Pete_Hickey said:
No, it's a basic philosophical question.
Do I want the forests to be there for my use?
Do I want some wilderness to be there for its own sake.
It's all how, philosophically one views the world and nature. I am just trying to boil it down into a single question.
If I want wilderness, it is there on its terms, and things are not done to aid with my enjoyment of it. In reality, there is a balancing act, but the two views are what is pulling on each side.
That's a good point, thanks for clarifying.
I guess my personal opinion is, I want a small portion of the forests to be there for my use; I do want some wilderness to be there for its own sake. I support > 99% of the area of Wild River Wilderness; the other <1% being the area covered by trails with their new restrictions, and the shelters that are probably going to be removed.
I do understand the impact these things & roads & timber harvesting have on the ecology -- there are some plant/animal species for which even a 6' wide trail will have some effect; either as a barrier or as a vector for invasive species or as a source of damage from erosion/trampling, and certainly an area around trails and shelters may be prone to pollution. But that impact (of trails and shelters) is incredibly small, & I don't understand why Wilderness areas have to include complete and total area coverage for everywhere within their boundaries. It's a much smaller impact than, say, the pipeline some people want to put in ANWR, which not only impacts the immediate area, but a neighboring area which is the "comfort buffer" of some animals to noise/machinery/etc, and the fact that there would be a large barrier, and the fact that there would be a huge potential risk.
If *some* of the trails and *some* of the shelters that existed prior to Wilderness were restricted/removed, then I guess I would probably support it, especially if those recreational resources restricted/removed had specific ecological reasons for doing so (e.g. trail X / shelter Y is near a nesting site for rare animal Z). But right now it's an all-or-nothing deal, and Wilderness is a complete and blanket coverage.
In a Western state, there's more room for Wilderness -- here in a small state like NH, where there is not much public land, and the land that is public already has uses of many types, there's going to be more conflict with pre-existing uses. I'm not saying that man's interest in the use of natural world should not be placed behind that of preservation, but I think we should be looking at it from a cost/benefit standpoint. The benefits of non-motorized recreation in the WMNF in most places pose a very small cost (damage from use) to a very small portion of land base. If we want to put restrictions on a large portion of the land base where it makes sense, let's do that, but I just wish we didn't go as far as the point of diminishing returns, and in my view, the present Wilderness designation does that. (especially if we're arguing about the impact of trail blazes)
