Discussion: To guarantee wilderness in the long run,

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/k...

To guarantee wilderness in the long run, we first need to ensure a constituency for it. Environmentalists focus on preserving wilderness, because that’s the immediate priority, but they perhaps should be as energetic at getting young people to interact with it. We need more Americans working through their challenges, like Cheryl Strayed, by hurling boots off precipices. We need more schools and universities to offer classes on the wild, in the wild — with extra credit for students who get lost.

See also: The Impact of Nature Experience on Willingness to Support Conservation.

Wow, that is really interesting.

I typically find "conservation"-minded land owners (especially government Parks organizations) to be the most difficult to deal with in getting permissions. This paper shows a possible way to argue with them that it is actually in their best interest to allow orienteering in the parks. But first we'd have to prove that backpacking and orienteering are quite similar, at least in some regards ;-(

Love this article, I hope to keep getting lost, and that future generations will too. :)

How do you argue with a government department when they say you cannot hold an event in winter due to the occurrence of rain (the mud will spread disease), so you postpone it to a 'drier' month in spring and they tell you that you cannot hold it then because there wasn't any rain in winter so they are expecting it in spring?

Yes this is what I have to deal with.

Did I miss something about our MTBO champs? Are they off/moved again???

No they are still scheduled for September unless the highly dubious forecast in the two weeks prior says it's going to rain, in which case they are cancelled again.

@tRicky - I feel your pain. I'm slowly learning that you can't argue with those guys at all. They go out of their way to say "no" because (IMO) it is the simplest thing for them. In Alberta Canada we recently tried a unique approach to this problem ... we had one of our members run for parliament in the Provincial elections, hoping that if he won that his party would make him minister of Parks - with all of the benefits that would give to orienteering organizers ;-) Sadly, he came a close second and we're left dealing with the front line bureaucrats. Four years or so until the next election ...

(ps: We didn't really plan that election strategy in that way of course - it just so happened that one of our club members was interested in running for parliament)

From my experience, the guys in Parliament don't do much running - except our Leader of the Opposition who does triathlons.

Abbott in his budgie smugglers is one of the reasons I now live overseas.

Abbot in the Lodge is far more frightening.

Tony Abbot participated in the Anaconda adventure race that MTBjen and I did in NSW 3 or 4 years ago. First time I'd heard of him really. I remember seeing suited types waiting at the end of the MTB for him, some matter of national import to interrupt his leisure time!

He should take up accounting where there are no deadlines to interrupt sporting commitments.

In addition to the Alberta one, I seem to recall an APer well known to Invisible almost getting herself elected to Parliament some years ago (something I was reminded of last night after listening to a discussion about the shenanigans surrounding the current Bendigo preselection).