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At the Summit:
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Leave No Trace: A Couple's Mission to Ensure Our Wilderness Remains Wilderness
Dusty Allison explains Leave No Trace practices with a visitor.
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by Josh Marcus
Dusty and Amy Allison have a job most wilderness aficionados would drool over. They travel eleven months out of the year in a sponsored Subaru vehicle educating children and adults about the principles of Leave No Trace for Outdoor Ethics, a small non-profit based in Boulder, CO. The origins of Leave No Trace began with the 1964 Wilderness Act passed by Congress. It protected millions of acres of our land, while simultaneously bringing outdoor recreation to the masses. "However with increased access and enjoyment of the wilderness, comes increased responsibility for it," noted Dusty, a North Carolina Native. "Our parks were, and in many ways still are, being loved to death," says Amy. "We needed a way to preserve our wilderness, so the idea of Leave No Trace was born." During the 70s, the now famous slogans were developed "Pack it in, pack it out," and "Take only pictures, leave only footprints." Yet, what wilderness stewardship meant was still unclear. After haphazard and incoherent adoption and practice of Leave No Trace principles by the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service finally unified the policies in the 1980s. By the mid 90s, the National Outdoor Leadership School joined in the education effort. Although the Sierra Club was in many ways the founder of wilderness stewardship, it only recently officially adopted Leave No Trace principles for its activities. "Leave No Trace is all about ethics," commented Dusty, "and by ethics I mean what you do when no one else is looking." They even showed the audience how humans can easily pack out their excrement by using "poop powder." Despite the humor, Henry David Thoreau recognized the gravity of what they are doing well over one hundred years ago. "In Wilderness lies the preservation of the world." For information about the Leave No Trace for Outdoor Ethics and principles check out lnt.org -- 09/09/2005 Fri |
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