Re: Survival Menu

In message <48c1bca0$1@darkstar>, Eugene Miya <eugene@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
In article <MfNWwVUv4ZwIFwKP@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Chris Townsend <Chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
How far from a hospital do you have to be for it to be backcountry?

The example I gave Floyd was at the flight limits of a helo.
But in some cases a fixed wing aircraft could land close by.

Hm. That would mean most of the Himalaya except for high altitudes
wasn't backcountry. Or Greenland.

That's the problem with language.
I am looking at Greenland photos in another adjacent window, then I will
head toward Tahoe this weekend. In a month, Norway.

Will you be seeing any "backcountry" in Norway?

By road or by air? Time or distance?
You pretty much have to use air as a rescue/survival example.
Bruce and the legal definitions are based on roads. Take your pick.
When you take the road example you get the lower 48 distance to a road
example. None of you guys in Europe ask that question.

Oh, it's asked. The distances are shorter.

What do you think the largest radius you can get in Western Europe and
excluding parts of places like Siberia?

I've never considered that. In England it's less than 5 miles. Probably a bit more in Scotland.

Define roads too. Public roads or are private 4WD bulldozed tracks included?

Distance isn't the only factor. A decent mucky, watery bog can make
short work of distance.

Plenty of places in Scotland qualify due to bogs! What about steep rock or dense forest?

My favorite is having something which might eat you. But you need an
operational and legal definition (the why's and how's of what you want
to do).
Why do you need an operational and legal definition?

Because fundamentally, we have evolved into a society of laws for people.
The requirement is that whatever cute idea you have, you have to have
"standing." You can no longer take for granted your wild lands. They
will for all other intents and purposes cease being wild. All this
started getting set up before any of us were born.

Europe has legislation for protecting landscapes and nature without
precise definitions.

That's in part why I gave the Italian example. It could have been
Spanish, or Portuguese. Or more Eastern European.

The problem with definitions is that they can in the end be merely
circular and get you no where. Meanwhile you could have succeeded in
protecting nothing. I see that you can eat whale meat in Iceland, again.
You have a reason for using these definitions (like CO2 limits).

I'd rather say this landscape has value and deserves protection/restoration than try and make an area fit a definition. The reason for the value can be different in different places. The Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland in Northern Scotland is of international significance but it's not an area that most people would think of as attractive let alone beautiful or attractive. And "possibly the largest blanket bog in the world" doesn't attract hikers or mountaineers or many people at all other than bird watchers and botanists.

http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/1323/
http://www.rspb.org.uk/supporting/campaigns/flowcountry/future.asp


That's what goes into the legal definitions into words like Forests (as
in short for National Forests), Parks, Wilderness Areas, Refuges, etc.
It's a consequence now of zoning. It's otherwise wide open. Do you
want trees (for instance)? Sure. Let's cut a few down. Fine, in the
US, we have Forests. Can't do as easily in Parks (I know the chain saw
area in Yosemite). You may need a permit depending on use. The guys in
1870s didn't see a need for any of this. You only have Forests and
Parks in the US, because they had the foresight. You guys in Europe
only caught on later and that's why your Parks et al are late.
I'll leave off the other technical words.

Not very late. The first European national parks were in Sweden in 1909.
Britain was late, not having any national parks until after WWII.

Parks are late.
Forests with a cap F were an important stepping stone be they Sherwood
or the Schwarzwald.

"Forest" in Medieval times meant a hunting area that wasn't necessarily wooded. Hence all the tree free areas called something forest in the Scottish mountains. Forests in the UK have mostly been managed for well over 1000 years. There is probably more untended forest now than for many centuries.

You wanted a Navy? You needed stout wood.

English oak. The history of forestry is interesting in this respect. Trees were planted to provide masts for Naval ships but by the time they had grown big enough the ships were iron and had engines. Hard to plan ahead with tree growth rates.

Many trees were cut down in Scottish forests in the 20th century world wars. However research shows that the period with the lowest forest cover was around 1700 and that the pattern of woodland hasn't changed much since the Middle Ages. The last major change seems to have been in Roman times.

Parks are more spectacle. They have greater entertainment value. At
least until some war comes along, and you want to cut down the entire
Olympic pennisula to make transports to attack Honshu, or grab
petroleum from the Naval reserve, etc. And the lack of WWIII meant the
desert SW of UT didn't have to get further mined for U.

Nothing is safe in the long term.

You could have the situation like in the Brazilian rain forest.
Oh, lots are gone to make it rural and feed people (that's good isn't
it?). That and another contrast that guys like Langford saw, private
spectacles: that's Niagarra Falls: you have to pay to see it. You want
to see the Meteor Crater in AZ near Winslow? You have to pay to see it.
You want to see Yosemite? Now you have to pay to see it, but it at
least in public trust (you have to deal with two costs: admission which
we rationalize {your spell checker balk at the Americanization?} to upkeep).
But some people think you have to pay a lot for hotels, camping gear, etc.
Lots of Parks, the more remote ones, don't require fees.
Unless you want to visit Joni Mitchel's tree museum.

European parks generally don't require fees (I don't know any that do
but there might be one or two).

It doesn't have to be fees Chris. They could be quotas. They could be
other regulations (No camping, No hunting, Stay on marked trails, etc.).

I don't know about all of Europe for this but Scottish, Norwegian and Scandinavian parks don't have no camping rules and allow free access - indeed, all three countries have legal access rights to land.

Hunting is very different in much of Europe to the USA and Canada. In many countries it's a sport for the wealthy only and very organised. It's the deer hunting and grouse shooting season in Scotland now, which means that rich business people pay large sums of money to be taken out on private estates by stalkers and keepers to shoot a stag or a brace of grouse.

Rationalize is perfectly good British English! As is rationalise, which
most people would use. My spell checker accepts both.

;^)
It's been programmed that way.

Of course. But the Oxford English Dictionary agrees.

Not only that, but the laws which created and protected this stuff have
holes: logging, hunting, mining, etc. E.g. why not go hunting in
Yosemite National Park. In fact at one time it was legal. Rangers
could do it to supplement their merger incoming. Why would any one want
to see a grizzly bear in Yosemite after all? Safer to kill them off
(extermination).

Hunting is legal in many European national parks - including all British
ones.

But not in the vast majority of US National Parks to say nothing of
State Parks. Subsistence hunting by local natives in some Parks.

The European situation is complicated by all the different national laws.
I think what little of the story of Italy's few Natl. Parks (one might joke
about mafia parks, but that's not fair) might be useful. But then we'd have
to enumerate each and every country which took it upon national pride to
try to claim you have wild lands and not merely unused rural pasture
(see all these funny words we can pull out of our hats?).

When does unused rural pasture become wild again?

Well, you tell me.

Almost immediately I would say. There are an increasing number of areas in the Scottish Highlands where grazing pressures have been reduced and the trees are regenerating without planting or fencing. I think of these as wild.

You are either citing a legal contradiction in terms or have different
zoning. If it's rural (misc.rural, and which can be pasture), then when
can you call it wild?

We don't have that sort of zoning here. Rural often means farmed but can sometimes mean everywhere outside cities. Countryside means everything from fields of wheat to mountain tops. The point where the farmed becomes the wild is a fuzzy area. Gradually bits of wildness start to appear until at some point it dominates.

Bears and wolves roam on the boundaries of
Yellowstone and Glacier in the USA, but the guy/family with the
ranch/etc. next door isn't necessarily interested in the wild if they
have herds.

How much did the sheep change Sierra meadows? Are they still wild? Are
they rural pasture?

I'm not certain. They were only grazed a few decades in a Park like
Yosemite. In the adjacent Forests, in some areas they are still grazed.
So you get introduction of non-native plant species. We still killed
off numerous predator species, so in that sense, they are clearly less
wild. Cow turds are all over the place in various forest areas. You
won't tend to find too many in the Parks so long as people restore
gates. Does that make a forest rural? Well agriculture is to rural as
silviculture is to forests? I'm not certain.

Again, I think this is an undefined area. It depends on the effect the livestock has on the forest. How many cows? What type of trees? What type of undergrowth? What type of soil? How many native species are present?

Actually Mtn lions and larger adult coyotes can still be problems.
Much less the areas which have wolves and bears. And alligators.
And poisonous snakes..... And ....

We have a poisonous snake.

National parks in Britain are generally seen as protecting landscapes,
which may or may not contain wild land. They're not seen as specifically
to protect wild land or to make claims that there is wild land. British
national parks have roads, towns, farms. I live in a national park! Most
of the land is privately owned too.

Well you also have that National day of trespass and a whole slew of
laws, customs, land uses etc. which aren't in the USA.

It is very different. What we don't have is much public land.

You could get
shot here as you know. This is why when you use words like "wild" and
"landscape" any such user will be taken to task. Failure to do so leaves
one wide open, and this is why the US has so many lawyers (protective as
well as offensive). So wild here mostly means roadless.

I think wild here often means roadless too, but the roadless area can be quite small. Roads may be visible and a place still called wild.

And I have not even brought up species biology (things that might eat you).
Maybe mosquitos.

Midges! The season will be over soon.

Atomically mutated might make an amusing sci-fi horror movie.

You could make a horror movie without any mutations!

Your man Orwell brought this language thing up best in 1984.

If you don't want Parks, remove them from the language.

But we do want Parks.

Then you have to be prepared to fight for them.
You guys have the Land Trust.

We do fight for them. Otherwise we wouldn't have them.

By Land Trust do you mean the National Trust? There are two - one for England and Wales and one for Scotland. The National Trust for Scotland does own much wild land - as well as castles, gardens and stately homes. There is also the John Muir Trust, which owns wild land too.

I'm out of here for the weekend Chris.

I'm back from the Mountaineering Council of Scotland AGM & Gathering weekend. Conservation and wild land is a key topic for us.
--
Chris Townsend

http://www.auchnarrow.demon.co.uk
.

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