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[left][  ][font "Poor Richard"][green][size 3] There are times that I am ashamed to be included in the human race. Today was such a time. Living in SoCal one has to travel a bit to find a fresh water stream to do a little fly fishing. Well I took a drive up into the San Gabriel Mountains to try out the west fork of the SG River. This location is about 10 miles from civilization. When I arrive and scanned the area I was sick to see what I found. Beer bottles, cartons, plastic containers, food trays, sandals, clothing you name it, it was there. Obliviously a bunch of slobs paid this National Forrest a visit over Memorial Day. To top off this disgraceful behavior the taggers must have been working over time. Every sign, disposal bin post was covered with graffiti. The gang taggers didn’t stop there for they found it necessary to deface many of the boulders in the river. Here are just a few examples of what I found. Obliviously these slobs can’t read or care less about how they treat our National Parks for [/size][/green][/font][font "Poor Richard"][green][size 3] there were several signs posted in English & Spanish informing the public about the proper disposal of one’s trash. Unfortunately I don’t have an answer to this out of control epidemic. Do you? [/size][/green][/font][/left]
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Parents need to teach better. I watch the children in the neighborhood get their ice creams and just through the paper on the ground.
They have not been taught that Mommy is not gonna pick up.
It makes me sick also. The river up the street gets bad and I think I will start carrying a bag with me. Won't make the problem stop, but I will feel better about the surroundings.
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I used to fish Cottonwood Creek a lot as well as the Jordan River. The dirtiest thing in the river at that time was a Carp. ha ha.
It's too bad that others don't respect public areas.
My son and I just got back from a 4 day weekend. After picking up all the trash in the areas that we visited, we ended up with more than what we were able to generate ourselves.
We took enough stuff to fill one 30 gallon trash bag. We left with 4 trash bags full just from the other peoples garbage that was left behind at each of our fishing holes.[ ]
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I think the solution starts at home.. teach the kids to be responsible for themselves.. to respect each other and world we live in...when I was growing up these lessons were taught with discipline and my parents making sure I cleaned up after myself.. if not. I had a lot more work to do and usually a sore butt on top of it... until we as a country take the steps needed to hold these people responsible with jail time.. or heavy heavy fines coupled with hours of community service cleaning up after the ones who did not get caught yet it will not change...
like everyone on this board and other boards I visit .. I take the time to police after myself and if I see a mess I clean that up too.. once had a park ranger tell me to leave a log I was moving alone plus the paper under it since it was all natural and bio degradeable. I then held up a huge wad of mono line and said I dont think this is biodegradeable. he turned red ..thanked me for helping him to keep the park clean and went on his way... I am hoping I am passing on these lessons to my grandson when he goes out with me since I make sure he cleans up his mess and extra trash in the area...
I remeber as a kid a series of commercials where an Indian in a canoe paddles across a beautiful lake.. then the camera cuts in closer and you see a little trash.. as he goes upstream you see lots of trash.. the closing scene of this commercial is the indian stand next to his canoe.. surrounded by trash.. and he is crying.. and I believe the caption said something like help keep America clean so we can pass a cleaner America on to our kids and grandkids....
maybe we should bring those commercial back with a warning that anyone caught will be prosecuted etc... and then make sure we follow up on it..
MacFly [cool]
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There is not enough active campaigning from the Boy Scouts. I learned alot there and with my Pops. My Grandfather on my Pops side also played a key contributor to my youth as well.[cool]
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Give park rangers 12 gauges, and rock salt shells. Punishment for getting caught littering, one shot per item of trash. That'll get people thinking.
I Know the river bank I fish (The catfish pictures, in the General discussion forum) have these big drums set out, and are emptied fairly regularly by some group. They're spaced out about 20-50 yards, all along any publicly accessable bank. Yet I still manage to find wrapers from rigs, empty bait tubs, bundles of fishing line, coffee cups, and other trash. Though I think the majority of people take advantage of the garbage cans. I remember it being alot worse before.
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[size 1]MacFly wrote:[/size]
[size 1]I think the solution starts at home.. teach the kids to be responsible for themselves.. to respect each other and world we live in...when I was growing up these lessons were taught with discipline and my parents making sure I cleaned up after myself.. if not. I had a lot more work to do and usually a sore butt on top of it[/size]
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[#0000ff][size 1]We have made too hard to discipline kids. You can go to jail for it these days. I think this is a thing carried way to far the wrong way.[/size][/#0000ff]
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MacFly wrote:
[size 1] remeber as a kid a series of commercials where an Indian in a canoe paddles across a beautiful lake.. then the camera cuts in closer and you see a little trash.. as he goes upstream you see lots of trash.. the closing scene of this commercial is the indian stand next to his canoe.. surrounded by trash.. and he is crying.. and I believe the caption said something like help keep America clean so we can pass a cleaner America on to our kids and grandkids.... [/size]
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[#0000ff][size 1]Obviously you and I took a different importance to this message than most people did.[/size][/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff][size 1]Penalties are so hard to enforce. A law officer would need to catch them in the act. Then you have to pay for the the officer to be hanging around. Who's got the money for that. Only thing we can do is continue to be as good a steward that we can be and lead by example. [/size][/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff][size 1]The US is being torn down from with in so many ways one can not count them. The biggest problem is that those that are doing it don't recognize their destructive ways. They think the opposite. It can be depressing at times.[/size][/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff][size 1]Why can't everyone just think and act like I do?[/size][/#0000ff]
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All we can do is try. I have even thought of putting a sign on the tree in front of my house stating that Littering is a crime. I know the kids in the neighbourhood would respond (they are good kids)
I have gone to extremes. In one case I was following a car getting off the freeway. I knew traffic wasn't going to move fast due to the semi's in the front of the line. The lady in front of me threw a container of fries out the window. I didn't mind the fries cause I knew something would eat them but the cardboard container was a different story. I got out of my car and picked up the cardboard container, walked up to her car and said, "I believe you accidentally dropped this" She did take it and threw it in her back seat. I think I embarassed her. Not a good thing to do however....never know who might get %$#@ and carry a gun, but I think this one got her thinking.
Another one that makes me so mad is a small lake in town. I watch a family pull up and have a picnic and do a little fishing. They had bags filled with goodies. When I came back to shore, they were gone. They had taken the time to put all their leftovers in the bags and tie them off, but left the bags sitting on the shore. The kicker is, you have to pass a dumpster to get back out to the road.
WHO DO THEY THINK IS GOING TO PICK IT UP![mad]
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...I agree on this point totally.. I know our troop is very active in the local community.. but beyond that there is nothing.. I know here in San Diego they have beach clean up days.. usually a lot of political footage about keeping the beaches clean.. and then the volunteers get to work.. my point here is that if people simply policed after themselves then we would not have to have beach clean up days.. [mad]
as a kid during the summer and on school breaks I would go to job sites with my dad and hod for him....it was hard work but the money was good.. one of the first things my dad taught me at a job site is to always leave it as clean if not cleaner than when you arrived.. as his hod it was my job to clean up.. if it was not done right I heard about it from him.. so today.. when doing work at home .. or out fishing.. I always make sure the area I am in is as clean if not cleaner than when I got there... and to be honest I taught my daughters the same thing and am teaching my grandchildren as well.. hopefully if enough people do this then the problem will get solved...
MacFly
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Funny how people have the energy to carry everything in full but somehow get to weak to carry it out empty.
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now that is a great ovservation that I think says what we all think very simply.. and Id say the solution to the problem is to make sure you carry out what you carried in... end of problem..
MacFly [cool]
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I have got to add, that the majority of the problem I have seen with total disregard comes from Foreigners. And I am not talking about the south of the boarder. I have had run ins with Scandinavians.
It seems they just don't care about the good ol' USA
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[font "Poor Richard"][green][size 3]Teaching respect for other people's property has to start at an early age & that needs to start with the parents. Every thing else is reinforcement. I remember as a child walking down the street with my Mother and being admonished for for spitting on the side walk. She said that gentlemen either spit into their hankie or in the gutter. Yup my Mother was from the old country. I wouldn't have dared to throw even a candy wrapper away. I would place it in my pocket until I came across a trash bin. Old habits never die. As far as graffiti is concerned animals mark their territory for a reason. Obliviously taggers are worse than animals. [/size][/green][/font]
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I wish there was a clapping icon available to us here.. if there was I would be giving all of you a standing ovation... I hope and pray that by us doing as we were taught...and passing that on.. and doing by example that one day we will overcome the complacency in our society... [  ]
MacFly [cool]
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I have to agree with FG on the forigners comment...And up here in Canada a good chunk do come from south of the border...No offense intended to the responsible visitors. I've seen hunters from down south leave a duck blind, and also leave all thier wrappers from the new decoys they bought, boxes from thier shotgun shells, wrappers from thier lunches, and knee deep piles of empty hulls. Now, I can understand a wrapper might blow away. Or you fail to find a couple empty hulls when the shotgun spits them into the reeds, but sometimes there's minny landfills left in the marshes. (And I've seen local residents do the same, so I'm not trying the blame game here).
The Most littered portions of the river bank I notice are usualy recently vacated by Asian immagrants. They'll leave a hundred yards of tangled 30lbs mono, empty minnow containers...
And natives, stewards of the land, I've seen throwing all sorts of garbage around. I saw one spearing spawning pike with a pitchfork near a beaver dam, and leaving them on the bank. I ask what he was doing with them, and he admited he was only spearing them because it was fun. Another one, I saw shooting spring Malard ducks with a .22, and just leaving them because he wanted to target practice. In the Whiteshell Park, I see them netting lake sturgeon, even though they're a threatened species of fish around here.
And semi-ritch suburbanites. They drive out into the country, rip around on thier ATV's (Not always on public land, and never asking permission). They have bonfire parties, leaving hundreds of empty bottles, wrappers, broken lawn chairs, used condoms, spray paint cans (used to paint random crap on rocks and trees and anything else they feel like defacing) and all sorts of filth.
I'm starting to think there's no one left out there that actualy respects the beauty of natural places, fresh air, clean water. The plentiful animals and fish that can be viewed and hunted by all. If it was enforcable, I'd suggests barring those convicted of these sort of crimes from entering anyplace resembling a natural area or green-space or waterway...
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.... and another round of applause for more well spoken truths...
MacFly [cool]
****Here is one for you. Tn2**** ![[Image: appl.gif]](http://www.getbentsportfishing.com/forum/images/smilies/appl.gif)
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My Pops always taught me:
[red][size 6]Pack it in, pack it out![/size][/red]![[Image: moon.gif]](http://www.getbentsportfishing.com/forum/images/smilies/moon.gif)
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Well there was a little private lake here in SE Idaho that was open for free public use. The landowners got sick & tired of the garbage and kegger parties going on around their lake (like what has been described by everyone here).
The solution? Start charging people to use their lake and use the funds to pay a "camp host" to stay there all summer.
Its amazing how much difference it made by charging $5/day.
Not saying it works everywhere, and not saying I particularly like the idea of paying to use public land, but at Twin Lakes in Idaho, it worked.
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Id pay the fiver if it worked.....one lake I go to here its 3.00 to get in and 5.00 to fish... and that is the lake I referred to earlier where the ranger told me to leave natural things go.. like wood etc.. except I was clearing a huge wad of mono mixed in with a plastic bottle and some other trash....
MacFly
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Back when I lived in ID, people had more pride in keeping their area clean than they did on their driving.[cool]
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