'Right to roam' movement fights to give the commons back to the public

I think the main reason people get nervous about &quot;the public&quot; roaming their land is the liability and the personal injury lawsuit industry in the USA. If I let someone cross my land and he trips on a tree root and breaks his leg, now I&#x27;m possibly facing a lawsuit.<p>Also, what are they allowed to do? Simply crossing the land is one thing. Around here many private landowners are dealing with homeless encampments that are not only a liability but a sanitary issue, as they tend to be full of litter, needles, food waste, and human waste and end up attracting vermin.

Without a right to roam, we end up with cases of public lands that lack any legal public access. I just read this article in the LA Times about a state park in California that there&#x27;s no legal access to: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.latimes.com&#x2F;california&#x2F;story&#x2F;2024-05-20&#x2F;the-state-park-on-sutter-buttes-no-one-can-visit" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.latimes.com&#x2F;california&#x2F;story&#x2F;2024-05-20&#x2F;the-stat...</a><p>But that&#x27;s certainly not the only such case: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.trcp.org&#x2F;unlocking-public-lands&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.trcp.org&#x2F;unlocking-public-lands&#x2F;</a>

The Bavarian constitution says:<p>&quot;All parts of the great outdoors, in particular forests, mountain pastures, rocks, wastelands, fallow land, floodplains, riparian strips and agricultural land, may be entered by anyone free of charge.&quot;<p>(Though you can&#x27;t camp there like in Norway)

The thirty people who own half of Berkshire here on Airstrip One.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;whoownsengland.org&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;17&#x2F;the-thirty-landowners-who-own-half-a-county&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;whoownsengland.org&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;17&#x2F;the-thirty-landowners-...</a><p>Loads of sychophants in that list.<p>Airstrip One has been invaded by so many countries over many hundreds of years that those who have defeated the our poor armies have then, without any authority, given &quot;OUR&quot; lands to their friends, lords, ladies, and any sychophantic mendicants.<p>These lands are not their lands!<p>All these lands were stolen from the common people.<p>Its called Berkshire for a reason and where the cockney rhyming &quot;Berkshire&quot; comes from<p>I never gave my permission to give away my land.

I pretty much knew what I would find in the comments on this one. The right to roam, in country in which it exist in one form or another, is exactly this: the right to roam. Not the right to camp (although some allow it usually with some restriction), live, squat, pollute, destroy, ...<p>As someone who sometime had to go from point A to point B in the countryside without a car, this was a necessity as it was the only safe way to do so (sidewalk are nonexistent in the countryside). It also avoid &quot;trapping&quot; some public land within private one (and effectively privatizing it), although, in my country at least, the state will usually preempt a small piece of the private land to always have a passage between public land.<p>As for the liability, is should go without saying that there is usually laws that release you from any liability for people hurting themselves while roaming on your property (with the obvious exception that you should not put anything with the intention of hurting people, for example traps).

My ideal &quot;right to roam&quot; laws would be 1) you have the right to pass through any piece of land 2) you have to stay x amount of meters away from a house&#x2F;building&#x2F;etc 3) you have the right to camp for one night in a spot and you can&#x27;t have a tent pitched until one hour before sunset and it must be down by one hour after sunrise. There should probably be an even further minimum distance from a house compared to the distance set for just passing by. 4) no fires &#x2F; pack it in, pack it out &#x2F; etc<p>There&#x27;s a bunch of places in Europe now that have a no camping policy, but allow (or tolerate) &quot;bivouacking&quot;, which originally meant sleeping on the ground without a shelter but now kind of includes small tents. I think it&#x27;s the ideal tradeoff, it still allows long distance backpackers to do their thing while discouraging the &quot;party camping&quot; crowds.

It works well here in Sweden: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Freedom_to_roam" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Freedom_to_roam</a>

I want this in the US so badly. Thrice now I&#x27;ve had my commute double because somebody fenced off a trail and now I have to go the long way around.

Well here&#x27;s something that will be taken as an inflammatory comment, which I nevertheless believe with absolute certainty and will hold to despite the inevitable loss of karma&#x2F;banning:<p>Anglosphere countries cannot be trusted with this level of access to another person&#x27;s property. If the change gets through, people will abuse their rights, overstep, overstay, and leave a mess behind them; owners will complain bitterly, and some owner who has enough land or sway or title will complain strongly enough to the right person, and this will be dialled back. If you wait 50-70 years, it&#x27;ll come back for another go.<p>I know Anglosphere mentality. I&#x27;m American, but have spent 21 years in Europe, living in Ireland, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, and travelling extensively in Scandinavia, Germany, and the UK. Folks differ in their attitudes toward collective responsibility and respect for others and their things. Not only that, but that&#x27;s what&#x27;s germane to this discussion.

The right to roam ought to be given together with an obligation to restore the land to the original state after you have roamed.

I&#x27;m not sure people should have unrestricted rights to roam over private property, but where public land is fully enclosed by private land there should be an allowance made (or compulsory footpath introduced) to grant access.<p>I think there is a similar issue in the US with land that is only accessible on touching corners. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.onxmaps.com&#x2F;onx-access-initiatives&#x2F;corner-crossing-report" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.onxmaps.com&#x2F;onx-access-initiatives&#x2F;corner-crossi...</a>

Another interview with Jon Moses: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;novaramedia.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;07&#x2F;13&#x2F;novara-fm-revenge-of-the-commoners&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;novaramedia.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;07&#x2F;13&#x2F;novara-fm-revenge-of-the-...</a><p>Putting the &#x27;right to roam&#x27; movement in a greater context. Coming about after de-peopling of the land, trying to counter the effects that has had on people. By returning land access to people, people will regain a connection with the land and care for it more.

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;<p>Sign was painted, it said private property;<p>But on the back side it didn&#x27;t say nothing;<p>This land was made for you and me.<p>-- Woody Guthrie

The right to roam&#x2F;access was so natural and ingrained to me that it took me 3 decades of my life to finally realize that it was not everywhere like in Germany&#x2F;Switzerland&#x2F;Austria where the entire landscape is essentially one big recreational park. Vacation away from home is great, but living in a place where I am confined to my own ground&#x2F;public roads and a few select pieces of federal land? Unimaginable. Freedom comes in many forms.... the right to roam is one I exercise every day.<p>I feel that the right to access&#x2F;roam (depending on the country it is called and framed differently) hurts no one and makes everyones life better.

I kind of like this idea but I’d prefer it only applied to commercial land owners or very large personal land holdings.<p>It would suck to buy a couple acre plot to get away from the city and constantly have people camping or hiking on your land.

This article never mentions the existing access setup:<p>1. a really dense network of rights of way – almost entirely on privately-owned land <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rights_of_way_in_England_and_Wales" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rights_of_way_in_England_and_W...</a><p>2. open access to unimproved wild land: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Freedom_to_roam#England_and_Wales" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Freedom_to_roam#England_and_Wa...</a><p>The way this article reports the campaigners, you&#x27;d be forgiven for thinking that there are no existing rights of access in law, and for thinking that private ownership of land necessarily means absolute access restrictions.<p>This is not just a problem with this specific article; I&#x27;ve seen it numerous times, and it makes me think that this is a consistent pattern of this campaign; the campaigners are either wilfully ignoring the rights which already exist or are themselves woefully ignorant. Either way, they&#x27;re doing the public a disservice by spreading what looks a lot like misinformation.

Some of the best climbing in the world is in karst topography. The best known is in Central Europe. Far away from that is the Texas Hill Country, which while possessing incredible rock, is almost entirely privately owned. Central Texas could be a climbing mecca, but isn&#x27;t, because of a lack of right to roam.

Doesn&#x27;t Scandinavia have a right like this?

This authors mindset is unfathomable to me:<p>&quot;repairing the damage caused by centuries of private land ownership.&quot;