What Leave No Trace & minimal impact bushwalking means to yo

[Lamont]

Interesting to read the thoughtful responses HIAH.
Ta for putting it up.

[Moondog55]

Sometimes it means I do carry a poo tube, no big deal and no problem either. Sometimes it meas cleaning up after other people and bringing rubbish out with me. Brown paper bags are cheap enough after all. Last camp I found several titanium tent pegs too. A bit of a bonus for taking the rubbish with me

[Mark F]

I used to walk with a guy who would go well away from camp, clear an area, crap on the ground, burn tp, pee on the resulting mess then put back leaf litter etc. He thought it best practice.

It is not. Consider flies that land on that and then land on your face/hands/food.

It really is a perfectly reasonable approach for many locations. My only caveat would be that it is best well away from camp sites in low use areas. Removing and replacing the leaf litter limits access by flies. Most mammals leave their dung on the surface and that is where it will be most rapidly broken down. My main peeve is the endless white flags people leave as some sort of memorial to their successful bowel movement - the result of a traumatic toilet training in their infancy?

Last edited by Mark F on Fri 07 Jun, 2019 2:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[skibug]

As an obvious conclusion to several of the above observations, it makes sense to toilet during the day, when between popular camp-sites, so that the camp sites themselves remain hygienic and less effected -while the waste is not concentrated in one area, but dispersed widely. I'll often combine a toilet break with morning or afternoon rest breaks, heading off trail into thick bush for both privacy and minimising the "accumulated" impact.

Skibug.

[ofuros]

I don't see alot of poo talk on any of the National Parks social media...just lots of pretty perfect nature pictures.

Maybe a short educational social media post of where & how to $h!| in the wilderness...followed by a regular reminder, might be step in the right direction for the average tourist, day/weekend walker, to help lessen unsightly unburied crap & toilet paper in our ever more popular National Parks.

Social media addiction is a great way to spread information...true or fake.

[Moondog55]

Maybe we need some better funding for the NPs. So we can put dunnies at the start of each walking track with a big sign saying "Go NOW" "There are no toilets provided in the bush"

[Nuts]

As an obvious conclusion to several of the above observations, it makes sense to toilet during the day, when between popular camp-sites, so that the camp sites themselves remain hygienic and less effected -while the waste is not concentrated in one area, but dispersed widely. I'll often combine a toilet break with morning or afternoon rest breaks, heading off trail into thick bush for both privacy and minimising the "accumulated" impact.

Skibug.

Unfortunately, as areas get busier, it's some of these very places that suffer. And the easy answer is to just keep funding dunnies and helicopters.
Not the smartest, quite likely negligent, but easy.

Last edited by Nuts on Thu 13 Jun, 2019 2:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Orion]

The hard answer is mandatory carry out. But the non-compliance rate would probably be high enough to make that less than successful. There are places where I live that require carry out and it's not a perfect solution. People don't want to do it, naturally. It's hard to see the big picture.