Dear HCN,
Our backyards make up the
majority of the nation’s public lands, and yet we Westerners don’t
know how to talk about the future of those lands. That was clearly
shown by two essays on recreation user fees in the Oct. 13, 1997,
High Country News.
Terry Anderson and Steve
Hinchman both assumed that logging, mining and livestock grazing
harm the land, while outdoor recreation does not. The two differed
mainly on strategy: Hinchman doesn’t believe recreational user fees
will empower environmentalists; Anderson believes they
will.
Both essayists think environmental damage
is the result of other people: loggers, ranchers and miners.
Recreationists are blameless because what they do is benign.
Because motorized vehicle users obviously cause damage, they are
defined as not being outdoor recreationists. But it is never
explained why downhill skiers and snowboarders, kayakers and
rafters who camp on riverine beaches, rock climbers who dangle from
cliffs on brightly colored ropes, mountain bikers and hunters are
not also cast out of the recreation tribe.
Honest conversation will begin only when we
admit that no outdoor recreation is benign. A recent survey in
BioScience found that outdoor recreation was the second largest
cause (after dams) for the decline of endangered and threatened
species. This will only get worse because public-land agencies have
decreed outdoor recreation to be the current “highest and best use
of our public lands,” as HCN pointed out in its coverage of the
Lake Tahoe Tourism Conference (HCN, 12/23/96).
Just as serious, even as the intensity and kinds
of recreational uses increase, we chop away at our land-management
agencies’ ability to protect the land. The threat is stark: Not
only are we recreationists more numerous than chainsaws, we are
more intelligent than cows. Solutions won’t be easy. Land
stewardship will require each of us to place land health above our
desires. It is time for recreationists and miners, loggers and
ranchers to meet somewhere along the line demarcated by land health
on one side and land use on the other.
Richard L.
Knight
Fort Collins,
Colorado
The writer teaches
wildlife conservation at Colorado State
University.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Recreationists are smarter than cows.
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