No, the study I mentioned was carried out in 5 states at 33 different protected areas.
The full study here:
https://www.ebparks.org/sites/defau...et_al_ecological_impact_of_dogs_2016.pdfThe study may reference other possibly contrasting studies in the introduction as related work but if you can point to the "smoking gun" European studies that would be great.
Personally, I think there should be a high bar before Federal Bureaucrats or the "Ban Kings/Ultra-Regulation" California bureaucrats make gestapo rules in a sort of environmental "dick-measuring contest".
I think true "dog lovers" will feel guilty going on a hike without their (fully capable) dog just because some scum bureaucrats on power trips. Dog stays home laying around bored getting fatter and fatter. Also, hikers go where they want to go.
I have never taken my dog deep into wilderness backcountry areas because I feel such a long-distance thru-type hike would be just too many miles for my dog. But, I could see people with ultra-athletic dogs (e.g. Iditarod level dogs) wanting to do this.
What I think sucks is rigid blanket rules over huge areas. Suppose leashed dogs effect certain wildlife in a specific part of a park and/or season, should you ban dogs year around in the whole huge park? Bureaucrats seem to love making restrictive blanket rules.
An example of this even extending anti-dog rules nationwide is the controversy over the National Park Service controlled Golden Gate National Recreation Area, an urban area park where the NPS inclination was for "uniformity" sake to start cracking down on dogs after decades of freedom. Luckily, they were beaten back.
A relevant example to this board is Mt Whitney. How much wilderness destruction would there be if dogs were allowed on the top 13,800 to 14,500 feet elevation part of the trail (aka 405 freeway of the Sierra)? Note that this part of the trail is only aound 1000 feet inside the National Park boundary.
In my previous post I mentioned two issues with dogs that I thought were important and could not be mitigated. The only way to completely eliminate "predator scent" is if your dog went in a "space suit" and of course, haters are going to hate.
Two more reasons that a land manager would want to totally ban dogs:
- Jerks keep abusing the rules by letting their dogs run rampant off-leash harassing wildlife and hikers and not cleaning up after their dogs. "Sorry, the jerks ruined it for everybody".
- Idiots keep needlessly getting their dogs in trouble where hurt and/or incapacitated dogs tie up already scarce resources for rescues. "Sorry, the idiots ruined it for everybody".
As for pesky rangers, I have been told that search and destroy missions for hikers with leashed dogs with rolls of poop bags on their leashes are not high on their priority list.
