The whole "locals only" thing is just as bad. How do you communicate to the locals what is okay and what is not? How do you define locals? Is it just those that live on the same road, those that you run into at the store? It has to be all or nothing. That is really what sucks with the whole situation.
You are taking "locals" a bit too literally. It is just a social convention and these are small communities, it is generally understood that unless the property owner has socialized something different, those signs are for mining companies, yahoos from the city, etc. A lot of times if you are not from the area, you can often ask one of the local people the purpose of a sign in some area based on what you want to do. They'll often tell you that you can ignore it as long as you are just passing through. The signs are there to discourage people. In fact, they'll appreciate that you bothered to ask.
I grew up in a small rural area and learned very early that a no trespassing sign means that it is likely to get a warning shot sent your way if cross the line. The signs were not up to just discourage non-locals. I am sure some areas are different but that is my experience in Montana.
That's a fair point. There are some areas where "no trespassing" applies to everyone. A good example of this is in the Nevada gold fields. If you don't respect those signs, you'll be staring at the business end of a gun.
But again, if you talk to one of the locals they will tell you that. I always made a point of doing that, most people don't.
As someone who works in the Nevada gold fields, I can say this is blatantly untrue. This isn't the wild west, you won't find armed guards up here. In general the security is no higher than the average oil refinery.
Anyone with a to mind to could easily drive into an active mining area on BLM land
I'd share your frustrating with mining companies, but is "yahoos from the city" a bit unfair? Your country has brilliant appreciation of the outdoors, including city-dwellers who travel out on weekends or holidays. Signage that informs and guides them rather than bars them might help.
I imagine 99% of people just want to pass through carefully rather than dump trash or graffiti anything.
Yes, "yahoos from the city" is a bit unfair. :-) I was living in the SF Bay Area at the time and most of the out-of-town traffic through the area of that property was also from the Bay Area. We made a point of getting to know the local ranchers early on and I had lived in the rural West as a kid, so I had a vague idea of the basic rules.
More often than not, it wasn't that people were trying to behave badly, they were just careless and exercised poor judgement. A recurring annoyance was someone in the Bay Area buying an SUV and deciding to take it off-roading deep into the wilderness with no prior experience and being completely unprepared. In addition to frequently damaging their vehicle beyond drivability or getting it hopelessly stuck far out of mobile phone range, they would tear up the roads and land joyriding, leave gates open, run into the cattle that live in the wilderness, etc. I probably personally rescued people a dozen times who had no business being out there in those vehicles (an SUV off the new car lot is not equipped for that environment), with that lack of preparation, with that little experience.
Not malicious most times, just ignorant and engaging in poor behavior without understanding that they shouldn't be doing those things.
Elsewhere in these comments are people saying that landowners will remove (public) signage(!), which might impact what the parks people can do?
Maybe a well-publicised term for a private easement that people recognise is treated in a particular way? I like that in the States, National Park means something, BLM means something, etc. Our designations in Australia don't seem as clear. We have Crown land, but I have no idea where to find out about it.
Private easement guides would be: You are a guest here on private land. Don't stray from the road, leave gates as you found them, livestock has right of way, no camping, etc.
Surely there's a balance in making reasonable land access available to people.
This isn't a local or non-locals issue, but it's just that due to the social dynamics of Montana it can get framed in those terms. But, really this is about public access to the public lands which should be sacred, constitutional even, like in Sweden.
Probably a "local" in this context is anyone who is close enough to jandrewrogers' circle that these things are communicated through the grapevine and tacit common understanding.
