Towers of rocks, stacked neatly by hikers, filled the grassy ridges of the ancient hiking trail in England’s Peak District. Stuart Cox, grumbling, went around and kicked them down.
“Look at this!” he said on a recent hike, adding an expletive. “What I’ll do now is destroy the lot of them.”
Mr. Cox, who lives near the Mam Tor hiking trail some 20 miles southeast of Manchester, is not sowing destruction for the sake of it. He wants the hikers who visit one of England’s most scenic trails to stop stacking rocks there, a practice that he and other conservationists argue is harmful to the environment.
He has found an inventive way to share his message: Mr. Cox, 57, in May prompted a vigorous debate by posting a video of himself grumpily kicking down a series of rock stacks. The stones had been taken from an ancient wall, he railed, not only disrupting the area’s habitat but degrading a centuries-old structure.
Stone stacks, also known as cairns, have long been used to mark burial sites or as navigation aids on remote hiking trails. Park authorities in many places maintain them to help hikers. But authorities and wilderness lovers like Mr. Cox who follow ethical rules for hiking have a message for visitors: leave the rocks alone.
New stone stacks, piled up by hikers and often snapped for social media, have become a worrying sight for researchers who say they damage the environment around trails the world over. Stone stacks have been spotted everywhere, from trails in Yosemite to the beaches of Tenerife.
“When you move the rocks, you’re disturbing the habitat of a multitude of species,” said Ricardo Rocha, an associate professor of conservation science at the University of Oxford, who listed snails, insects, lizards and plants among species that rely on the rocks. That was especially important in places like Spain’s Canary Islands, Dr. Rocha said, where some reptiles have become endangered.
Dr. Rocha believes the phenomenon has gained momentum from social media, pointing to the contagious appeal of the “photo-friendly” stacks.
Humans “have big enough of a mark at a global level and in nature,” Dr. Rocha said. “We don’t need to leave additional, unnecessary ones.”
Mr. Cox, who calls himself the Peak District Viking on social media, has always found solace in nature. (He chose the name because he has some Viking ancestry, and thought it suited his orange beard.) He began sharing photos and videos from his walks on social media during Covid lockdowns, aware that many people did not have his access to sweeping landscapes.
But he has been peeved by the rock stacks, which he said had become an “epidemic.”
“I don’t think people realize the damage they cause when they build these things,” Mr. Cox said. During one of his visits, he noticed that somebody had removed large flagstones from a key footpath to act as a base for stacks, which he said would speed the path’s erosion.
The National Trust, a nonprofit which manages swaths of British countryside including Mam Tor, has asked visitors to stop building stacks there, arguing that it damages a historically significant site that includes a wall dating to the 1570s.
Mr. Cox started posting to help get that message out. “I put a small video up just to moan about it, like most middle-aged men,” he said.
Encouraged by his audience, he followed up with a more lively video — including some extra “choice words” — of himself destroying the piles, to explain why they were detrimental to the environment.
His approach triggered strong reactions, he said. Many viewers had the same thought: “Who is this idiot and why is he knocking stones over, what’s his problem?”
Some commenters were defensive, and said he shouldn’t police their actions. But he was gratified by others who said they had learned something for their next foray into the wilderness.
When he returned to Mam Tor this month, he found a pleasant sight: the hundreds of stones that typically littered the grass on the hill had been put back near the wall. He is hopeful that his social media campaign had something to do with it.
“You don’t need to improve on the beauty of nature,” he said.
Isabella Kwai is a Times reporter based in London, covering breaking news and other trends.
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