Visit the Central Cascades while you still can...

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Water
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Re: Visit the Central Cascades while you still can...

Post by Water » May 15th, 2019, 3:20 pm

One thing the FS entirely lacked with this was transparency. They just said increased use was a problem and they were ineffective to deal with it. But don't worry, now they're going be real effective with the new plan even though they don't know how much it'll cost, but it's gonna work!

They pointed to a few environmental anecdotes, referred to wording about solitude, then plowed forward. If it was the environment, do LEAs in those small areas. If it was solitude, they had data showing the limited high impact areas were only over carrying capacity a limited number of summer weekends.

I'll keep hiking on FS lands. But I've got a disability, selective mutism around authority figures due to PTSD of trying to interact with the FS commenting and objecting guidelines. Those enforcers can have fun getting blood from a rock.
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retired jerry
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Re: Visit the Central Cascades while you still can...

Post by retired jerry » May 15th, 2019, 3:33 pm

Just an attempt at humor - I think the FS was very transparent. Too many people so they're going to restrict to make fewer people.

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Water
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Re: Visit the Central Cascades while you still can...

Post by Water » May 15th, 2019, 3:41 pm

"too many people" - that's a metric but there's nothing in the wilderness act that says a hard number or how to measure what is too many.

And yet Mount Hood sees more and is smaller.. How's that work?

When the Forest Supervisors flatly state that restricting and limiting access as they have set out to do on 450,000 acres of public land of unprecedented in the FS's operation, I haven't heard the truly compelling and unprecedented argument other than that they already suck at their job that justifies this course of action.
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Re: Visit the Central Cascades while you still can...

Post by Webfoot » May 15th, 2019, 5:13 pm

retired jerry wrote:
May 15th, 2019, 2:13 pm
Fewer humans allowed so those lucky ones won't encounter many other humans.

Along the lines of the Wilderness act that says the area should be untrammeled by man or whatever.
I get the impression people misunderstand untrammeled as un-trampled. Forgive me if you're just making a joke, but exploitation of that apparent confusion seems to be used by those who are trying to restrict entry, so I'm going to keep mentioning it whenever I see untrammeled used in the context of crowds and solitude.

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retired jerry
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Re: Visit the Central Cascades while you still can...

Post by retired jerry » May 15th, 2019, 6:57 pm

I've never thought about it much, I assumed it meant something like untrampled

googled definition "not deprived of freedom of action or expression; not restricted or hampered"

that would seem to mean it was intended that people be able to go into Wilderness without restriction?

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Re: Visit the Central Cascades while you still can...

Post by Webfoot » May 16th, 2019, 11:06 am

retired jerry wrote:
May 15th, 2019, 6:57 pm
that would seem to mean it was intended that people be able to go into Wilderness without restriction?
No, it is nature itself that is to be free and unbound. The passage everyone loves to quote:
A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.
It means that in a Wilderness man should not control nature; no dams or diversions to control water or sediment, no retaining walls to control erosion, no fences to control wildlife, etc. Searching "untrammeled" to support my understanding I found any essay on this exact subject: Untrammeled Wilderness—Kevin Proescholdt. An excerpt:
Even at the time, untrammeled was a seldom-used word. Some people incorrectly assumed that it meant “untrampled.” Colleagues tried to talk Zahniser out of using such an arcane word. But untrammeled provided the precise definition Zahniser wanted for wilderness and wilderness character. A trammel is a net for catching fish, for example, or a hobble for confining horses. Untrammeled, then, means unconfined, uncontrolled, unrestrained, or unmanipulated—exactly the connotations Zahniser sought. Wilderness areas would remain untrammeled by humans, allowing ecological and evolutionary forces to operate without restraint, modification, or manipulation. Untrammeled also matched the etymological origin of the word wilderness: literally, “self-willed land” or “place of wild beasts,” in Old English.
The essay also directly quotes Howard Zahniser, primary author of the Wilderness Act, addressing the subject:
We describe an area as wilderness because of a character it has—not because of a particular use that it serves. A wilderness is an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man. (Untrammeled—not untrampled—untrammeled, meaning free, un-bound, unhampered, unchecked, having the freedom of the wilderness.)

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retired jerry
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Re: Visit the Central Cascades while you still can...

Post by retired jerry » May 16th, 2019, 3:17 pm

ahhh...

so untrammeled doesn't really say whether humans should be restricted from going there, just that humans shouldn't control it

the rest of the sentence says that humans should just visit but not stay

it doesn't really help with the question whether the number of human visitors should be limited

the language in the Wilderness act is rather vague and left to us to interpret

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Re: Visit the Central Cascades while you still can...

Post by Aimless » May 16th, 2019, 8:15 pm

The paradox here is that the wilderness areas designated under the Wilderness Act of 1964 are not 'uncontrolled by humans'. The USFS is made up exclusively of humans, who are engaged in controlling those lands in some manner. What they tend to control most (or try to control) is the activity of humans who are visiting those lands (but not staying). That makes sense from a human/legal pov, but our legally designated wilderness areas are hardly zones where humans do not control what happens. We are the dominant species. We dominate everywhere, like it or not. Look what happens when the Wilderness Act of 1964 conflicts with the Mining Act of 1872.

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Re: Visit the Central Cascades while you still can...

Post by drm » May 19th, 2019, 3:01 pm

I have always interpreted this as our activities controlling or dominating the ecocycle. In cities, there is plenty of wildlife, but it mostly eats our trash and lives where we either let it live, or are unable to prevent it from doing so, like in the sewers. Their lives are dominated by us, our trash, our infrastructure.

In wilderness, not controlling means that the natural cycles dominate wildlife. They eat the stuff they would eat if we weren't there at all, live where and how they would live without us, etc. The non-human cycles of nature dominate, and to whatever degree we are there, our activities do not change that, at least to any significant degree.

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Re: Visit the Central Cascades while you still can...

Post by Webfoot » May 20th, 2019, 6:12 pm

drm, I agree, but would also include geology in this, i.e. the landscape should evolve though natural processes and not blasting, bulldozers, dams and dredging, even if no effect on wildlife by the latter could be demonstrated.

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