national forests are also important though, in a park I can't hunt, I can't fish, I can't decide to climb that hill if theres not a trail there, I can't do a million things that I normally do when I go "real" camping, and they charge money. Camping in a national park is like visiting a museum, pretty but you can't touch.
At least in Missouri, there is a distinct difference between national parks and national forests. In the
Mark Twain forest , you can hunt, fish and camp, either in campgrounds with ammenities, or :
Primitive Camping is allowed throught the forest except in day use areas, administrative sites, within 100' of springs, stream, caves and other natural features or archeological sites, or where otherwise prohibited. Follow Leave No Trace principles and protect the forest resouces.
I'm not worried about loggers buying up the land and clear cutting it. The woods in the Missouri Ozarks are not really very good for lumber. What saddens me is the fact that people like me will buy up the chunks of land as they become available, and live on it and civilize it. They'll build fences and run cows or hogs on it and put up no trespassing signs and NO ONE else can walk on that ground and enjoy the sights ever again. They'll build houses and barns and sewage lagoons and plant fescue grass for lawns, and the character of the land will be changed forever.
If it's near a town, developers will buy it and
develop it and change it like the area around Branson has been trashed. When my family first moved to the Missouri Ozarks over 30 years ago, Branson was a small town with a thin highway running through the hills with just a few shows for tourists plus Silver Dollar City and The Shepard of the Hills play. Now it's like this:
Wall to wall tourist traps and all those pretty hills paved over and jammed with buildings. I've been there once since I grew up and moved away (I just had to go see ROTK in IMAX!) and it was just appalling.
There was barely anything natural left. Orcs had destroyed everything. There will never again be the delicate ecosystem of the thin soil of the glades there again.
That's why I don't like the thought of selling off any of this national forest land. It's been acquired, it's in our hands. It will only get more expensive later, if we try to buy it back. We need to keep it now, so that we can save it from being developed by individuals or corporations. The more people there are in the world, the more we need to keep wild areas available for those people to visit.
And Halpm (I think it was you?) you said what did it matter because a forest will burn down. Having a forest burn down is OK, it's natural. It happens. New trees will grow, more animals will move in. What is impossible to recover from is concrete foundations and trees with barbed wire fences imbedded in their flesh because people were too lazy to sink posts. Makeshift bridges constructed of culverts with concrete poured over them. Ugly things like that that endure for centuries. If we try to make developed land back into wild zones later, it would take an enormous, huge effort to erase the signs of human habitation. Much more expensive than merely saving these lands for later. And the diverse ecosystem survives as well, with conservation.
It's more than worth it, I think. It's necessary.