I would be grateful for ideas on how to better convince the players that it is reasonable for all air travel to be prohibited over Ukulam.
While I guess I can convince them that starship landings are prohibited for ecological reasons, I am sure I will get offered ideas on the eco-friendly use of solar-powered gliders (or even hot air balloons), instead of a week-long trudge through hostile jungle.
Any ideas?
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Ukulam is supposed to be neutral territory that the Lashunta, Formians, and Elves have no claim to, right?
Simply state that if the PCs attempt to fly over this continent, one (or both) of those other groups would see it as an act of war.
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I had some similar questions when reading the book. I think there are several ways you can approach it. For all of them, I picture the Lashunta, et al., protecting the preserve as some of the most hard-core rangers there are. They aren't swayed by talk of ancient mysteries or kidnapping. To them, someone can always find reasons to bend the rules of the preserve. If they started making exceptions, the preserve would soon be irreparably damaged by the hundreds of "really good cases." And they're probably right.
So as to the reasons:
(1) There's a lot of airborne wild-life that needs to be protected! Skyfishers, for example. Airflights near or around the preserve disrupt and destroy their habitats.
(2) It's too hard to keep those who are flying over from landing quickly, and damaging the preserve through poaching, etc. Because the resources involved in policing and enforcing a "go fly, no land" zone would be enormous, and the rules easily circumvented anyway, it is better to have a blanket no fly zone enforced by planetary wardens.
(3) There've been big problems in the past with "sky-poachers" taking wildlife from the air without even landing.
The politics aspect Ventnor mentioned is one to consider too. I think outright war might be a bit extreme, but the various independent factions don't trust each other enough to come up with a system to allow flight licenses, and so have banned them entirely.
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I had some similar questions when reading the book. I think there are several ways you can approach it. For all of them, I picture the Lashunta, et al., protecting the preserve as some of the most hard-core rangers there are. They aren't swayed by talk of ancient mysteries or kidnapping. To them, someone can always find reasons to bend the rules of the preserve. If they started making exceptions, the preserve would soon be irreparably damaged by the hundreds of "really good cases." And they're probably right.
So as to the reasons:
(1) There's a lot of airborne wild-life that needs to be protected! Skyfishers, for example. Airflights near or around the preserve disrupt and destroy their habitats.
(2) It's too hard to keep those who are flying over from landing quickly, and damaging the preserve through poaching, etc. Because the resources involved in policing and enforcing a "go fly, no land" zone would be enormous, and the rules easily circumvented anyway, it is better to have a blanket no fly zone enforced by planetary wardens.
(3) There've been big problems in the past with "sky-poachers" taking wildlife from the air without even landing.
The politics aspect Ventnor mentioned is one to consider too. I think outright war might be a bit extreme, but the various independent factions don't trust each other enough to come up with a system to allow flight licenses, and so have banned them entirely.
These are all good reasons and are along the same lines of what I was thinking when writing about Ukulam. You can also consider the noise pollution that some aircraft and spacecraft might create, damaging critical soundscapes that species require to find prey or avoid predators (similar to aircraft disruption of toad choruses in the United States).
Basically, Ukulam's largely pristine state is something that all three of the dominant species take seriously—at least now that everyone's at peace. To an outside viewer, the degrees of that protection might go beyond what's logically required at times, but to a native Castrovellian, the cumulative impact of neighboring civilizations' actions could degrade and despoil that environment. As stewards, they take few risks beyond the ecological clean-up of the coastal bases, a handful of scientific survey missions, and a few approved eco-tourism operations.