[newnewpdro]

This is essentially an argument for more national parks.

I've lived someplace embroiled in controversy over pursuing national park status. Most the residents are vehemently against it because it would trash the place and overwhelm it with tourist traffic and all the problems that brings. The supporters consist a small contingent of profiteering area land owners that don't even spend any significant time living there. They couldn't care less about what impact becoming a national park would have on the environment or the area residents' quality of life. They just saw dollars.

National parks are a double-edged sword. They bring often much-needed tourism dollars to typicaly economically distressed remote regions. But they do not improve the environment. They stimulate travel (often by air), pollute the park area, and damage the natural habitats.

If the goal is to preserve and protect, the last thing you do is classify a place as a national park and make it easily accessed and comfortable with infrastructure. You leave the place lacking roads, running water, campgrounds, and toilets, and certainly don't advertise it as a nationally-recognized place of beauty.

National parks are more about stimulating the economy than preserving nature, at least as implemented today.

[overkalix]

Commodification of nature. Get in the car, drive for a while, do something for 2 to 4 hours, get back in the car and drive back. In this case the activity consists of walking, but the summit/lookout/whatever can't be more than 6-7km away from the road. It has nothing to do with preservation.

Let me share a case I am familiar with. One of my favorite short walks in my grandparents' town used to be one where you had to walk ~2km through fields, then a steep ascend of ~4km on a difficult rocky trail, then another ~2km through a nice pine forest to finally reach a beautiful lookout.

Then someone somewhere decided that it was a good idea to build a paved road so people didn't have to walk the first 6km.

To the benefit of who? Certainly not the environment: the construction of the road, polluting cars, garbage, soil erosion at the sides of the road from cars parking there...

It didn't provide any benefit for the people that walked there. Now you can hear cars going up and down while you walk. Some places are littered with waste material from the road's construction, and at some points you actually have to cross the road.

The people that drive up there also admit that while the place is ideal to go with kids, it is so crowded that it makes the experience miserable.

Finally, it didn't create a continuous economic revenue for anyone, since the lands are public and the town doesn't charge any fee. There are only a handful of shops in town and they have not seen an increase in consumption.

So what was the point of all it? Did we wreck a beautiful mountain and forest so that a construction company could pocket a few million euros?

[prawn]

This might not be the ultimate answer because I think a world with a variety of experiences is reasonable, but making locations accessible may mean a lot to those in a wheelchair or unable to walk 6km. Let's say you work yourself to the bone, retire and then every natural wonder of the world has a lengthy walk to see it and you have bad knees - that's brutal. Or you have a teenage daughter unable to walk and you'd love to show her the view you grew up enjoying yourself. In your example, did the outlook itself change dramatically?

A lot of national parks have this mix already. You can drive a scenic route. you can do a short interpretive walk or an accessible trail, or you can do a half- or full-day hike, or you can get out away from the main trails hiking 100 miles across the park. You can stay in a nearby town, or in the in-park campground, or hike 5 miles to a backcountry spot with no one around.

But I think accessibility would be one 'point of it all.'

[dredmorbius]

"bad roads act as filters... bad roads bring good people, good roads bring bad people".

-- Joseph Wood Krutch

http://www.escapist.com/baja/books.htm

[TulliusCicero]

You're ignoring the cultural impact. People growing to love national parks may influence them to vote for pro-environment politicians and initiatives.

[hunter-gatherer]

Do you have evidence that this has ever been the case? My personal experience, having grown up in Utah and still having family there, it always seemed to me that the best way to "protect" the environment or a wilderness area is to simply not build a road to it.

Edit: spelling/grammer/I'm on mobile now.