As citizens, faced with the restrictions of parks and nature reserves we feel as if we were living through a real, indiscriminate harassment. Faced with such bans, we wonder what the benefit for the community could possibly be.
It's often objected that, if it isn't possible to visit some areas of the park (that is, if man himself can't make use of them), why on earth should we protect and respect them?
To some this may sound like an unpleasant argument; in years of hiking I've heard differing opinions, but lately I'm becoming convinced of the need to respect the "however strict" rules of the parks.
In park areas we often seem to perceive more restrictions than benefits.
On the classic information boards, which you can find at the edges of the park or at the local pro loco tourist offices, it's easy to see lists like this one:
- no lighting fires;
- no camping;
- no dogs;
- no removing plant species;
- no removing minerals;
- no removing wood from the undergrowth;
- no removing or killing insects:
- no shouting and no music players;
- no leaving litter;
- no leaving the network of established paths...
As citizens, faced with all these restrictions, we feel as if we were living through a real, indiscriminate harassment. Faced with such bans, we wonder what the benefit for the community could possibly be. It's often objected that, if it isn't possible to visit some areas of the park (that is, if man himself can't make use of them), why on earth should we protect and respect them?
We must remember that the existence of park areas is the result of a long history, often made of the continuous, predatory exploitation of the land by man.
A first effort to really understand why park areas exist must start from the need to remove man from his Ptolemaic centrality and bring him back inside the system of ecological mechanisms in which he cannot help but live.
Regardless of the philosophical, political and social framework that can justify the existence of parks, it's easy to convince yourself of the importance of respecting them by considering, essentially, the practical reasons behind their creation:
1) Defending nature to defend the ecosystem we depend on;
2) Conservation of the biotopes linked to the area,
3) Maintaining the variety and the intraspecific genetic diversity of living things;
a) Protecting animals from poaching (whether they walk on four legs, fly or crawl...);
b) Protecting protected, rare or endangered botanical species;
4) Protecting the shyest animal species and creating an environment with little human presence, in which the "wild" character of the species can be preserved...
5) Controlling soil erosion;
6) Protecting the integrity of watercourses and catchment basins
a) Protecting the quality, naturalness and cleanliness of surface waters;
b) Preserving groundwater (location and quality of the water);
7) Conserving the landscape and scenic value of natural areas;
8) Sustainability of development (I leave future generations the world just as I found it).
You can't assume that the hiker is harmless to the natural environment of the parks, nor can you assume that the damage done by a few hikers is a small thing compared with other damage caused by man.
We must presume, as the past has concretely shown, that civilisation tends to develop by creating waste by-products that are potentially destructive for nature. Authorising the opening of a path means giving run-off water a preferential escape route, which can often both damage whole sections of a mountain ridge and leave not exactly pleasant marks on the landscape.
For these reasons I feel I can defend, to some extent, the wilderness of the parks, which, when you think about it, is always and in any case very scarce...