How to deal with unethical campers?
Earlier last month I witnessed someone fell a tree in the Eagles Nest Wilderness while I was on a backpack trip. Its quite obvious that you're not supposed to cut down trees in a national forest, in this particular wilderness fires are also prohibited. I hadn't any idea how to deal with this group of individuals. I feel that yelling at them would have done no good, as its obvious that what they were doing was wrong and they knew it.
Should I have reported these individuals? I had no way to identify them, and its hard to track who was even in the area during that time frame.
Should I have said something? Threatened to report them? Or is it best to just let it happen, because it seems there's not much that can be done.
It really upsets me to see someone do something so detrimental to a protected area. Its such an obvious trace of human presence. I've heard this has become a big problem in the Maroon-Bells Snowmass Wilderness, which isn't far from where I was hiking.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/q/9063. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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It boils down to the point what one could really do in such a situation. When I trek in India, I do come across such situations that beg some action from me and other sensitive people around. I define scope of 'what can I do' as following:
- Don't be outnumbered!:
If we are outnumbered, I will rather opt to report it to the authority, without threatening the guys doing it. I would also consider taking pictures of the deed and the doer, preferably without they noticing me doing so. - If they are being outnumbered by us, and they are unarmed: Yes, you can save a tree. Approach them with a sense of unity, warn them for what they are up to and what you can do about it. A bit of controlled but false aggression helps at times like this, at least it worked for me. A fictitious or unreal friend of yours working in the concerned authoritative organization just might do the trick.
For immediate results, the second options works best. But then again, you avoided an incident, that doesn't really alarm the authorities about possibility of happening it again.
For long term results, whether you chose to act and somehow managed to stop them, or just saw the incidence, whatever the case, report it at the concerned legal authority. With an increased number of such alarms, authorities will be a bit more keener about controlling such deeds.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/9070. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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