Uninformed hikers, campers, climbers and casual visitors are the key factors contributing to the deterioration of our national parks.
Every year, our parks become more trashed and crowded by those who are ignorant of the damage their tiny acts of littering, illegal fires, bear-feeding, and so on do to these public lands.
Likewise, casual adventurers who are unwise in the ways of nature cause the public and their families’ unneeded emotional and financial burden due to the large number of those who become lost and distressed during their trips.
A series of training classes and certifications should be initiated in order to ease the National Park Service, which is most often called in to clean up the messes its temporary tenants leave behind.
A low-level class, showing basic survival and direction-finding skills, as well as the damage that even small acts of environmental defiance cause, should be required before any person is issued a camping permit.
For more involved hiking and climbing expeditions, there should be a more involved series of training courses and certifications required. Every level of these certifications should also have timely renewals required, such as with drivers, gun and fishing licenses. Adherents to the idea of public land have valid beliefs.
As a nation of tax-paying citizens, the idea of public areas open to all is an important ideal to maintain. However, this same logic should also imply that the public land should be preserved for all. Knowledge begets progress, and an informed public is more likely to make choices while camping that lead to a progressively cleaner and well-maintained park system.
Also, in the case of lost hikers, there is the issue of the public being responsible for the hikers’ mistakes, in the way of rescue operations.
With more knowledge about direction finding, and a sense of humility concerning one’s place in the wilderness taught to more hikers, there will be potentially less lost and endangered hikers.
Nature itself does not become a more dangerous place for humans. The threats and problems remain mostly static in the level of danger presented. Humans have a built in knack and desire for learning that has allowed them to overcome the weather, wildlife, and other challenges presented by nature.
By learning a core set of survival skills, virtually any hiker should be able to survive many of the normal, as well as many of the freak situations found in the wilderness.