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Bikes, politics, wilderness: oh my.

Jim Mac

MAKE ENDURO GREAT AGAIN
May 21, 2004
6,352
282
the middle east of NY
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/opinion/keep-bikes-off-our-wilderness-trails.html?src=me



Keep Bikes Off Our Wilderness Trails
Palm Springs, Calif. — Some new threat is always trying to nose its way into America’s wilderness areas. Fierce battles have been fought over logging, mining and damming these last vestiges of our wild heritage. Now proposed legislation in Congress would allow bikes in wilderness.

This may not seem like a big deal. But the 1964 Wilderness Act forbids bikes and other forms of “mechanical transport” in federal wilderness areas. To allow in bikes would set a perilous precedent that would encourage further efforts to open up these wild places, threatening the very idea of wilderness that the law expresses: “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

To keep wilderness this way, the law is strict, and there is no ambiguity over its ban on “mechanical transport.” The four agencies that administer the nation’s 109 million acres of wilderness — the National Park Service, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management — interpret the law to prohibit bikes.

Yet leaders of the pro-bike effort, the Sustainable Trails Coalition, argue that lawmakers in 1964 never intended to exclude mountain bikes. They claim the law’s legislative history “shows that Congress would have wanted to allow bikes in wilderness if mountain bikes had existed or they had thought about them.”

The first mountain bikes were not widely sold until 1981, 17 years after the Wilderness Act became law. Undeterred, Utah’s Republican senators, Mike Lee and Orrin Hatch, no friends of wilderness protection, are sponsoring the Human-Powered Travel in Wilderness Areas Act. It would give federal land managers discretion to allow mountain bikers into wilderness areas. The agencies that oversee these areas oppose this.

No doubt it will only be a matter of time before enthusiasts of motorized all-terrain vehicles will be pressing their case for access to these areas.

Only very narrow exceptions supported by conservation groups now allow anything mechanical in federal wilderness areas: Rangers can use whatever it takes to rescue someone in trouble. Disabled people may use non-gasoline-powered wheelchairs. Snowmobiles and motorboats are allowed for subsistence hunting and fishing in Alaska’s huge wilderness areas.

The Sustainable Trails Coalition argues that since the Wilderness Act became law, “the world has changed.” The coalition also notes that horses are already allowed on trails inside these areas.

But travel by horse is a use that had a long tradition in many of these places before the 1964 law.

Ultimately, this is not really a debate about whether to allow bikes in wilderness, but whether we will allow the first incursion against a law that has held firm for 52 years to protect America’s disappearing wild heritage. Senator Lee has argued that his legislation is intended to “enrich Americans’ enjoyment of the outdoors by making it easier for them to mountain bike in wilderness areas.”

The two Utah senators sponsoring this effort have made no secret of their disdain for the federal government’s ownership and management of Western lands. They also support putting hundreds of millions of acres in the hands of the states and localities.

More than 600 million acres have been set aside as national parks, forests and other federal lands. Of that, 109 million acres have been designated as federal wilderness, with its extra layer of safeguarding. Much of the rest is available to cyclists.

In New York State, however, the Adirondack Park Agency has allowed mountain bikes and motorized maintenance vehicles on old logging roads in two of the park’s “primitive areas” — Pine Lake and Essex Chain Lakes. Now the agency wants to continue to allow bikes, as well as maintenance vehicles to repair major damage to trails, after these roads are scheduled to be closed in the next few years. That proposal is incompatible with wilderness stewardship and should be rejected by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. There are ample opportunities for biking on hundreds of thousands of acres of state-owned land outside these areas.
And that really is the point. We set aside wilderness areas to protect them for what they are — wild places, untrammeled, as much as possible, by man, a reminder of what this country was like before Columbus set foot on this side of the Atlantic. There aren’t many of these places left, and we should leave them alone. They are our heritage, and the heritage of future generations.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the outdoors on bikes or even off-road vehicles. There are plenty of other places to go to do that. In Moab, Utah, for instance, cash registers seem to jingle nonstop thanks to the abundance of outdoor recreation opportunities, including mountain biking. This is also true in the Adirondacks and across the United States.

We can have both. The Human-Powered Travel in Wilderness Areas Act should be stopped in its tracks.

Doug Scott is the author of the forthcoming book “Wild Thoughts: Short Selections by Great Writers about Nature, Wilderness, and the People Who Protect Them.”
 
Sep 11, 2015
332
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We set aside wilderness areas to protect them for what they are — wild places, untrammeled, as much as possible, by man, a reminder of what this country was like before Columbus set foot on this side of the Atlantic.
Is he saying Native Americans aren't people?

Doug Scott is a racist.
 

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,138
16,537
Riding the baggage carousel.
Jesus. What a load of horse shit. I don't think that assclown of an author has a single fucking clue how the Wilderness Act works, or how the land management agencies in question work..

Fierce battles have been fought over logging, mining and damming these last vestiges of our wild heritage. Now proposed legislation in Congress would allow bikes in wilderness.
<snip>
More than 600 million acres have been set aside as national parks, forests and other federal lands. Of that, 109 million acres have been designated as federal wilderness, with its extra layer of safeguarding. Much of the rest is available to cyclists.
"Wilderness" being the key term here. The Forest Service, Fish and Game and the BLM where created for the express purpose of managing land for exactly the purposes of logging, grazing, mining, personal use, etc, in a "controlled" fashion. There are arguments to be made for sure about what constitutes "control" and "management", but that's not the point. These agencies might manage or designate an area as "Wilderness", but that is not the mission they were originally founded with in mind. It's the National Park Services mission to protect and preserve. The designation of an area as "Wilderness" gives an area the sort of protection that a National Park gets, regardless of what agencies borders it might happen to fall within.

To allow in bikes would set a perilous precedent that would encourage further efforts to open up these wild places, threatening the very idea of wilderness that the law expresses: “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
Also, complete bullshit because:
The coalition also notes that horses are already allowed on trails inside these areas.
And this is my biggest problem with excluding bikes. I'm personally of the (bound to be unpopular here) opinion that bikes do not belong in either wilderness areas or National Parks. But neither do horses and for even better, actual reasons, not made up bullshit, get off my lawn, reasons. Either ban horses or let in bikes, pick one, I don't care which. It's hypocritical and stupid.

No doubt it will only be a matter of time before enthusiasts of motorized all-terrain vehicles will be pressing their case for access to these areas.
And when we allow gay marriage, people will next want to marry their lawn furniture. :rolleyes:

Mike Lee and Orrin Hatch
This is all I need to know to oppose this actually. If Lee and Hatch support this measure, you can be goddamned sure it's not because either of those two fucks want to ride a bike through Lost Creek.

The two Utah senators sponsoring this effort have made no secret of their disdain for the federal government’s ownership and management of Western lands. They also support putting hundreds of millions of acres in the hands of the states and localities.
It's been talked about in here before, but the real travesty occurring isn't bicycles, It's people like Lee and Hatch trying to dismantle Federal Land Protection so they can rob one of Americas greatest legacies and sell it off to their corporate masters.
 

jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
85,564
24,182
media blackout
And this is my biggest problem with excluding bikes. I'm personally of the (bound to be unpopular here) opinion that bikes do not belong in either wilderness areas or National Parks. But neither do horses and for even better, actual reasons, not made up bullshit, get off my lawn, reasons. Either ban horses or let in bikes, pick one, I don't care which. It's hypocritical and stupid.

And when we allow gay marriage, people will next want to marry their lawn furniture. :rolleyes:
once we allow bikes in, bikes will be marrying horses will be marrying sasquatch
 

jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
85,564
24,182
media blackout
It's been talked about in here before, but the real travesty occurring isn't bicycles, It's people like Lee and Hatch trying to dismantle Federal Land Protection so they can rob one of Americas greatest legacies and sell it off to their corporate masters.
this. and instead of focusing on the real issue, the hikers want to bicker about bikers.
 

jstuhlman

bagpipe wanker
Dec 3, 2009
16,624
12,916
Cackalacka du Nord
wait just a minute...why you gotta go and drag @stoney into this? what does a $$$nake have to do with it?!?

fuck those senators and their corporate land grab.

fuck the hikers for taking the bait.

either let all non-motorized in or keep it all out, hikers included.

and stay the hell off my lawn.
 
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