Arrested development 3

Interesting. I quit playing in the dirt with my toy trucks when I was... oh, about 6 years old.

A few weeks ago, the Forest Service announced a plan to control the proliferation of illegal trails created by off-road enthusiasts. Personally, as I said in an earlier post, I wish the government would just get out of the recreation business. I think it should be illegal to drive motorized vehicles off road on any public land. You can't dump garbage on public lands, why are you allowed to churn it into a mud hole with your 4x4? These people do a lot more tangible, direct damage to natural habitats than urban Hummer drivers. Most people are not aware of it because they do all of this damage off the beaten track.

Let the enthusiasts pay the market price for tearing up the planet. There are plenty of entrepreneurs out there who would love to charge them to use their property -- assuming, of course, that the government would create a level playing field by enforcing laws that protect wetlands and streams on these properties. You might even see a throttling of this growing industry by free market user fees, which could be quite steep, depending on competition, supply, and demand.

My real name is Russ Finley. I live in Seattle, married with children. Suffice it to say that although I am trained and educated as an engineer, my passion is nature. I very much want my grandchildren to live on a planet where lions, tigers, and bears have not joined the long and growing list of creatures that used to be. In an attempt to minimize the workload on Grist editors responsible for turning my submissions into intelligible articles, I will also be posting on a seperate blog called Biodiversivist, which will contain articles in addition to those submitted to Grist.

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  1. biopolitical Posted 6:53 am
    17 Nov 2005

    Why?"assuming of course that the government would create a level playing field buy enforcing laws that protect wetlands and streams on these properties"
    Why?

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  2. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 11:16 am
    17 Nov 2005

    By level playing field, I meant thatif a given government municipality does not enforce wetland zoning, but an adjacent one (say, in the next county) does, one entreprenuer will have an advantage, being able to use wetlands and streams for the toy trucks to play in (these boys especially love to drive through mud and water).I have realized that enforcement of wetland protections varies greatly from county to county in Washington state. Some rural officials tend to look the other way because they don't like the rules themselves.
    Free markets can work just fine with some government regulation as long as the regulation applies to all competitors--a level playing field.

    In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com

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  3. jdhlax Posted 11:45 am
    17 Nov 2005

    How About ...ending all commercial activity on public lands?  Even the vendors in National Parks are causing significant environmental damage.  (E.g., in Yosemite, unfiltered grease has clogged sewage lines, causing pollution of rivers.)  Removing cattle, logging, mining, and drilling would be a great boon to wildlife and the land.
    Re motorized recreation, it should be outlawed, period.  Consuming and burning fossil fuel is bad enough when it's considered a necessary evil, but there's absolutely no excuse for destroying the planet for fun.

    Jeff Hoffman

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