Backpack to increase stewardship.  It deepens our connection to the land and its remarkable variety of plants and animals the further we go into the wilderness.  We come to understand that protecting the natural world around us for ourselves and for future generations is not optional, it is our duty.

FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS

Backpacking brings us to special places where land and animals remain un-touched by mankind.  Sitting fully present in these places, witnessing the glory of the land and its wildlife, it is difficult to imagine them any other way.  This is the gift of backpacking.  It grounds us and strengthens our bond with and desire to protect the natural world which delights and amazes us.  Others who came before us understood the importance of preserving and protecting many of these places for us.  It is now our responsibility to protect these fragile, irreplaceable places and creatures.

Extinction is not reversible.  Destruction of that which took hundreds, thousands, or millions of years for nature to create is not reversible.  What we lose now is lost to all who come after us.  When we work to conserve wildlife species, their habitats, and irreplaceable landscapes and environments we pass them on to future generations.  It will then be their turn to enjoy, appreciate, protect, and pass them on. 

FOR OUR HEALTH

Backpacking helps us fundamentally understand our dependence on healthy ecosystems to provide the basis for everything we need to survive.  When we go backpacking, we enjoy trekking through healthy ecosystems which support abundant plant and animal life.  Conservation efforts aimed at reducing habitat destruction helps ensure we maintain vigorous ecosystems, organisms, and plants which provide the clean air, water, and land we all require for healthy survival.  Additionally, medicinal uses of organisms and plants are being discovered daily.  Losing their habitats means we lose them as well as the opportunity for preserving and protecting human life.   Conservation is thus way more than simply helping a species, it is about helping ourselves.

BEFORE THEY ARE GONE

Sadly, conservation efforts simply cannot save some of the incredible landscape features or wildlife creatures we assume will “always be there” to see.  Sensitive landscape features such as glaciers are disappearing rapidly as the earth warms.   Wildlife in some places is decidedly struggling to survive in the face of destructive influences of man which are rendering their habitats uninhabitable.  The time to see them is now, before they become only memories of what used to be.