Entry 148: The Cost of Access: Outdoor Recreation, Stewardship, and The Trees Are Speaking

We often say we are managing our natural resources sustainably, but what if, in doing so, we are slowly losing the very things we claim to protect?

In The Trees Are Speaking, Lynda Mapes describes forests that have been clear cut and carefully replanted, landscapes that, on paper, are restored. Trees return. The forest grows back. But what existed before is not truly recovered. Even with careful replanting, what was taken cannot be fully replaced. Old growth, shaped over centuries, is gone. The depth of nutrients built into the soil, the complexity of habitats, the relationships between species, these are not things that can simply be recreated. What comes back may function, but it is not the same. And in many cases, what was lost will not be seen again within our lifetimes.

What looks like recovery is, in reality, replacement. A new forest stands where another once existed, but it carries a different structure, a different rhythm, a different capacity to support life. Time itself has been interrupted. The landscape may still be there, but something quieter and harder to measure has been diminished.

At some level, this is the result of a simple truth. Use changes the resource. Even when that use is intentional and well meaning, it alters the system over time. The more we ask of a place, whether for timber, recreation, or economic return, the more we shape it into something else. What begins as a natural system becomes, gradually, a managed one.

And yet, the way we approach these decisions rarely begins with that reality. Instead, we often start with a different question. How can this place be used? How can it contribute to tourism, to local economies, to access and experience? These are not wrong questions. They reflect real needs and real opportunities. But when they become the starting point, they quietly set the direction.

We begin to measure value in terms of output. Visitation numbers, revenue generated, experiences delivered. Over time, those measures shape our decisions. More access leads to more use. More use leads to more infrastructure, more promotion, more expectation. Each step makes sense on its own. But taken together, they move us away from the very qualities that made these places valuable to begin with. As E.F. Schumacher wrote, “the modern economy is propelled by a frenzy of greed and indulges in an orgy of envy,” a system that has difficulty recognizing limits or long term consequence.

What if we began somewhere else? What if, instead of asking how a place can be used, we first asked what it can endure, and what it needs in order to remain whole over time? Not every landscape is the same. Some places can absorb use and still function. Others cannot.

This way of thinking is not new. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes that “all flourishing is mutual,” pointing to a relationship with land grounded in reciprocity rather than extraction. Freeman Tilden, in his work on interpretation, emphasized that understanding must come before use. People cannot truly value what they do not first understand. If we begin with use, we risk shaping places before we fully understand what they are. If we begin with understanding, we are more likely to recognize their limits.

These questions are not abstract. They are playing out in real time. In northern Minnesota, debates over mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness reflect a familiar tension between economic opportunity and the long term integrity of a freshwater system that cannot easily be replaced. In Alaska, decisions to open protected wildlife areas to drilling raise similar questions about what these landscapes are being asked to carry, and for how long.

But it is not only happening in places of national attention. At smaller scales, the same pattern shows up again and again. A new trail is added to improve access. Then another to spread out use. Parking areas expand. Signage improves. Promotion follows. None of these decisions are wrong on their own. Many are made with good intentions, to connect people to place, to support communities, to meet growing demand. But over time, they begin to change the character of the landscape. What was once quiet becomes busy. What once felt remote becomes accessible. And slowly, the place becomes something different than what it was.

As Douglas Tallamy writes, “conservation is a grassroots phenomenon.” The choices we make at every scale shape the systems we depend on. Whether at the level of a national wilderness or a municipal park, the question is not just how land is used, but how those uses accumulate over time.

The consequences of these decisions do not appear all at once. They unfold over time. Ecological integrity is often the first to erode, as systems are altered or pushed beyond what they can sustain. As those changes take hold, the experience of the place begins to shift. What was once quiet becomes crowded. What felt wild becomes managed. What drew people there in the first place begins to fade.

Eventually, even the economic promise begins to weaken. Places that once stood out lose what made them distinct. The draw changes. In some cases, the pattern becomes more visible, cycles of rapid growth followed by decline, where landscapes are asked to produce and then left diminished once the resource is spent. The history of extractive economies shows this clearly. In the long term, the outcome is not a balance between use and preservation. It is a gradual loss across all three. Ecological, experiential, and economic.

If the pattern is clear, then the response cannot simply be more careful use. It has to begin with a different way of thinking. Not every place should be asked to do everything. Some landscapes can sustain use and still function over time. Others hold their value precisely because they remain undisturbed.

This requires a shift from asking what a place can produce to asking what it can endure. It asks us to think in terms of time, not just in years or decades, but across generations. It asks us to recognize that use, even when well-intended, is not neutral.

Aldo Leopold described this idea directly. “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” That idea reframes the question. When land is treated as a commodity, the focus becomes what it can produce. When it is understood as a community, the focus shifts to what it can sustain.

From that perspective, stewardship becomes something more than balance. It becomes restraint, selectivity, and care. It means recognizing that some places may be better left largely untouched, while others can carry the weight of access, recreation, or economic activity. It means asking, before we act, whether this is the right place for that use, or whether the outcomes we seek might be achieved elsewhere, in ways that place less strain on what cannot be replaced.

Barbara Kingsolver, writing about food and place, reminds us that “eating is an agricultural act.” The same is true of how we use land. The choices we make, what we use, how we use it, and where we direct our attention, shape the systems around us. When those choices are grounded in place, limits, and long term thinking, different outcomes become possible.

This is not a call to limit experience, but to ensure that it remains possible. Because if we continue to ask every place to serve every purpose, we risk losing not only the ecological integrity of these landscapes, but the very experiences, and long term value, that led us to care about them in the first place.

I want to believe in people, and I want to believe in places. I want to believe that, given the choice, we are capable of doing the right thing.