lot of rules that no one follows. Like, the authorities can identify someone they want to hassle so they find some rule they're violating and use that as an excuse. Or if people get used to not following some rules, then they lose respect for government in general.

For National Forests, developed sites are closed, but the rest of the forest is just not recommended that you not enter. I don't think they really care as long as you socially distance. I was somewhere and the national forest truck drove by and just waved at me. They didn't stop and lecture me for violating their recommendation. Of course, I was just there for the day.

retired jerry wrote: ↑

May 3rd, 2020, 7:54 am

I dunno
...

I dunno either in a general sense but I'm pretty sure routine enforcement is nil, except for maybe Skamania county in which Chip reports he had been "redirected". Only authorized enforcement people (that is, police) can enforce the new closure laws. While they were recently given additional laws to enforce, they were not given additional budget so practical enforcement is effectively incidental to normal patrols. Routine patrols on mountain roads appear to be rare. Recall the last time you saw a marked police vehicle on a remote mountain road (like, probably never).

I dunno about whether you can have a rule/law or not vs whether it's enforced

Theoretically, you wouldn't have to close the gorge if you could just tell people to socially distance and we obeyed

But no, there were still huge crowds in the gorge and on the beach so they tightened the rules, now people are socially distancing in the gorge (because they're not there)

If people violated the rule about being there, but socially distanced, then the authorities wouldn't have to worry about the rule about being there. The whole purpose was to just get people to quit infecting each other which would overwhelm hospitals