Its very easy to tell the biodegradable stuff from the non-biodegradeable stuff. Its also easy to tell official-use tape from someone marking a trail to their stand or marking an illegal trail in 99.9% of cases. Official use and biodegradeable are not what I see though. Personally, I am referring only to tape that is clearly not official, is clearly not biodegradeable in any meaningful way, is often grossly excessive (as in, flagged literally every 10’ for half a mile such that its aggressivly visible to everyone who passes through a large area of public land and screams “Im using this WHOLE AREA” or “Im cutting an illegal ski glade on this entire mountainside because I want to ski pow-pow and theres too darn many trees…critters, regen, other users, management plan, etc be damned”). And in 99.9% of cases this tape is still up in march and april after hunting seasons are long over, and in many cases has clearly been there for multiple years, so its generally clear that whoever put it there cant be bothered to clean up after themselves. You are correct that there is a legit use for tape—but thats not what I see and not what I’m talking about. No, of course its not the biggest issue facing public land, but I see it a lot and it bugs me mostly because I think normalizing it does nothing but breed contempt and disregard for other people and other users.
