New York Time's Kristof -Licking a Banana Slugs
or
The Law of Unintended Consequences: Protect and Lose

The Mt. Hood Wilderness area moved this year: it crawled down a hillside and is now about 400' from my cabin. The many acres of 100 year old mono-culture Doug Fir is now being "protected", presumably in the hope that it may become like that old growth snag on my property: 23' around.

But the "law of unintended consequences" is likely to "do its thing".

Nicholas Kristof had an interesting op-ed in the New York Times today.

It seems he takes his children to the Mt. Hood National Forest and Wilderness areas to get away from the industrialized world,

He notes that the legacy of the evangelistic Baby Boomers may be to lock future generations out of the woods. By "protecting" nature (and their kids), they may keep people out of nature. Without stewardship, the infrastructure in nature will disappear, making "nature" inaccessible.

Nature, in turn, will clean up the mess of this non-stewardship (mono-cultures, fuel loadings, invasive weeds, etc) by burning it, and continue burning it until those pesty human non-stewards "go away". The old growth snag I mentioned, likely lost its top back in the 1880's when massive fires burned through this area. That is why the new "wilderness" is a young (compared to my snag) monoculture.

I note that "stewardship" requires real, intelligent work.

There seem to be the usual number of people who want to perceive that they are "endowed" with a "natural environment" and don't have to do anything beside yell at people.

=> Unfortunately, they are actually "empowered" to create such an environment and make it accessible. Sitting on their butts and yammering may "feel good" with their limited knowledge and horizon, but, as Malcolm noted in Jurassic Park: "Nature will find a way".