Do you like to fish or just camp out and enjoy the outdoors? Well, the campsites that the Forest Service builds are a great place to get to for a weekend or longer. Just to have a table, fire ring and a good toilet are all things we need and appreciate.

I have worked at building and rebuilding these sites for 40 years now. Last month while doing maintenance at some of the sites I thought I had seen it all. But no. Not yet. You see there is a small percentage of nut cases out there burning the tables, smashing out the toilets and ripping the fire rings out of the ground to place them where they want or stealing them.

While I think of it, it amazes me that these pigs think beer bottles, cans and lawn chairs will burn. We constantly have to shovel said items out of the fire rings. Paper products that will burn well are repeatedly found thrown under the trees and around the campsites. Pigs!

When I camp I hang a bag on my camper to make it easy to deposit metal caps rather than drop them all over the campsite and other areas of the sites. People leave tin foil and beer cans in the fire pits thinking it will burn, it does not. Take your garbage with you.

Now that I am on a roll, let’s talk about dirt bikes and quads. It used to be just dirt bikes, but it seems that since quads hit the market there has been even more rampant destruction of our wet lands, creeks and grasslands. This problem is happening in our own back yard. These quad riders have no respect. They just want to have fun and who cares, no one will do anything about it. Have you ever heard of anyone having to pay for damage they have done?

It’s the same old story, now we have to regulate and we will all have to pay. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to build rec sites, repair them and clean up the mess. I think it’s time we all got involved, a picture here, licence plate numbers there would surely help.

I was going to sign this – one man’s opinion, but hopefully I have 90 per cent of your readers with me.

BUD HORNE

Barriere