It’s wild enough that it just might work. And it’s not entirely unprecedented.
In England, groups like Right to Roam organize trespassing events to protest restrictions on hiking, camping, and swimming. Just this week, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Dartmoor National Park to assert backpackers’ rights to ‘wild camp’ on private property within the park.
And in Colorado Springs, Colorado, over a decade ago, hikers defied ‘no trespassing’ signs on the Manitou Incline trail so flagrantly, that even Congress was moved to act in support of legalizing hiking access there.
If it works, protection for the new GFNP will give the forest time to heal and return to its former glory.
“[We’d have] visitation from all over the world coming to see some of the, historically, largest trees on the planet, and currently the largest flowering trees on the planet,” Rees says. “These are gonna be giants over time. And if protected and guarded from fire and other things, we’ll be rivaling [the US’s] redwoods.”
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