I was amused to visit Capitol Reef National Park and enjoy a tour of a small canyon where a boardwalk lets you see the names of some 19th century folk carved into a cliff face. Along the way were signs warning you of the criminal prosecution that would result if you carved your own name into the cliff.

I have seen significant preservation efforts regarding a name scratched on a hillside near the Grand Canyon. The author was still living down the street from me, but the scratching was 50 years old.

The abandoned houses across town are blight, but the one in Yosemite is a national treasure. My child's mud hut is a safety hazard, but the one up the cliff is a sacred Anasazi artifact.

On the other hand, I have seen a small local wilderness area turn from a fun spot for a family Easter egg hunt to a regional ATV attraction so crowded the local Boy Scouts could no longer camp there.

Balancing the past, present, and future is always a subjective thing. When the BLM actually does its job, it does land management. But that is a hard job. It is often easier to just close everything down and not let anyone in. That is not management. But when pressure on a wilderness grows from a couple hundred visitors a year to a couple hundred visitors a day, a policy of "anything goes" is also not management. Management can be expensive.

The people in the best position to observe and propose solutions are always local. But BLM struggles to build local partnerships. They try to manage through a multi-layered bureaucracy that ultimately makes decisions from Washington, D.C. The result can often look like the United Airlines video--constructing and enforcing a policy in a manner that doesn't fit the local situation. There are any number of ideas that could get the job done cheaper and with more sensibility.