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Index of Subjects
Index of Subjects This is my second attempt to send - so my apologies if you've received it twice. I believe the problem has to do with my email address (I use net-based email as I live a rather nomadic life). I've re-subscribed under an alternate email address, so am giving this another try. ----- I've been following this discussion about dogs on trails with some interest. The topic has got me thinking of how so many of the arguments being made also apply to other users of trails and natural areas. In my slow wanderings back and forth across North America over the past three years while traveling after my husband's death, I have had the opportunity to observe a good deal. In southwest Utah, I have seen pedestrians trample over fenced areas where there is a species of tiger beetle found only in and around Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. Likewise, I've watched children (and sometimes adults) scramble over and degrade or destroy geological sites that have weathered thousands of years at places like Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park in Alberta - where a mob of boys and their dads were seen running between and leaping around atop the hoodoos while playing laser tag. I've seen an ancient petroglyph at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, that was vandalized by children who turned a deer image into a unicorn. In countless other places, I have seen petroglyph and pictograph panels severely damaged by bullets, or by those wanting to leave their own "mark" on a petroglyph panel (which is why a large part of Writing-on-Stone is now a restricted area). At Whitewater Draw in southeast Arizona, I've observed people with big cameras sneak down off the trails atop the dykes through the playa, or wander out into nearby pastures to stalk the thousands of Sandhill Cranes while they are feeding. Worse still, there are those who couldn't stay out of the "owl woods" beside the playa, to the point that the owls seem to have pretty much given up roosting there over the past couple of years. On countless occasions while walking in the San Pedro River Riparian Reserve, I've seen birders with binoculars trample through riparian vegetation, creating braided trails -- and the same along other river canyons which are major bird fly-ways throughout the southwest. This in very fragile habitat where plants do not easily regrow. In recent years, I've also watched as a good many birders have gone overboard using various mobile devices to make sounds to phish birds out for photo ops and better views. In all parts of North America, I've seen people toss rocks into, or rearrange them into inukshuks in streams where fish and other aquatics are spawning. I've seen rocks similarly rearranged in places where they would otherwise provide shelter for spiders, ants, millipeds and other ground-dwelling invertebrates. And, of course, I've witnessed the wholesale destruction that ATVs have inflicted in wetlands where my husband and I once hiked before the trails became so rutted and braided that they are now quite impassable to pedestrians. Having spent so much time on the high plains and deserts in the western U.S., I've seen much the same in those fragile environments where most plants take decades to grow and even a few careless ATVers can cause such destruction that will not heal in the span of a human lifetime. I speak as both a dog-owner, and a naturalist. My two dogs have accompanied me the entire three years that I have slowly camped my way around much of North America. I like to think that "we three" are reasonably responsible visitors to the natural places where we have camped and hiked. Around camp and while hiking, I keep my dogs quiet and always leashed. I take them only on trails and in places which allow dogs -- both within and outside of national forests, national parks, provincial and state parks, BLM lands, etc.... I intentionally avoid busy or popular hiking trails or those areas where there are many people birding - both to avoid contact with people who are fearful of dogs, to avoid bothering the birders, but mainly because these places are now getting such heavy human traffic that they are already stressed to their limits. This may not be true in Nova Scotia (yet!), but if you have visited the largest national parks in the U.S., or any of the well-known birding hotspots, you will know what I mean. In my own case, I try to use lesser trails - those where I will encounter few hikers, mountain bikers, etc.. When I meet hikers on a trail, I make the dogs step off to one side and sit until the people are past. I clean up after my dogs -- which is much more than can be said for many hikers and campers who almost pathologically seem to leave messes of toilet paper, food wrappers, used kleenex, beer cans, glass booze bottles, plastic water bottles, fish guts, and other unsavoury items along trails, at canoe put-ins, and campsites. Rather inexplicably, it seems as though some people feel that, if they put a rock atop of a pile of toilet paper, that miraculously neutralizes its existence. Before setting up camp, I inspect and clean up my site, searching for objects that could be perilous to myself and my dogs, and have found everything from rotted food, broken glass, used condoms, used packs of deer urine scent, to (shudder) straight razor blades and hypodermic needles, on the ground - this in both Canada and the U.S.. Having done volunteer trail clean-ups back in the days when my husband and I belonged to various trail associations in Ontario, I have made it my own policy to try to leave every place I visit, cleaner than it was when I passed through. I'll be saving some poor trail clean-up volunteer's back a few bends. If I'm carrying out my own trash, how much extra work is it to carry out a bit of someone else's, or transport a few extra cans and bottles to a recycling bin? This is especially true when canoeing - it is so easy to bring along a trash bag and a stick or net for lifting trash out of streams. If you make a bit of a game of it, after two or three trips along a creek or river, you should not have to be annoyed by the sight of trash and debris for the rest of the season. While on the subject of dogs, etc... Unfortunate as it is to report, when one is hiking or camping with dogs, many people seem to go out of their way to harass you. Over the past weeks while camping my way home from Arizona, on more than one occasion, my dogs and I were terribly harassed by children who repeatedly circled my van on their bicycles while their parents were within calling distance - this occurred even well after dark. Last autumn, while camped at Samuel de Champlain Park near North Bay, Ontario, I actually had two adult couples ride bicycles through my site after dark, each of them loudly slamming their hands on the side window of my van, just after my dogs and I settled down to sleep for the night. It was very frightening to me and caused my dogs to leap up and bark - which I suppose was the hoped-for effect of their actions. I had done nothing to provoke any of the above - just quietly prepare our evening meal after arriv