How Much Wilderness In North America?

[Guest elderwine]

Hi all,

I live in the UK, I'm sure you've heard of it - a very small and somewhat crowded island just above France . Well we have a large population in comparison to our size, but most people are crammed into cities so if you want to get away from it all there are still some remote and wild places you can go to without too much trouble. But nothing here you would consider a true wilderness.

A few years ago it was popular for environmentalists to claim that an area of the Amazon rain forest equal to the size of Wales was being cut down every day. An alarming statement, but one that anyone familiar with the size of Wales could easily relate to. Can anyone put into simple terms how much unspoilt forest / wilderness exists on the North American continent? Square miles would suffice, it doesn't have to be in multiples of Wales.

Looking on Google Earth its easy to get an idea of just how big some US and Canadian states are compared to Britain, but you don't get any idea as to how remote or populated some areas are. I haven't mentioned Sasquatch (until now ) in one of my first posts on BFF, but I think an understanding of the habitat would be helpful.

UK = 88,745 square miles.

Cheers folks.

[gigantor]

The Dept of Agriculture's National Resource Inventory office is going to release the latest numbers one of these days, it's overdue (14 years to revise the numbers!). The last assessment was done over a decade ago and here it is:

Note that Federal land includes national parks. It is a huge chunk of the country. Notice that less than 10% of the land is developed. Add to that forestland, British Columbia and Canada.

Edited August 28, 2011 by gigantor

[Guest]

British Columbia alone has 44,000 square miles of protected park land, most of which is wild.

[Guest Knuck]

LOTSA!

[BobZenor]

I don't think you get a true appreciation of how vast some of the wilderness areas are unless you actually try to walk through them. In the Black Hills of South Dakota where I grew up, you could walk almost anywhere. There were places where you would rarely see another person but it didn't prepare me for the area around Bluff Creek in Northern California. There are places there that would take you weeks to walk through. The vegetation is very thick, the trees are huge and really hard to get around and the terrain is so steep that it is just a chore to climb. You end up spending hours to travel a mile off the road. That is very common there for it to be that impassible. They also have some geological formation spread throughout the area where mostly manzanita shrubs are dominant and it is relatively easy to walk through those areas by the way. Those areas have serpentine soils. Part of the Siskiyou Wilderness from the link is very close to Bluff Creek and on the same back roads. The old growth forests or any forest on the fertile lands are nearly impassible off the trails and logging roads unless you are prepared to climb over fallen trees with an 8 foot diameter. It is harder than you might think if you can't afford to be injured if some rotten branch breaks.

Even if they cut the trees down decades earlier, so not a true wilderness, it is still very difficult to walk through. Much of the timber was cut on very steep hills. Just because there is a logging road nearby doesn't mean that a mile off the road is almost unreachable. There is almost nobody up there. I only saw two people twice in the accumulated probably 60 days of driving around the roads in the Bluff Creek area over more then 20 years. They were both natives which is only relevant since they wouldn't likely report it if they did see something. They were almost certainly Hoopa, many of whom were interviewed by David Paulides in his book The Hoopa Project. Many witness gave descriptions to his forensic artist Harvey Pratt. That is the area I am mostly familiar with. I also spent a lot of time in the high Sierras. The wilderness is also vast up there in places. There are certainly places that are much more inaccessible and isolated than either of the places I mentioned. You think of California as big cities but it is surprising how few people go to the wilderness areas, at least to me.

They have been increasingly limiting access to those areas even though hardly anyone ever went there. They often close the roads to make access even more difficult. There are many places in California that wouldn't be called a wilderness but you wouldn't likely ever see another person.

Edited August 28, 2011 by BobZenor

[Guest elderwine]

Thanks for the informative replies, it's something I find hard to comprehend not having first hand experience.

There are places there that would take you weeks to walk through.

This I found particularly interesting. If Bigfoot is indeed more human than animal, which I am inclined to believe, then they would have no problem avoiding discovery in an environment like this. Put another way, if a human, say he was a hobo or a hermit, had the desire to live apart from civilisation, I think that providing they had the necessary bush skills they could live a live of complete seclusion should they want to.

[Guest Lesmore]

Vast areas of wilderness in Canada...unfathomable huge and most would not be able to comprehend the absolute size and density in this country.

I'm not joking.

[Guest]

A man from a soviet bloc country escaped certain death there by leaving before being judged a criminal. He claimed to be part of the secret police before the regime changed. He got into Canada somehow and eventually ended up in Washington state. He came back on people's radar when he tried to burn down his ex-girl friends house. He escaped the law once again by heading to Darrington, a small logging town in the north cascade mountains. He lived there as a hermit in the woods, with three primary living abodes. One near a river, one up in the forest just off a hiking trail. He eluded capture for ten years, even though he occasionally came into town, broke into peoples vacation homes and rode the bus. They called in Joel Hardin to track him down. Took him the better part of a year using very sophisticated ground trembling sensors and a beeper he kept by his side. It made a full page story in the local newspapers. Anyway, they found his forest camp under some downed timber just a few feet away from a popular trail. He had all the comforts of home under there. When they captured him he had a small hand gun and a hunting knife. He told police (using an interpreter) that he was completely innocent concerning the fire at his ex-girl friends. They asked him if he was so innocent how come he had the property of several home robbery victims in his camp, along with the knife and gun. He said he was just trying to survive and took only food, the knife was for self defense and the gun was for, you know, those really big animals.

Darrington plays the whole thing down because they don't want him to become like a local hero or something. He was a disgusting person, very dangerous and is still in prison for attempted murder. I guess the girl friend was still in the home when he tried to torch it.

There is a lot of wilderness suitable for something like a Sasquatch to live in North America. It seems that when man disturbs that wilderness (builds a road, heavy logging, establish rock and gravel quarries, etc) Sasquatch sightings start popping up around the area. A single man could elude capture for ten years, hunted by the police, so close to a populated town (under 1,500) and a major thoroughfare traveled by many vacationeers and hunters so why not Sasquatch. This area is my primary study site.

I wonder what he meant by those really big animals? I have the whole newspaper article with color pictures of the camp sites found... maybe when Joel reissues his excellent book the story of his involvement will be in there.

The small picture is just the areas that have no roads. The other map, overlaid, sees the heaviest of sighting locations.

Edited August 29, 2011 by damndirtyape

[Guest]

Added to the concept of wilderness, when discussion where a presumed relic human (equipped with the instictive and physically adpated physiology of what some presume a sasquatch might possess), one might wish to keep in mind that in the modern sense humans have never been more alienated from and rarely in touch with undeveloped land that while not wilderness by most definitions is rarely visited or seldom appreciated for what it contains since modern humans more likely than ever stay on trails and roads and rarely enter into any forested areas that are not easy to access, even if these overgrown areas are merely running-along-side irrigation ditches in the mid-west or watershed and reservoirs anywhere else, on top of the fact that in small communities in rural settings the families are moving away and going to cities, and who are left are typically older people and fewer of them even go into the woods to hunt recreationaly or for the cook pot. And of course when modern humans leave their house or cars to enter into the woods when it's dark, or even just dusky, they invariably bring along lighting. You can imagine how useful a powerful flashlight is at finding a smart and thinking quarry such as a sasquatch is presumed to be...we may as well be carrying lit road-flares, wearing blindfolds and blowing trumpets as we attempt to sneak up on any quarry, let alone one with the presumed/alleged cognitive capacity of an animal thought to be recently ancestral to modern humans.Wilderness is no doubt a valuable asset as habitat for any creature that lives in the wild, human or not, but we should not underestimate the ability for wild animals, smart ones in particular, to take advantage of what human settlements and human landscapes might offer to augment that even if they are not defined as wilderness. cheers.

[Guest ajciani]

If Bigfoot is indeed more human than animal, which I am inclined to believe, then they would have no problem avoiding discovery in an environment like this. Put another way, if a human, say he was a hobo or a hermit, had the desire to live apart from civilisation, I think that providing they had the necessary bush skills they could live a live of complete seclusion should they want to.

Even without bush skills, people can live in complete seclusion. For example, Cook County, Illinois (land area 1,640 sq. mi.) has about 106 sq. mi. of forest preserve (not counting community parks, there are no State or Federal parks in Cook County). Roughly 15% of the Chicago area is undeveloped forest and prairie land, owned by various government bodies, utilities, and some private parties. There are half-mile wide protected corridors running along the county's two major rivers, the Des Plains River, and the Chicago River. There is also a series of continuous preserves running on the western edge of the county along Spring and Poplar Creeks, and another corridor along Salt Creek.

Just to give you an idea of how "remote" these preserves are, there have been quite a few incidents of Mexican drug gangs setting up manned and irrigated pot grows in the preserves, complete with irrigation tubing, generators, and pumps. Some of these have operated unnoticed for years.

Now to blow your mind; when I have found evidence of bigfoot activity, it is often within yards of human trails, in those preserves. I don't think all of the bigfoots retreat into the deep woods during the day either. I think they post sentries at the trail heads, watching for any humans that might go down a trail toward the family retreat. They stay watchful and mobile.

Cook County is probably the most developed county in Illinois. There are some counties in the southern part of the State which are almost nothing but national forest and hunting leases. Illinois is about 57,900 sq. mi., and probably half of it could be considered prime bigfoot territory. More than half, if you consider forests to hide in, and dumpsters and farm fields to raid.

Illinois is the median size. The average State land area is about 71,000 sq. mi., and most of those states are very empty. For example, it takes about 3 hours to drive (on highways) across the top of Florida, and that is almost nothing but wilderness. It takes about 5 hours to drive the length of Alabama, and again, it's long tracts of nothing. Even New Jersey is a big blob of forest, intermixed with towns. It takes about an hour to drive from Philadelphia to Atlantic City (on the highway), and you don't see much, even off the highway.

[Guest]

i agree with Les ,theres lots of space here for monster bigfoots to live.like in the canadian western provinces.

[BobbyO]

I'm from that little Island too elderwine, welcome to the Forum..

Here's soem stuff to give you soem ideas about the Land area, sizes etc, that i done a few Years back..

& i'll tell you from experience, you can't even begin to imagine the real vastness of North American Wilderness, especially us being from the UK, until we see it ( even part of it ) with our own eyes, trust me on that..

Anyway's, here we go, this is in relation to Sighting Reports & Counties in California & Washington State..

Washington State :

1 ) Skamania Co, WA - Sightings = 50, Population = 9,872 at last census, Area = 1,684m2 in total - 5 people per Square Mile

2 ) Pierce Co, WA - Sightings = 49, Population = 700k plus at last census, Area = 1,806m2 in total - 417 people per Square Mile

3 ) Snohomish Co, WA - Sightings = 32, Population = 600k plus at last census, Area = 2,196m2 in total - 290 people per Square Mile

California :

1 ) Humboldt Co, CA - Sightings = 42, Population = 126,518 at last census, Area = 4,052m2 in total. - 36 people per Square Mile

2 ) Del Norte Co, CA - Sigthings = 26, Population = 27,507 at last census, Area = 1,2380m2 in total - 28 people per Square Mile.

3 ) Siskiyou Co, CA - Sightings = 26, Population = 44,301 at last census, Area = 6,347m2 in total. - 8 people per Square Mile

I just find it pretty incredible that the County with the most Sightings in the BFRO database, throughout the whole of the USA, has 5 PEOPLE PER SQUARE MILE, that's insane !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By that calculation, it makes me wonder how we'd ever know what the BF Population would be as there simply isn't any people there for us to know & who would/should possibly report Sightings for these Animals ??

I think we'd all agree that, Nationwide, Skamania County in WA & probably Humboldt County in CA are possibly the 2 " biggest " States for BF both in terms of Habitat & obviously Sightings which are the proof in the Pudding & for those 2 Counties, like lots of others in the US which is prime BF Habitat ( like Fayette County, Illinois which is the County with the most Sightings in IL & only 30 people per Square Mile ), yet neither have the Human Population enough for us to actually really expect Sightings to occur of this Animal so who knows what the Populations could really be ( & i mean that in the higher estimattion sense ) so don't even get me started on BC & Alberta etc which is scary when you look ta the Figures for those Areas, which are also prime habitat for our Animal....

[Guest]

Not to mention that that number is an average. Most of those people are confined in a limited portion of the land (such as communities) meaning most of it is entirely UNinhabited.

[Guest Kerchak]

& i'll tell you from experience, you can't even begin to imagine the real vastness of North American Wilderness, especially us being from the UK, until we see it ( even part of it ) with our own eyes, trust me on that..

From some of the comments on this board over the months I would say that some people who live in North America can't eeven begin to imagine the vastness of it.

I've heard some claim all of it is traipsed and trampled over so nothing like bigfoot could exist there.

[BobbyO]

I agree wholeheartedly agree K..

Another couple of Stats to give you an idea of what we're lookign at, now looking at Canada & the 2 Provinces ranked with the first & third number of Sightings...

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British Columbia 357,265 Square Miles - Population 4,510,858 people.

Vancouver Metro 1,111, Square Miles - Population 2,116,581 people

So that's 0.001% of the Land Area of British Columbia, with about 40% of the total Population of the whole of British Columbia, within it.

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Alberta 255,541 Miles Squared - Population 3,724,832

Edmonton 3,635 Miles Squared - Population 1,034,945

Calgary 1,972 Miles Squared - Population 1,079,550

So that's 2/3's ( Two Thirds ) of the Province of Alberta's Population in about 2% of Alberta's Size..

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& back to the US, the below is with thanks to Stan Courteney who put this together a few Months back..

Forested acres by State.pdf