Because this message bears repeating: Don’t. Move. Rocks!

Drive down any of the roads in a national forest or park that follow a river and you can probably spot a cairn — a stack of rocks balanced carefully on top of each other. The word comes from the Gaelic for “heap of stones” and many can be quite beautiful.

Cairns can be good things when they are done right. Properly built cairns help mark trails to keep hikers from getting lost and can endure for decades. As trail markers, cairns keep hikers on a single route, protecting fragile soil and vegetation. In foggy or stormy weather, they can be lifesavers, helping to keep you safely on the trail. Each of these is a critical function of cairns, protecting the mountain or desert landscape, and you.

But they have no place in the middle of a river.

Some people stack rocks like this as a form of meditation. Some do it and call it art. More often than not, it makes for a neat Instagram picture and is never thought of again.

But what you may not realize is that stacking river rocks is doing serious damage to the delicate river ecosystem. And it’s not just cairns, the same goes for moving rocks and creating dams to make chutes or pools in a stream for tubing. Aquatic plants and animals make their homes on, under, and around these rocks. Fish build their nests in small cavities under rocks. When people move the rocks, the nest is destroyed and the eggs and young fish die.

Read full story…

 

The following are paid links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.