Although mountain bikers are essentially silent, as
well as not motorized, not polluting, muscle-powered, and most
importantly, appreciative of Nature and wild places,
environmentalists like HCN Editor Greg Hanscom
have from the beginning thumbed their noses at us. In his Sept. 18
editorial, Hanscom says we “should stay out of wilderness
politics,” because there ought to be places with “real solitude”
where people only go slowly. I guess we cyclists just don’t
pray right.
Bikes have been banned from 150 to 200
million acres of public land: 105 million acres of wilderness,
nearly all of the backcountry of the National Park Service, about
half of the national wildlife refuges, and a bevy of local and
state parks, forests, and wildlife areas.
Looking
forward, most wilderness activists want all 55 million acres of
Forest Service roadless lands to become wilderness. We face the
loss of 700 miles of trail access through forest plans in Montana,
a couple hundred miles through the bill for the Boulder-White
Clouds in Idaho, major losses in the Mount Hood National Forest on
top of the five wilderness areas already there, another 787,000
acres in the proposed “Mountains To Mesas” plan for the GMUG
National Forest. Two hundred miles and more than a quarter million
acres of bike access will disappear when Rep. Thompson’s bill
for Northern California passes this fall. Add the BLM’s
wilderness study areas and potential wilderness proposed by
activists, and it’s clear that this is no “postage stamp.”
From the beginning, International Mountain Bicycling
Association leaders have tried to demonstrate our environmental
values. We distributed the “Environmental Bill of Rights” promoted
by Sierra Club in the mid-’90s. We did not support Utah Rep.
James Hansen’s bill to allow bikes in wilderness because we
knew his real goal was bulldozers. Today we repeatedly support the
protection of ALL roadless places.
We have always stated
we’re OK with seeing some trails go to hiking-only
designations for the Hanscoms of the world. But there have been no
moves in kind by the environmental movement. We are knocking at
your door and you are pushing us away. Meanwhile, the motorized
community actively courts us. It’s telling that we
nonetheless try to remain in your camp.
It’s time
for the environmental movement to transcend its feelings about
personal experience and start thinking about really building the
constituency for conservation.
Gary
Sprung
Denver, Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Stop locking bikes out.
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