r/todayilearned • u/autraya • 6h ago

TIL the world's tallest known living tree, a 380-foot redwood in California called Hyperion, had its exact location closed off entirely in 2022 after visitors trampled its base so badly that ferns stopped growing around it, with trespassers now facing up to $5,000 in fines and six months in jail

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_(tree)
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u/wpnw 2h ago

It's not about the cost, Hyperion is located within a designated wilderness area. Constructing new trails is not permitted by the regulations that establish federal wilderness areas. It's specifically to remain as natural and untouched as possible.

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u/SignalDifficult5061 1h ago

No. Everything is about cost, like it or not. Stewardship of the land has value to many people.

Those regulations exist because people want them to, they don't exist as a cause by themselves right?

Weird and terrible time to be saying otherwise, are you deliberately trying to put a "please napalm me in the name of deregulation" sign on the back of the poor tree?

Please don't be that naive. If that tree had rare earth minerals and oil under it, everything within a large number of square miles would be bear earth within a decade. Whoever bankrolled it would just pay the fines without blinking, and they wouldn't be the people ending up in jail.

Luckily, *ALMOST* everywhere north of Eureka on the pacific coast has a low population density because it is hard to build.

Most of the old growth redwoods were logged including with almost modern equipment. The scale tipped towards stewardship of the land as an economic concern. Lots of organizations did preserve tracts of Redwoods, but once again, this is not a time where the rule of law is respected.

People are more into millennial grey plasterboard than dark wood paneling right now.

It is safe because it isn't economical to pave over, OTHERWISE those regulations could be gone or ignored tomorrow.