Wilderness Brainstorm

[Trackhead]

Bushwacker insight:

He lives in a house owned by two skinny, fit, athletic people who own two horses, or used to own two horses. Sue and Larry don't fit the profile.

On that note, I pretty much hate horses on trails due to the fecal deposits and ridiculous yielding needed to get around them and not spook them.

[kidwoo]

You know the best thing about the wilderness act?


Almost none of the area trails get used or maintained so they provide some of the rowdiest descents available. I personally consider the WA an incredible asset.

[DerJaeger]

mountain bikers are just horse jerky-eatin' PBR swillin' loudmouth dirtbags

I absolutely resent that!

I would never drink PBR. Fat Tire or Bell's Oberon all the way.

[mmmm...pow!]

Definitely agree with most of the points made above. There may be a sliver of hope, though, as one National Park (I believe Big Bend in TX) has allowed the construction of singletrack for bike use. But "they" could also just as easily classify skis as a mechanical device and ban those, too (not to mention wheelchairs). As for horses, they are big stupid animals that get spooked before you even see them sometimes, and the impacts are obviously way worse. I personally believe all horses should be allowed to roam wild - riding them seems like a form of animal cruelty to me. I'm all for wild areas, but a bicycle is the easiest, least damaging way for people to get deep into wild areas to actually appreciate them. On the plus side for the outlaws (not that I'm advocating it), constant budget cuts for the forest service mean enforcement is highly unlikely in many areas.

[tromano]

I am all for greater access for mountain bikers. Unfortunately, the battle grounds are not repealing the Wilderness Act of '64. That just is not going to ever happen. Rather, the focus should be working on maintaining existing trails and convincing land managers to allow for greater access at the BLM, FS, State and local level.

+1

I agree that horses screw up trails. I wish more of them would go and screw up the hiking trails trails in the wilderness areas and quit post-hole-ing up the pristine single track.

My personal take is that it seems much easier / preferable to maintain, expand, and improve / interconnect existing MTB accessible trail systems rather than push for new trail heads in wilderness areas. It is alot easier to build new trails and maintain existing trails in non-wilderness areas with proper tool. You can't even use a chainsaw or a wheel barrow in wilderness.

[jonski]

Horses – are for overweight/out of shape people. In country that is at all time high for obesity, the last thing we want is something that promotes being lazy.

I smiled to myself at this. Growing up in the centre of London, my folks took me out of the city and to a stables to ride horse for a number of years. (kinda like skiing...)

Anyway, I will just state that if you actually ride, it's a hell of a work out. (If the 'rider' happens to be someone who sits on a horse and just lets it wander down a trail, I understand and agree with your point). Trying to control that 1000lb animal is not as easy as it looks., and requires a lot of physical effort and fitness.


And what you say about the $$$ issue - it is partly to do with this, but not in the way you are looking at it (I think); MTBers generally spend some $$ on their equipment and educate themselves about the trails and their care etc. and don't want to lose the ability to ride trail. However, allow bikes in and a lot of people who could cause damage, because they fail to learn and become educated, could start rolling through on their KMart 'double suspension' specials and cause as much, or more, damage than horse riders do on wet trails, etc. because they can just rock up and roll around on their bikes.

However, I also agree that given when this bill was created it would be nice for it to be re-visited in light of modern day needs and uses.

But really, who cares? I live in Australia...

[Unruly Baker]

We are facing a similar threat in UT. If nothing else the threat helped organize the mtb community and that got the attention of the folks writing the proposal (SOC). SOC has since agreed to work with the mtb community to alter the proposal to be win-win for everyone. Organize and work together through pro-bike organizations such as IMBA (and WAFTA locally for those of us in SLC, UT) is my opinion.

Info on the UT issue here:
http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=401892

and
http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=409286

and
http://www.utahmountainbiking.com/UM...pic.php?t=4298

and:
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/s...d.php?t=120315

WAFTA and IMBA membership in UT probably has had quite the spike in recent months due to this threat. Obviously many letters were sent to both SOC and the folks at the State and Nations Capital.

Focus your efforts on making the right people hear you. Altering the WA of 64' is not an option in my opinion, once the door is opened for bikes the others will want in too. The best way to avoid losing trails is to get the attention of those writing the WA proposals and those reading and implementing them in DC.

My $0.02
UB

[tone capone]

Thanks unrulybaker. Good points. Unfortunately we have the problem up here of being within the imaginary boundaries of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The boundaries are wherever the wilderness groups want them to be, which is all the way to the Yukon according to some of them. Anyways here it is plain and simple.

The wilderness act is a fine piece of legislation. I don't want to ride trails there. It would involve carrying my bike over a fallen tree every 100 yards. I know because I hike there. That aside, the wilderness act "preserved" alot of great places that are maybe a little bit removed from urban centers. That makes sense. Hence the name "Wilderness"
In the course of the great magnificent places being protected, maybe some other public land closer to home got left out and raped by the extractive industries and by developement and such. So, here how we compromise:

Those places deserve a form of protection, too. They are in some ways just as precious and sacred as the land already established as wilderness. Go ahead with my full support and try for a different land designation that simply allows for bikes. I think it was unrulybaker that made a point about one of his favorite trails in Utah. It was like "July through September it is the only place I can go to beat the heat of the valley and get in a good ride and I can do it after work or in a few hours on the weekend."

That to me sums it all up. In the growing urban centers of the new west, people need access to fun, healthy, and sustainable recreation that fits their schedule. You know, people that work and stuff. Mountain biking is a totally low impact, non offensive way to have a lot of fun and get a great workout while enjoying the flow of a trail. And oh yeah, enjoying the pristine mountain air and other benefits of being in nature and stuff. It is great to be able to take a quick drive to the trailhead and be having fun and getting exercise after work during the dog days of summer. Those of us who ride don't want to bash our joints trail running. We don't want to hike the same piece of trail every day until we go insane with boredom. We believe that we user groups can solve any real conflict by working things out without the goddamn fucking federal government involved.

Wilderness just doesn't work when applied to public lands right next to population centers. There are other land designations that can be applied that would give a place almost all of the assets of wilderness without eliminating such a great opportunity for a truly awesome form of recreation. The future of recreation in the "new west" if you ask me. Get used to it. Mountain biking isn't evil, and it's not going away. If people really have to have a wilderness experience, get off the freakin' trail and go as the animals do. Strike out through the forest and go on your own adventure. Climb a peak or meditate or whatever.

Here in Montana they want to make a wilderness out of a mountainous area about a 20 to 30 minute drive from town to the trailheads. Actually, they want to do that in a lot of similar situations in Montana. Everything works perfectly right now. There is at least one huge wilderness area or national park within a 1 to 2 hour drive fom every urban center in western montana. Every city also has its own backyard playground, where we go and play after work and on the weekends and such. The best of both worlds, really. To make another point, the extractive industries have been sued out of exsistence here for the most part anyways. The big enemy of the wilderness folks are the motorized users of course, and I just don't see that fight as worthy of screwing over vast numbers of responsible and conservation committed recreationists. I guess they do see it that way, but if only they could have a sense of history and a vision for the future.

[powdercow]

Really nice work Unruly, I hadn't heard that SOC had agreed to work with you guys on getting the trails put on a different designation. Does this signal a new era within SOC or am I just being irrationally optimistic again?

Capone, I agree that a new/different designation that offers all of the protection of the WA but is updated to reflect the new reality of recreation is the best solution right now and probably for a long time coming. Getting the WA modified is more of a "shoot for the moon" or "for my kid" scenario. Maybe it won't happen but I think there is still a chance. Like I said, I am an optimist.

[Lonnie]

But "they" could also just as easily classify skis as a mechanical device and ban those, too (not to mention wheelchairs).

Dude, you might be on to something. Get a disabled MTB biker to get busted on a "wilderness" trail and then sue the federal gov for access under the A.D.A. saying the bike is the only viable option for access to that area for him/her......

[Unruly Baker]

Really nice work Unruly, I hadn't heard that SOC had agreed to work with you guys on getting the trails put on a different designation. Does this signal a new era within SOC or am I just being irrationally optimistic again?

Thanks, but it wasn't just me and I am just a member (fairly new member actually) of IMBA and WAFTA, not anyone in an authority position or anything. The heads of IMBA and WAFTA are the folks that will be working with SOC, and the mmebers of those groups will have input into the process through those leaders (I hope that is how it works anyway, it is a fairly new development and I haven't heard much in a week or so).

Capone, I agree that a new/different designation that offers all of the protection of the WA but is updated to reflect the new reality of recreation is the best solution right now and probably for a long time coming. Getting the WA modified is more of a "shoot for the moon" or "for my kid" scenario. Maybe it won't happen but I think there is still a chance. Like I said, I am an optimist.

Altering the WA to allow bikes is a bad idea IMHO, as then the ATV's and Jeeps would then feel like they now have a case and the WA would be useless. Creating a new standard that does allow bikes would be nice, but I think that is a big challenge as well. Best to just get in cooperation with the folks writing the WA proposals and get them to "cherry-stem" and break up the areas to keep existing mtb trails and leave room for new ones.

My opinion anyway.

UB

[tone capone]

you are right, baker

[Switch Sleepwalker]

The wilderness lobby hates all uses except hiking, period. Some extreme greens are anti hiking/anti human use.

You guys are gonna get locked out of all roadless areas if they have their way. With Barack's ok of course.

http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005117385

Congressional committee to review wilderness bill

NREPA would designate 23 million acres across 5 states


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

The White Cloud Mountains of Central Idaho are among the 23 million acres of road-free wildlands that would be protected as congressionally mandated wilderness if the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act becomes law. Photo by Mountain Express



It's "the wildest bill on the hill" in the words of a key proponent, and it's about to get a Capitol Hill hearing.

The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act is a massive wilderness bill that would designate 23 million acres across five states, including 9.5 million acres in Idaho, 7 million in Montana, 5 million in Wyoming, 750,000 in eastern Oregon and 500,000 in eastern Washington.

The total includes 3 million acres in Yellowstone, Glacier and Grand Teton national parks.

A hearing on the bill is scheduled for Oct. 18 before the National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee.

The Helena, Mont.-based Alliance for the Wild Rockies has been pushing the bill for nearly 20 years. Alliance Executive Director Michael Garrity said it will protect rare species like grizzly bears, bull trout and lynx, while creating jobs through restoring old roads and clear cuts.

Singer-songwriter Carole King, a Custer County resident, has long been an advocate for the bill. She said it was drafted by a group of well-respected biologists from the region about 18 years ago. Next week's hearing is a good opportunity to see a bill that many have long deemed unworkable because of its scope gain congressional approval, King said.

"This is very exciting," she said. "We have a very real possibility to see passage of this bill through Congress. We'll cross the bridge of President Bush when we get there."

King said she became involved with NREPA because she had been an advocate for Idaho wilderness since the early 1980s.

"I liked the scientific approach and the economic approach because it saves taxpayers money, and it creates jobs," she said.

The idea that designated wilderness assists with economic development in rural areas is controversial. A 2004 report by the Bozeman, Mont., office of the Sonoran Institute, however, asserts that proximity to wild lands does, in fact, stimulate economic growth.

"We discovered that Wilderness, National Parks, National Monuments, and other protected public lands, set aside for their wild land characteristics, can and do play an important role in stimulating economic growth—and the more protected, the better," the report states.

King put it this way:

"We see ghost towns all over the West based on extractive industry," she said. "You don't see any based on proximity to wilderness."

The flip side is that land protections like wilderness prevent access for some, and those include recreation advocates for off-road vehicles, as well as industries like timber and mining.



Politicians like U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, and Sen. Mike o, R-Idaho, are attempting to bridge the past with the present in that regard. They are trying to build a new wilderness model based on compromise between a myriad of public land stakeholders. Both Simpson's Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act and o's Owyhee Initiative are pending hearings in the 110th Congress.

Simpson's bill would protect 318,765 acres of the Boulder and White Cloud mountains as wilderness while releasing other areas from wilderness study status, establish permanent motorized recreation areas and give certain federal lands away for development.

Simpson's chief of staff, Lindsay Slater, declined to comment on the pending committee hearing on NREPA. But it is important to note that NREPA includes lands that are specified for designation in Simpson's CIEDRA. King is a strong and outspoken critic of Simpson's bill.

"I don't mean the chopped-up wilderness found in bills like CIEDRA," she said referencing what she deems true, functional wilderness. "I mean large chunks of intact, functional ecosystem wilderness."

o's bill, built through a collaborative stakeholder process, would protect 517,000 acres of the Owyhee Canyonlands as wilderness while releasing wilderness study areas and preserving livestock grazing as an economically viable use.

But ranching and motorized recreation are only small facets of economic stimulation, King said, and NREPA would go further.

NREPA would establish a "wildland recovery project" that would restore or eliminate 6,000 roads. Such recovery would create jobs, she said. She also pointed out that taxpayers would save money because wilderness areas do not require intensive hands-on management.

Regardless of the politics at work, the science is pretty clear that more designated wilderness would benefit wild ecosystems. People and their myriad uses for the land are the tripping point.

"The biological corridors that were in the bill two decades ago are now known to mitigate the effects of global warming for species because it is known that they provide corridors for them to migrate to cooler climates," King said.

NREPA's lead sponsors are U.S. Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-New York, and Christopher Shays, R-Conn. There are 114 co-sponsors, including House Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall, D-W.V.

King said NREPA was first introduced in the early 1990s, and it had a hearing in 1994, the last year Democrats controlled the House.

"The bill obviously didn't pass," King said. "But there were no objections to the science, to the economics or to the jobs. There were only objections from Westerners having Easterners tell them what to do."

King said that at the 1994 hearing, Maloney reminded those in attendance that the lands in question were owned by all Americans.

"And then the objections became more vociferous and personal, but there were still no objections to the science or the economics or the creation of jobs," King said.

King will join Garrity and several others to testify at the Oct. 18 hearing. She said she believes there are enough votes to get it moving out of committee.

"This is a bipartisan bill anyway," she said. "I will lobby on its behalf as I've done over the last 18 years."

/unquote.

And Carole King has fans in the Sun Valley newspaper.
That is what scares me of the lefty right/left coast dems. Fix your states first.

[tone capone]

If this is the way this country goes, which I fully expect and understand it will, I will go to Colombia and start a trailbuilding effort down there in some awesome high desert with 6 grand of vert that no one uses and start a tour company for all the poor dejected American Mountain Bikers.

All these little green tyrants, led by the likes of the N.Y. and Connecticut representatives, always talk about how good it will be for the economy when they can come in and over regulate the land. What a fucking joke. Only an idiot with your average college brainwashing could possibly believe that a bunch of old hippies and birdwatchers in hiking boots are going to be the backbone of a thriving diverse economy in the New West. I seriously hope that enough people are not stupid enough to have this false reality force fed down their throats.

Hey sleepwalker, I've been watching that piece of legislation, nice link. I'm glad you brought that to the discussion. It really shows the true nature of the smug ones and teir lofty goals.

[MotoBeak]

Goddammit, there's enough "wilderness" areas out there already. Bikes will never get in (legally), and there will be lots more closures and restrictions in the near future. The greenies just don't like to share with anyone, and our land management agencies tend to agree since it makes their jobs easier. If you keep people out of an area you don't have to acutally manage it.

End of rant.

Seriously, every thing is going to get worse for people who like to do anything but hike. Closing a trail to motorized use is the first step, and then it's just convenient to close it bo mtb use as well. Ride while you can.

[tone capone]

I'll ride when and where I see fit until they throw me into a federal prison in a straight jacket.

[MotoBeak]

I'll ride when and where I see fit until they throw me into a federal prison in a straight jacket.

Exactly. Since the forest service doesn't seem to have the budget to maintain trails, I doubt they have much of a budget for enforcement!!

[gunniride]

The best way to influence travel management decisions is to voice your opinion in person. Not by signing an IMBA petition, or posting on the interwebs, but by talking in person to the trails managers/district rangers/field managers/Forest Supervisors.

Biking in the wilderness- not going to happen, don't bother any argument to the effect.

Current trail design- This is where things can change the most in future years. Although the "Horses cause more damage than bikes" argument may never be won, design for different users is worth fighting. Design templates from the Northwest should become the staple for future trails, though we might not see it until a generational change in management.

Public Land managers need to hear desires for biking support. Forget about Wilderness and start focusing on things like the Continental Divide Trail outside of Wild....

These officials work for you, they simply oil the wheel that squeaks the loudest- enviro, moto, or otherwise.