OSMP Off-Trail Permits Now Required for 50 Yard Hikes

The City of Boulder's Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) Department has just instituted a new permitting system for off-trail travel on what will eventually be 35-50% percent of OSMP land. While the permitting system represents an improvement over earlier efforts to completely close these areas, the system, as currently structured, falls short of the Department's commitment (embodied in its Visitor Master Plan) to employ the "least restrictive" policies for achieving its environmental protection objectives.

One of the camera angles that now requires a permit.

Requiring permits for significant off-trail excursions makes some sense. It allows OPSMP to advise visitors on low-impact travel techniques, warn them about especially sensitive areas, and track visitation. However, since these areas are already very lightly visited, it seems doubtful that all the hassle and expense will yield significant environmental benefits.

The bigger problem, however, is the department's decision to require permits for VERY short diversions (less the 100 yards) from what is fundamentally an on-trail trip. Under the current rules, for example, you'll have to pretty much sit on the trail and enjoy your lunch as people walk by. If you don't want to be (literally) underfoot and if you want to enjoy a little privacy and solitude, you'll need to get a permit, in advance.

You also better have access to the Web. Otherwise, you'll have to send a letter or make a trip to an OSMP office (during business hours), which may take longer than your hike. If you choose to ignore these rules, you're at their mercy. They can fine you $1000.

That's not all. You'll need a permit if you want to take a picture, but the angle from the trail isn't quite right. You'll need a permit if you want to get a better look at the Western Tanager that just flew into the tree down the hill. You'll need a permit if you hike to the top of Long Canyon and you want to walk across the road and admire the view of the Indian Peaks from the clearing 50 yards off the road.

You'll also need a permit if you take the trail around the North Side of Flagstaff or up Green Mountain and want to scamper a few yards out to one of the viewpoints. And, the way the maps are currently written, you'll need a permit to check out the view at Stoney Point.

There are also ominous hints that if too many permits are requested during the first, experimental year of the program, then OSMP will start limiting the number available. Surely the miniscule environmental impact of giving users access to a 100-yard corridor on each side of the trail would be outweighed by improvements in the quality of the visitor experience.

Still, there is one bright spot. Exemptions are granted to heed the "call of nature" (which is never really defined). It seems to me that heeding the "call of the wild" and the "call of nature" are pretty much the same thing. So, maybe we don't have to follow the rules after all.

All joking aside, OSMP's on-trail requirement is a deliberate decision reflecting misplaced priorities. I respectfully ask the City Council to ask OSMP to amend those policies.

Sustainable Environmentalism

The relentless growth of human settlements and the accompanying expansion into natural areas has led many in the environmental movement to view human society as something of a cancer which is growing on, and rapidly destroying, the natural environment. This way of framing the problem tends to see the environmental movement as a desperate effort to strengthen the barriers which protect the natural environment from human encroachment. In keeping with the cancer analogy, this view sees environmental protection as, quite literally, a fight for survival in which human society is the enemy. The political manifestation of this view is the contemporary conservation movement which is motivated by a philosophy which I call "separation ecology."

Unfortunately, it is an approach which fails the test of sustainability and equity. If people are increasingly separated from their environment then, sooner or later, they are likely to start asking why they should favor environmental protection measures. While alarmist (and often overstated) rhetoric about impending ecological collapse and altruistic appeals to protect natural species for their own sake may answer some of these concerns, the long-term trend is likely to be a continuing erosion of the core environmental constituency. In other words, it is unrealistic to expect to be able to sustain long-term, public support for environmental objectives if the public finds itself increasingly denied the benefits of environmental protection.

The environmental movement should also be about more than simple preservation. It has an interest in promoting human quality of life among a broad spectrum of the population, not just an elite few. It is not enough for environmental connections to be reserved for the wealthy and environmental activists who know how to take advantage of the system. The connection ecology project offers a new way of thinking about the environmental movement -- one which fosters both environmental protection and human quality of life.

No Child Left Inside

This article appeared in The Economist on Feb 8, 2007. It summarizes the alarming fall in various measures of National Park visitation. This trend, if it continues, threatens the sustainability of the environmental movement and marks, in my view, a significant deterioration in human quality of life. A primary goal of this blog is the exploration of strategies for overcoming this problem.

Feb 8th 2007
SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition

Put down that Xbox, young man

TO THE alarm of environmentalists and park managers alike, interest in the great outdoors seems to be tailing off among young Americans. The country's extensive system of national parks includes some of the most photographed and best preserved landscapes on earth—like Yosemite Valley in California, the crenellated Teton Range in Wyoming, Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park or the white edifice of Mount Rainier in Washington state. But attendance at the parks is falling. Between 1995 and 2005, overnight stays in them declined 20% overall, and camping and backcountry stays dropped by 24%, according to statistics compiled by the National Parks Service.

No park, it seems, is immune to the decline: even in Yosemite, one of the system's oldest parks and probably its best known, the number of visitors dropped 17% over the ten-year period. The number of visitors to Death Valley, an easy drive from vigorously growing Las Vegas, went down 28% over the same span. In some of the system's remoter parks, such as Lava Beds National Monument near the California-Oregon border, site of much fighting in an Indian war of 1872-73, the number of daily visitors is down to ten or fewer.

The importance of this decline can hardly be over-estimated for big environmental organisations such as the Sierra Club: they have depended on what one expert calls “a transcendent experience in nature”, usually in childhood, to gain new members and thus remain powerful lobbyists for environmental causes. “The political implications are enormous,” says Richard Louv, a writer whose most recent book, “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder”, describes the social, psychological and even spiritual ramifications of a dearth of outdoors experience for a generation raised on electronic, rather than natural, stimulation and entertainment.

Read entire article

Understanding the Visitor Role in the Spread of Invasive Plants: A Modest Research Proposal

Much of the OSMP management debate focuses around the threat that hikers (as well as dogs and horses) may or may not pose to efforts to control the spread of invasive species. It seems to me that there is a simple, joint fact-finding process that we could all go through to clarify this issue.

First, we need a short list of invasive species that are the posing a significant threat to Open Space. Next, we need to identify at least one location where each species is getting out of control. Over the course of a year we would then need a fact-finding team to repeatedly visit each location to determine when seeds are and are not a susceptible to human dispersal. One could also walk through each area with typical types of clothing and then examine how many of the offending seeds each person picks up. This would enable us to identify kinds of clothes that limit the collection of seeds (such as the wearing of ankle gaitors to limit “sock prickers”). We could also determine what kinds of seeds are likely to fall off on a hike and hat kinds are likely to be transported back home where they don’t pose a threat. Similar tests could be done on dogs and horses.

The resulting information could then be used to separate necessary from unnecessary restrictions.

Connection Ecology Blog Contents

• OSMP Off-Trail Permits Now Required for 50 Yard Hi...


• Sustainable Environmentalism


• Connection Ecology


• About the Connection Ecology Blog


• No Child Left Inside


• Connection Ecology: An Alternative to the War Betw...


• Understanding the Visitor Role in the Spread of In...


• Connection Ecology: The Next Phase of the Environm...


• General Principles Underlying Boulder Outdoor Coal...


• Adaptive Management


• Environmental Damage / Human Presence


• Environmental Constituency


• US 36 Dispute Reveals OSMP Anti-people Bias


• Equitable Access Problems


• Research to "finds out" vs. research to "prove"


• Eldorado Mountain / Dowdy Draw


• The Original Boulder Open Space Poster


• Natural / Human History Destination Hikes


• Ecology Hikes


• Inspirational Viewpoints


• Natural / Human History Destination Hikes


• Demonstration Project Maps / Legend


• Proposed Marshall Mesa Interpretive Trail


• Fewer happy campers


• Where Gorillas and the Antelope Play


• National parks seeing fewer camping visits


• The “Social Trail” Problem: Myth or Reality?


• Role of Urban Wilderness


• Obligation to Provide Visitor Access


• Facts and Values


• The Overprotective Librarian Syndrome


• Visitor Pathway / Trail Types


• Unconventional Environmental Connections


• Cohabitation


• Role of Urban Wilderness


• Unconventional Environmental Connections


• User Fees / Sweat Equity Option