Wetlands, mudders and atv's...





This week was this story from the Strib on a mudrun turned wetland violation. In any story, the most interesting and frightening addition is reading the comments. They range from the bizarre to the rational, but it often shows the scary part of our society. This one brought out the best; deranged mudheads, private property rights nutballs and absolutely ignorant fools. Two comments stand out, however. One writes on how rural or small town people often assume they know more about nature than city people. That I often find is true. Just because you have a bear in your garbage, live on a gravel road and deer hunt doesn't mean you know squat. Working in resource management, one sees this all the time. Horse people converting forest and wetlands into pasture, then years later you see nothing but a rocky, muddy, weedy mess. Small farmers growing corn on clay soils next to a stream and needing the evil gov'mint to come in a put up a deer fence at taxpayer expense. The local guy who decides he is going to "improve drainage" by ditching and damming. Most, frankly, have the biological knowledge of a treated fence post. What they really know is what they wish to know so they can justify what they want to do, an often universal human trait. But out of the mouths of lunatics often comes legitimate questions, and in this case the offender himself asks one:" Why do Atv's get to play and I don't?". I could get technical, for in this case wetlands law applied and the event was a frigging nightmare, but the question is legitimate. The DNR, bowing to political pressure, and so have other government units as the counties and feds, created an entire system for atv's and vehicles. Oh yes, it is regulated, and most of it follows existing road systems or other existing networks, but that begs the question on how the entire operation is justified, and why is the same agency obligated to protect resources not just allowing, but actively developing systems that are inherently ecologically destructive with no legitimate economic or social purpose. It is one thing to manage timber or minerals for economic reasons( though the giveaways are ridiculous and offensive), and another to say let's build a trail system for something we know is ecologically destructive and consists of nothing but people tearing up the woods and burning gas. The above pictures are not a bad example..that is normal for what is seen everywhere. At a resources meeting last week, there were the usual atv people present, and when faced with any evidence, the usual arguments popped up. They are just bad apples. They need more places to go or else they will go there illegally. Here is a thought experiment. Picking another illegal, inherently destructive activity, perhaps lets say illegally playing in wetlands with heavy equipment: "People get great enjoyment being in nature while playing with heavy equipment and altering wetlands; if we do not allow them to do it on public land of adequate size, they will just do it illegally. If we use part of the transportation tax to develop places where citizens can run excavators and enjoy the outdoors while moving hydric soils around and digging holes, they will just do it wherever they please and create problems". Pardon the absurdity, but that is what we have now.