Der Fall eines kanadischen Mannes, der entgegen dem Verbot im Wald wanderte, wird vor Gericht verhandelt | Wächter

I support the Government in this; the public good is best served when the safety of our shared commons is defended. I’m not one to support defending the rights of the individual *regardless of the potential of harm to society at large;* I support a balanced approach. Here in BC we regularly close off sections of forests to hikers and other backwoods uses, because wildfires are a very real threat to the Province.

*That said*, if the Government loses then it opens an interesting path to confirming *the right to roam*. If one has a constitutional right to access the forests due to their PTSD, then what does that mean when the forests within reasonable distance are privately owned? Where I live the old E&N lands are owned by Mosaic, and so one must drive for *hours* to access crown land, if you wish to do so; or simply trespass, which is criminal when the gates are closed.

You see, I am in favour of the right to roam; but also in favour of restricting access when the forests are unsafe for public use.

For those not in NS the ban was a blanket ban on all „woods“ activity. That includes biking and hiking but curiously not things like logging or riding ATVs. This blanket ban also included city parks or beaches.including Peggy’s Cove which is literally barren rock. Is this guy a weirdo sure but the ban was overreaching.

Someone who thinks his personal needs & wants are more important than society and our public goods AND who has the audacity of publicizing his disregard for the law needs to have the book thrown at him.

If there’s one thing we need to ensure in Canada, is that we stop this skidding towards the American mindset that „me“ is more important than „us“. This is essentially what led to the destruction of most public services in the US, and led to this paranoïa that everyone needs a gun to protect themselves from their neighbhours.

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The guy is a blow hard anti-authority type who was/is looking for attention. Crystal clear in his video.

To the best of my recollection, this PTSD angle was not part of his content creating strategy when he did it.

His video was missing one thing… the red hat.

Personally, I’d draw the line at if there was clear evidence that the ban (and its extent) was actually needed.

I think far too often Canadian governments have used “urgency” as a crutch to justify sweeping bans and prohibitions that are largely unfounded and based on vibes.

That being said the courts have taken an incredibly lax view on these, basically saying thr governments decisions should automatically be viewed as correct in all circumstances and overwhelmingly evidence in the contrary is needed to overturn the action of government.

Honest fire management question, only tangentially related to the story: is fire in these northern deciduous forests actually „caused“ by ignition sources in an important way, or is it just a matter of fuel load?

I’m originally from California, where there are a lot of forests full of resinous evergreen trees, in areas that reliably get really dry, hot, and windy every year. Fuel takes a really long time to rot away, if it ever does. Dead trees tend to stay standing. A lot of areas definitely *will* burn over sooner or later. If you don’t suppress that, you get a larger number of relatively (relatively!) small fires. If you do suppress it, including trying to remove ignition sources, you get a smaller number of relatively large fires. But you won’t have *no* fires. A certain amount of fuel is going to burn. Things that actually change the fuel available, like disease or climate stress or *eventual* decay, happen over long enough times that you can’t really expect to get all the way through a „lots of fuel“ period without it burning.

… but maybe that’s less true when things are wetter and soggier most of the time, and the wood *does* rot, and maybe isn’t as burny to begin with. I mean, *standing trees* rot here. When I was a kid, I thought a „hollow tree“ was a literary device, but it turns out not to be true…

Anybody actually know?