Do Idaho's Wilderness Areas Need Safety Signs?
We have to ask ourselves how, or rather, how not to balance wilderness values and public safety.
The New York Times recently ran a guest opinion about how increasingly strict enforcement of The Wilderness Act was making these areas unsafe for the public. The author says that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are being unreasonably draconian by forbidding baby strollers, hunting carts and trail cycles: "The result may be more pristine lands, but the agency's zealous enforcement has also heightened safety risks and limited access to America's wilderness areas."
What the article fails to point out is that author Ted Stroll is a mountain-biking enthusiast who advocates opening wilderness areas to mountain bikes.
Interestingly, he uses this concern for public safety as a means to open access to mountain bikes and other uses.
The issue of opening wilderness areas to mountain bikes is one that most folks have moved past. Even the International Mountain Biking Association supports bike-free wilderness and instead collaborates to craft designations that protect both trail access and natural resources.
The issue of striking a balance between wilderness and personal safety is even older, poetically captured by Canadian author R. Yorke Edwards:
When all the dangerous cliffs are fenced off, all the trees that might fall on people are cut down, all of the insects that bite have been poisoned ... and all of the grizzlies are dead because they are occasionally dangerous, the wilderness will not be made safe. Rather, the safety will have destroyed the wilderness.
Wilderness is valuable in part because it isn't safe. We have to deal with nature on its own terms, not ours. And in learning to adapt, we learn more about ourselves, the world and our place in it. Local backcountry expert and author Mike Lanza offered a great response to the editorial in his blog, the Big Outside. He concludes:
...the one sign that wilderness never needs is, “Warning: Wilderness Isn’t Safe.” Better to post signs in our cities that read, “Warning: Living Without Wilderness Isn’t Safe."
