Pine needles crunched under James Parker’s feet as he walked in the Santa Fe National Forest on a warm September day. Parker, a longtime local, has hiked from the Winsor trailhead for the better part of two decades, and he rarely sees signs of other people once he leaves the path and bushwhacks into the woods. But this time, hiking off trail just inside the Pecos Wilderness, he stumbled upon a crime scene: Hundreds of chainsawed firs and ponderosa pines, their trunks littering the forest floor.
The fallen trees shaped a path 50 feet wide and several hundred yards long. Side trails branched out from it, forming a network of ski runs hacked from the heavily wooded forest. Shocked, Parker surveyed the damage, walking past stump after stump. “It goes beyond egoism to egomania,” Parker says. “It looks like someone cut their own personal run to show their friends this cool new glade they made.” He reported the crime to the U.S. Forest Service and local media, and the Forest Service launched an investigation.
Most of the illegal cutting that
Parker discovered occurred near Raven’s Ridge, an unofficial trail near
the Ski Santa Fe resort. And each time Parker returned, he found yet
more slashed trunks. Plastic red ribbons flagged trees still standing in
the route.
The U.S. Forest Service gave the case
to the agency’s crime unit, but as it grinds on, the incident vividly
illustrates the paradoxes involved in managing public lands, which are
open to anyone and lightly, if ever, patrolled. The federal process for
developing new trails is slow and cumbersome, and that seems to be
driving a few frustrated outdoor enthusiasts to forge their own renegade
paths, says Miles Standish, manager of wilderness, trails and
recreation for the Española Ranger District.
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It's hard to believe these incidents aren't being fully handled. I guess they are too busy running "saturation patrols" to meet their quotas by issuing tickets for cracked windshields and other vehicle and equipment violations.
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