Locals in Norway's north are facing an epidemic of destructive tourist behavior, according to NRK.
Saltfjellet is a mountain sitting on the edge of the Arctic Circle, and it has become a popular destination for southerners. While visiting, they have taken to building cairns out of rocks found on grasslands. Sometimes these tall constructions are reminiscent of inuksuks, but often visitors simply spell out their names on the ground.
While that may seem like a benign way of commemorating a visit, it has reached such a scale as to cause significant natural disruptions.
The local Sámi are an Indigenous group spanning Norway, Sweden, and Finland with ties to reindeer herds going back over a thousand years. The cairns constructed by tourists pose a serious impediment to natural reindeer migration patterns. Since there is something new and artificial in an area, it scares off the reindeer, said Sámi reindeer herder Olof Anders Kuhmunen.
"It looks more like a construction site," Kuhmunen said, per NRK. "Measures must be taken immediately here."
The other challenge is that tundra topsoil is thin. The rocks anchor it down and allow vegetation to grow. When stones are concentrated in smaller areas, the soil is prone to erosion, and the vegetation goes with it. Without vegetation, the reindeer have nowhere to graze. Worse still is that all this amateur construction is disrupting native archaeological sites.
Attempts have been made to educate visitors with prominent signage, and while many have ignored it, others have acted in open defiance of it.
In general, it's best to leave only footsteps when visiting national parks or other wilderness. While stones might seem like benign things to interact with, they too play a vital role in ecosystems, and disrupting them can have a cascading effect that isn't immediately obvious.
Reddit community members were angry about the situation.
"How is this a discussion?" one said. "The discussion should have started and ended with 'Please don't build cairns here'. But people are actually offended to be asked not to build cairns???"
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Absolutely 👏 "What an eyesore. Why do people insist on leaving their mark?" someone else wrote.
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