[Tagging] Hunting area tagging

Kevin Kenny kevin.b.kenny+osm at gmail.com
Fri Oct 21 13:45:26 UTC 2016


 That's rather a simplistic view. Hunting reserves exist to protect the
land from development so that there will be places where it is possible to
hunt and game available to harvest. The important distinction isn't the one
between 'hunting reserve' and 'wilderness'; it's the one between 'reserve
land' and 'suburbia.'

In most of the conservation lands in my part of the world, hunting is
permitted, even encouraged, because it is necessary to thin the herds.
Since humanity drove the wolf and cougar into extinction in my part of the
world a century and a half ago (and so far will not allow the wolf to be
reintroduced, even in strictly protected wilderness), hunting is necessary
to avoid ecological collapse from overpopulation of the larger game
species, notably the white-tailed deer, the black bear, and local
nonmigratory populations of geese. Most of the hunters that I know
understand very well the value of conservation, and few would say that
hunting reserves exist for the primary purpose of supporting hunting.

The state not only owns lands for this purpose, but also encourages this
style of management on the part of private landowners. My brother gets
substantial tax breaks on the farm he owns because my family has allowed it
to return to woodland. (It hasn't been farmed since the Dust Bowl years.)
In return, he's required both to refrain from farming it and to refrain
from subdividing or developing. He is permitted the occasional timber
harvest (the plan for which must be approved by a forester) and to use the
land for hunting (he's not much of a hunter, but leases the hunting rights
to a club), fishing, and recreation (a snowmobile/ATV trail crosses his
acreage). Given that the state is compensating him to conserve his land and
practice sustainable forestry, how is his private preserve not conservation
land? Does the fact that people pay the club to hunt on the club's
leaseholds (an area much larger than my brother's farm) change the nature
of my brother's conservation easement?

His deal with the government is typical. A lot of people get something out
of it. New York City gets better water quality in the Watsonville
reservoir. A few hunters, fishermen, and snowmobilists get a place to
recreate. The National Park Service gets protection of the Delaware River
viewshed. The poor soil that remains is stabilized against further erosion
and gradually rebuilt by the natural processes that have been going on
since it was denuded in the last ice age. Brook trout and shad find a place
to spawn. Several threatened bird species have been sighted on his
property. Most important to him, he can afford the taxes to continue living
in the place. Without the conservation easement, he'd have been forced to
sell to a developer and move back to the city years ago.

Nature reserves are managed for many purposes, and enjoy greater and lesser
levels of protection. New York is fortunate enough to have them in
abundance. Some are enormous and strictly protected (e.g., High Peaks
Wilderness). Some are tiny (as small as a few city blocks of wetland in New
York City). Some belong to Federal, State and local governments. Some are
in private hands - the International Paper tract in Arietta township is the
largest. (It allows public access for recreation anywhere that active
logging is not taking place, and it takes a forester's eye to distinguish
it from the adjacent Jessup River Wild Forest.) Some belong to
conservancies (and for complicated legal reasons, sometimes it is
convenient for New York to pay conservancies to acquire and manage land).
Some allow only the most passive of activities (access by foot, ski, and
canoe, in terrain that only fit and experienced outdoor recreationists will
tackle). Some restrict only development and allow motorized recreation,
timber harvest, and low-density habitation.

All are popularly known as 'nature reserves' of one sort or another. I
daresay that around here, few people can make the distinction, for
instance, between Wilderness Area, Wild Forest, State Forest, State
Wildlife Management Area, and even State Park. To the tourist, they look
identical - they all have the same style of brown-and-gold signs, they are
all open to the public, they are all mostly forested (because that's the
natural state of most land in the local ecosystem), they all belong to the
state and are policed by the rangers, ....  The fact that they are managed
for different primary objectives and fall under different regulatory
schemes is secondary - most people deal with the regulation by following
what the signage proclaims. (State Wildlife Management Area, by the way, is
a newer title for what used to be called State Game Reserves. They are very
much hunting preserves.)

I see 'leisure=nature_reserve" as an interim measure to get something on
the map when its full legalities are not understood, and I also continue to
tag it because otherwise a great many of our public recreation areas would
not appear on the rendered map at all. It's not so much 'tagging for the
renderer' as it is adapting to an imprecise data model while the world
catches up to the more specific one (boundary=protected_area). Since I ALSO
tag with boundary=protected_area (and at least protect_class and
protection_object), I'm supporting the more precise data model as well. At
such time as protected_area is adequately supported in the rest of the
toolchain, I can remove the nature_reserve tag from areas that are
considered inappropriate for it by a simple mechanical edit based on
protect_class.

If, as you say, this is 'wrong,' then offer a concrete proposal for what is
right - and a concrete plan for making it actually usable.

I'm not satisfied with the answer that I must wait for the renderer to
catch up. If US mappers had not resorted to nature_reserve tagging for such
entities as US National Forests (even more obviously not 'nature reserve's
by your definition) they would not appear on the map. That situation has
been at an impasse for at least a couple of years. It's in with a large
bucket of rendering change requests that are deferred because they 'need
hstore.' And 'hstore' itself is being intentionally delayed (so one of the
maintainers casually remarked to me) precisely so that the people who
maintain the renderer will not be deluged with nuisance change requests.
Hearing that dispelled my last sense of guilt at 'tagging for the renderer'
in cases where there is no formally correct tagging that renders.

I'd rather use tags _sensu lato_ and see my work on the map than have the
Adirondack Park disappear from the map because it is not a 'national park'
_sensu stricto._ And in every case where I have 'tagged for the renderer',
I have additional tagging that would enable the finer distinction to be
made moving forward. I render my own maps for the places that matter most
to me, but I'm not tooled up to offer them to the whole world. That's
really the best I have to offer.

Nobody's reverted it yet. For all that people on this list tell me that I'm
'wrong,' nobody seems to have a better idea.
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