I recived this from Peter Straub and was asked to post it so pepole could send him input.
Greetings fellow Four Wheelers.
As you may recall, I am representing the 4x4 community on the Ghost Stewardship Monitoring Group. This group has been active now for 2 years. We finalized our team charter in April 2007. I became the chair of the Trail Sub-committee 11 months ago, and in that time we've approved trail criteria, created a conceptual trail plan for the South West area in the Ghost FLUZ, trained 18 volunteers on how to do Trail Inventory, Condition Assessment, and Sustainable Trail Design, and we created and used a proposal submission and evaluation process for new trail applications which the Climbers Accessess Society has already submitted a proposal for 5.2 km of new trail to access climbs in the Ghost area. This proposal was the first through our process, and was recommended to SRD for implementation by the Ghost Stewardship Monitoring Group. We are awaiting word back from SRD on thier acceptance of this proposal. The GSMG published it's first annual report and held an open house in April of this year. As you can see, we've been busy. We are currently working on a trail plan for the NW area, and have people on the ground doing inventory, condition Assessment and Trail Design. Depending on volunteers (that means you) we are hopeful that the first new trails could begin to appear in 2009.
But, to the purpose of this message. There is much discussion about camping in the Ghost area. This is now a hot topic for both SRD and Parks, and there is support from the ministers of both of those departments to make some changes to the way camping is managed in the area and across the province as a whole. Specifically there are several problems:
Random campers sometimes leave garbage at their camp sites. There are no managed waste bins..
Random campers sometimes leave human waste at their camp sites. There are no managed outhouses.
Random campers sometimes destroy rangeland that is important for livestock and wildlife.
Random campers sometimes behave lawlessly.
Random campers are very hard to manage when they do any of the above.
The campgrounds in the area are not used to capacity.
The campgrounds in the area are closed in the Winter.
The campgrounds in the area do no fit new larger RV's such as toy haulers.
The campgrounds in the area do not facilitate the 'group camping' or 'circle the wagons experience that many people enjoy these days.
The campgrounds do not have staging areas that connect to the trails.
The campgrounds do not allow you to operate ATV's within them so you cannot legally get to the trails that are not connected to the campgrounds.
SRD and Parks are ready to invest in new campgrounds and re-designed existing campgrounds to try to alleviate some or all of those problems.
They are also talking about 'Taking the random out of random camping', to quote the line I've heard many times. One idea seems to be to build better campgrounds, but eliminate Random Camping. This is a major change to the current GAMP plan and an idea requires some feedback from YOU!
At the next GSMG meeting on October 27, the issue of random camping and campgrounds will be on the agenda. I committed to getting feedback from you for that meeting.
Some questions to ask yourself.
Why do I not like camping at campgrounds in the Ghost?
What could be done to manage some of the persistent problems with random camping?
What could be done to the campgrounds to make them appeal to you so that you would use them?
I will take all of your feedback, but positive suggestions will be more powerful than complaints. Think of solutions.
For example, my personal thoughts are that I prefer to random camp because of my dog. I don't like the on-leash rules in campgrounds, and my dog tends to bark at everyone that walks past my campground once it get's dark out. That's not pleasant for me or other campers. I like to camp well away from others for that reason. Perhaps a series of designated camp spots could be built around the region. SRD and parks would build outhouses and bear proof garbage containers, and provide free firewood at the staging areas that I can take with me, and my club would 'adopt a campspot' and maintain the outhouse and garbage can. Those are my personal thoughts.
Please feel free to post your thoughts or ideas here, or send me an e-mail with your thoughts that I will summarize and present at the meeting next week.
Thanks for your participation.
Peter Straub
[email protected]
Topic: Random Camping in the Ghost FLUZ (Read 8789 times)