"There seems to be a fairly general acceptance of poaching within the bike community"

Such honesty is EXTREMELY RARE!

Mike


http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=489086

Coming from the land managers perspective comming on the OP. I do see
a growing trend where land managers are beginning to enforce areas
that in the past had little or no enforcement.

I cannot speak about the areas in the OP, but in many of the socal
areas, the issue is coming to a head due to several factors.

One factor is that many area that used to be fairly unstructured in
the past, have been signed into one of several protection programs
that not only outline the protection (including access guidelines),
but have legal ramifications if the land-owners don't follow them.

This is also coupled with a huge increase in our sport over the past 2
decades, and unfortunately a general lack of cohesiveness within the
mountain bike community itself to self-police or control our own.
There seems to be a fairly general acceptance of poaching within the
bike community.

The issues are heating up locally in my area for the reasons stated
above.

The other main reason why locally, mountain bikers are stressing
various land managers is that the mountain bike mantra of the past
where we stated that all user groups contribute equally in the
problems, and that it is a very small portion of the group that
creates the problems, is proving to be not quite accurate.

After eight years of collected data locally, the percentages of
miss-use by the various user groups have been tallied and the numbers
are not favorable for bikers.

So locally the land managers are stepping up enforcement which
unfortunately has to happen, but the bigger picture they are trying to
get across to the group is to simply have the bulk of the group begin
to take a stance of not being so accepting of poaching within our
sport.

Land managers locally have visited and been in discussion with some
other areas that do not have the poaching issues that we experience
down here, and much of the success of thier areas lies with the bike
communities themselves. There are definitely some areas where the bike
communities themselves don't tolerate these actions within their own
group because they have experienced loss of access due to past
behaviours....so they have developed an intolerance for these
behaviours, and really do control their own.

We don't really share that level of self-policing locally, and many
bikers bash the managers for not getting tough on the poachers.
Locally managers are begining to get tough, however from my
discussions with many managers, there is still an underlying sentiment
that we should not have to resort to getting tough. Basically we
should not have to be forced to put so much effort in to controlling
any user groups.

In reality, the maps, signs, gates, etc....should be sufficient; and
probably would be if there was more direct involvement from the user
groups themselves to not accept these actions.

With that being said, we still acknowledge that it is a small
percentage of the total number of mountian bikers that create the
problems, but what the locally reality shows is that the number of
mountain bikers are pretty large, so even the small percentage
constitutes a pretty large number, so percentage-wise is it a much
higher percentage than the other user groups.

Plus what the data shows is that the actual actions are basically more
aggressive and more impactful than other groups.....ie...the
percentage of actual off-trail use, and night use is much greater in
the bike community than other groups.

Locally we are still hopefull that we can turn these percentages
around, but we know that heavy enforcement will not be the answer.
Education and the bike community itself will be the long-term
solution.....so until the bike community actually comes together and
really starts taking care of their own, and truly adopts an
unnacceptance of poaching behaviour.....this saga will continue
locally.

Just some thoughts
--
I am working on creating wildlife habitat that is off-limits to
humans ("pure habitat"). Want to help? (I spent the previous 8
years fighting auto dependence and road construction.)

Please don't put a cell phone next to any part of your body that you are fond of!

http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande

On Mar 29, 11:50*am, Mike Vandeman wrote:
Such honesty is EXTREMELY RARE!


As a habitual liar, you wouldn't know.

On Sun, 29 Mar 2009 10:32:32 -0700 (PDT), Kayak44
wrote:

On Mar 29, 11:50*am, Mike Vandeman wrote:
Such honesty is EXTREMELY RARE!


As a habitual liar, you wouldn't know.

No one has ever found a lie in my posts -- because there aren't any!
--
I am working on creating wildlife habitat that is off-limits to
humans ("pure habitat"). Want to help? (I spent the previous 8
years fighting auto dependence and road construction.)

Please don't put a cell phone next to any part of your body that you are fond of!

http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande

On Mar 29, 6:20*pm, Mike Vandeman wrote:
On Sun, 29 Mar 2009 10:32:32 -0700 (PDT), Kayak44

wrote:
On Mar 29, 11:50*am, Mike Vandeman wrote:
Such honesty is EXTREMELY RARE!

As a habitual liar, you wouldn't know.

No one has ever found a lie in my posts -- because there aren't any!

Liar.