![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
athousanderrorsvia https://ift.tt/2KmXfFk
copperbadge:
equagga:
kaijutegu:
bogleech:
bogleech:
A rare giant hellbender salamander found dead because some hiker’s rock-stacking collapsed on her.
I didn’t even know rock stacking was a thing until this year but there are many ways it disrupts the environment.
*Ever since it caught on as a form of white hipster “meditation” there are actually so many hikers who stack rocks now as a hobby that it collectively pollutes streams with sediment that the rocks would otherwise be filtering and reduces the populations of countless organisms that grow and nest among said rocks.
http://www.wideopenspaces.com/rock-stacking-natural-graffitti-ecological-impact/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/stacking-rocks-wilderness-no-good-180955880/
http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/08/25/new-graffiti-national-parks-fight-stone-stackers/
“There is merit to everyone doing some part to heal wounds to fragile riparian ecosystems that are already enduring a slow death by a thousand cuts.”
Flipping over rocks at all changes their very nature. It doesn’t even matter if you put them back afterwards - when you lift up a stone that has laid among other stones and been shaped just-so by the current, if it had properties that made it appealing to stream creatures as nesting and resting places, you’ve changed them.
Even scientists are moving away from flipping stones to seek out animals. Genetic sampling is the method preferred in this day and age, as filtering DNA out of the water column hurts nothing.
Leave the stones be. As much as every naturalist itches to peek beneath them, and as much as every dipshit wants to stack them on top of one another, it’s not the right thing to do.
As someone who had been camping as a kid but only recently developed an interest in backpacking, rock-stacking never occurred to me; I was taught “Take only photographs, leave only footprints” and I internalized that so thoroughly that I found it weird at first how many sites and classes heavily emphasize the Leave No Trace ethos. I didn’t understand at first how many people find it truly alien to have to pass through somewhere and not leave their mark.
As the second article points out, meaningless cairns can also be misleading or even dangerous for people who are accustomed to using rock markers as guides and aides. If your cairn looks like a handhold but isn’t, someone else is gonna be fucked when they try to use it that way. Save that shit for your garden.
But also I read through the articles because I was kind of curious about whether fellow hikers could or should take down cairns or leave them up. I’m a bit torn; inexperienced hikers might tear down a trail marker by mistake, but it looks like the rangers have their work cut out for them handling it. So I think it looks like it pays to be cautious – take down a cairn that’s obviously not serving a purpose if you find one, and don’t build any, but if you don’t know whether something is serving a purpose, let the park guides and rangers handle it.
(Your picture was not posted)
copperbadge:
equagga:
kaijutegu:
bogleech:
bogleech:
A rare giant hellbender salamander found dead because some hiker’s rock-stacking collapsed on her.
I didn’t even know rock stacking was a thing until this year but there are many ways it disrupts the environment.
*Ever since it caught on as a form of white hipster “meditation” there are actually so many hikers who stack rocks now as a hobby that it collectively pollutes streams with sediment that the rocks would otherwise be filtering and reduces the populations of countless organisms that grow and nest among said rocks.
http://www.wideopenspaces.com/rock-stacking-natural-graffitti-ecological-impact/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/stacking-rocks-wilderness-no-good-180955880/
http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/08/25/new-graffiti-national-parks-fight-stone-stackers/
“There is merit to everyone doing some part to heal wounds to fragile riparian ecosystems that are already enduring a slow death by a thousand cuts.”
Flipping over rocks at all changes their very nature. It doesn’t even matter if you put them back afterwards - when you lift up a stone that has laid among other stones and been shaped just-so by the current, if it had properties that made it appealing to stream creatures as nesting and resting places, you’ve changed them.
Even scientists are moving away from flipping stones to seek out animals. Genetic sampling is the method preferred in this day and age, as filtering DNA out of the water column hurts nothing.
Leave the stones be. As much as every naturalist itches to peek beneath them, and as much as every dipshit wants to stack them on top of one another, it’s not the right thing to do.
As someone who had been camping as a kid but only recently developed an interest in backpacking, rock-stacking never occurred to me; I was taught “Take only photographs, leave only footprints” and I internalized that so thoroughly that I found it weird at first how many sites and classes heavily emphasize the Leave No Trace ethos. I didn’t understand at first how many people find it truly alien to have to pass through somewhere and not leave their mark.
As the second article points out, meaningless cairns can also be misleading or even dangerous for people who are accustomed to using rock markers as guides and aides. If your cairn looks like a handhold but isn’t, someone else is gonna be fucked when they try to use it that way. Save that shit for your garden.
But also I read through the articles because I was kind of curious about whether fellow hikers could or should take down cairns or leave them up. I’m a bit torn; inexperienced hikers might tear down a trail marker by mistake, but it looks like the rangers have their work cut out for them handling it. So I think it looks like it pays to be cautious – take down a cairn that’s obviously not serving a purpose if you find one, and don’t build any, but if you don’t know whether something is serving a purpose, let the park guides and rangers handle it.
(Your picture was not posted)
