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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren Vogebam here. If you've been out on a hiking

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Speaker 1: trail lately, you've probably noticed them suddenly popping up everywhere,

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Speaker 1: small intentionally stacked piles of rocks called cairns, and environmentalists

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Speaker 1: worldwide are increasingly alarmed because moving rocks can have numerous

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Speaker 1: unintended consequences for insects, animals, and even the land itself.

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Speaker 1: People have been stacking rocks since the dawn of time,

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Speaker 1: typically for directional or burial purposes. Such structures have been

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Speaker 1: found in Greenland, Northern Canada, and Alaska, and we're built

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Speaker 1: by Native people's for specific purposes like navigation, to indicate

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Speaker 1: a food source, or to warn of danger. More recently,

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Speaker 1: park officials began creating them on hiking trails, especially potentially

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Speaker 1: confusing paths, to help ensure that hikers don't get lost.

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Speaker 1: In a man named Waldron Bates created a specific style

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Speaker 1: of hiking cairn in a Kadia National Park. The Bates cairns,

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Speaker 1: as they became known, consisted of a rectangular stone balanced

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Speaker 1: atop two legs and then topped with one stone pointing

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Speaker 1: to the trail. These cairns were replaced by standard ones

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties and sixties, but the park began

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Speaker 1: rebuilding the historic Baits cairns in the nineteen nineties. Akatia

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Speaker 1: now contains a mixture of both. What's concerning scientists today

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Speaker 1: is the new practice of creating rock piles as an

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Speaker 1: art form or for alluring social media posts. Because stacking

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Speaker 1: rocks is not an innocuous practice, Many insects and mammals

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Speaker 1: head under rocks to live, reproduce, or just escape their predators.

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Speaker 1: So move a rock and you might destroy a home.

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Speaker 1: Stack a few, and you may have just exposed the

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Speaker 1: hunted to their hunters. And while that may sound melodramatic,

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Speaker 1: whether you're stacking rocks in the woods, on the beach,

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Speaker 1: or in the desert, your actions could inadvertently knock out

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Speaker 1: an entire colony, or, in the worst case scenario, threaten

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Speaker 1: an endangered species. Some rock stacking fans note that they're

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Speaker 1: being responsible by returning their rocks to the spots where

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Speaker 1: they found them after creating and then disassembling their artwork. However,

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Speaker 1: the second that you move rocks, you may compromise a

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Speaker 1: species habitat in an unrecoverable manner. In addition, moving rocks

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Speaker 1: in any fashion contributes to soil erosion, as the dirt,

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Speaker 1: once protectively packed under them, is now loosened and more

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Speaker 1: prone to washing or blowing away. Should you come upon

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Speaker 1: stacked rocks, especially in national parks, leave them alone, and

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Speaker 1: if you're hiking, don't automatically follow where they seem to point.

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Speaker 1: The National Park Service recommends checking with park officials before

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Speaker 1: setting out on a hike. As every park has different

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Speaker 1: rules about carns, you wouldn't want to remove those intentionally

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Speaker 1: set as navigational aids, nor would you want to follow

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Speaker 1: those that may have been randomly, if artistically assembled by visitors.

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Speaker 1: In the end, let your actions be guided by the

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Speaker 1: important principle leave no trace. Today's episode was written by

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Speaker 1: Melanie red Zekie McManus and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain

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Speaker 1: Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.

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Speaker 1: For more in this and lots of other stacked topics,

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Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com, and

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Speaker 1: for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart

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Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

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Speaker 1: favorite shows.