Posted by Jonathan Labaree on August 28, 2002 at 14:44:08 from 207.5.198.231 user JLabaree.
In Reply to: Re: Swallow Island posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on August 27, 2002 at 22:30:35:
Thanks, Andrew, point well taken. This topic hits close to home because we always asked permission before camping on islands as kids near our summer home in Maine, except when we didn’t know who the owner was.
In addition, I work for a coastal conservation organization here in Maine and one of the management challenges we face is camping on our islands. Having a group of kids use a place for a couple of nights is not a problem, but a stay of several weeks is a different story (the longer you stay in a campsite, the greater your impact). As you say, Andrew, pressure on such resources is much greater now than 70 years ago. The trick is figuring out how to give people experiences similar to those the children in the books enjoyed. Even in a place like Maine, with some 1200 coastal islands (and many thousands more inland islands), overuse is an issue. Now, of course, there are commercial outfits bringing groups of kayakers to remote islands -- not a bad necessarily, just another new set of "users".
- Jonathan