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Mountain bikers more and more the threat to new wildernessdesignation--another example from BTNF by Jackson



 
 
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Old October 24th 13, 04:12 AM posted to alt.mountain-bike
Mike Vandeman[_4_]
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Default Mountain bikers more and more the threat to new wildernessdesignation--another example from BTNF by Jackson

http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/article.php?art_id=10418

Subject: Mountain bikers more and more the threat to new wilderness designation--another example from BTNF by Jackson
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 14:47:43 -0700

Subject: Mountain bikers more and more the threat to new wilderness designation--another example from BTNF by Jackson
Date: October 23, 2013 10:51:11 AM PDT

Forest cycle trails dissed
Conservationists say some bike routes authorized by Forest Service may be illegal.

By Mike Koshmrl, Jackson Hole, Wyo.
October 23, 2013

Conservationists are asking why the Bridger-Teton National Forest has permitted construction and maintenance of mountain bike trails in the Palisades Wilderness Study Area south of Teton Pass, contending the work is illegal.

Popular mountain bike routes such as Lithium, Triple Direct, Fuzzy Bunny, Black Canyon and possibly Powerline Jumps are among the trails in question. All have been cut through Forest Service lands that three decades ago were nominated as wilderness, a class of land where cycling is illegal.

The area in question is not officially wilderness * Congress would have to designate it as such * but it is supposed to be managed so as not to diminish its wilderness character. The distinction is at the center of the debate.

“This is not wilderness, and so mountain bikes are legally allowed in the [Wilderness Study Area],” said Linda Merigliano, recreation wilderness program manager at the Bridger-Teton. “The forest plan says that very specifically.”

Biking would be illegal in the 180,000-acre Palisades if Congress were to act and make it wilderness.

“What would happen is that there wouldn’t be mountain bike use on those trails anymore,” Merigliano said. “It would be prohibited.”

Meantime, the Bridger-Teton is required to maintain the wilderness character of the Palisades as it existed in 1984, when it was designated by Congress.

Wilson activist and biologist Ann Harvey thinks the forest has neglected that duty. Wilderness by definition is earth “untrammeled by man,” has retained its “primeval character” and is “managed so as to preserve its natural conditions.”

“My problem is the Forest Service consistently is ignoring the law,” she said.

Last week Harvey led a hike near the Palisades boundary where Teton Freedom Riders was upgrading the Powerline Jumps singletrack.

An access road had been cut through the forest so that a small excavator could move dirt on a few hundred feet of the trail.

“It’s huge,” Harvey said of the makeshift road. “It’s like a highway.”

It is not yet determined if Powerline Jumps, located southwest of Crater Lake, runs through the study area. Maps generated by a 1977 roadless area survey place the trail inside the wilderness study area. A recent effort to legally map Palisades, however, proposes shifting the boundary south, beyond Powerline Jumps.

Palisades’ wilderness study boundary was supposed to be based on the roadless survey and legally certified “as soon as practicable,” after passage of the 1984 Wyoming Wilderness Act.

The boundary was moved to exclude a power line corridor, which Merigliano said “would never be included in a designated wilderness.”

At the scene, Harvey wasn’t pleased that the forest had given the Freedom Riders the OK to work on the trail.

“Until they get this boundary formally certified, [the Forest Service] has no business permitting activities in an area that may or may not be wilderness,” Harvey said.

The Freedom Riders, working with Bridger-Teton’s permission, had just learned they were possibly digging in the wilderness study area.

“Until two days ago, I had no idea,” said Harlan Hottenstein, the nonprofit’s field director. “We’ve been trying to stay in good standing with our land management and following all the rules since day one. Everything we’ve done has been approved by the Forest Service, including this.”

Ironically, the Teton Freedom Riders formed to combat illegal trails, Hottenstein said. The group abides by the laws of the land, he said, to the point where “we take crap from the riders for being kiss-asses.”

Biking trails farther south, most notably Lithium, are irrefutably in the study area.

In 2004, Bridger-Teton officials OK’ed building Lithium, a 5.9-mile expert ride, to cut back on use of nearby illegal trails, Merigliano said.

“A lot of people around here are going to remember Ritalin and a couple of other trails,” Merigliano said. “We closed and rehabbed those trails.

“We just didn’t think it was going to go away,” she said. “Do you try to manage [biking] and get it into a better location? Or do you just try to say no?”

As a result of Lithium and other trails cut near the power line corridor, illegal mountain biking on Teton Pass has diminished, Merigliano said.

Former Jackson Hole resident Phil Hocker is straight to the point about the Bridger-Teton’s permissiveness of mountain biking in the wilderness study area.

“The Forest Service broke the law,” he said, “and it’s a law that they should not reasonably have been ignorant of.”

The one-time Sierra Club employee involved in the Palisades designation points to a legal debate in the 2000s about heli-skiing in the Palisades as important precedent.

In U.S. District Court, an Idaho judge shot down a Bridger-Teton decision to permit a threefold increase in the number of skiers who could be landed by helicopter in the Snake River Range.

Lynn Winmill, the chief district judge, explained his rationale in the ruling: “The Palisades WSA has been carved out by Congress for special protection. Public demand for heli-skiing, the balancing of competing interests, and ‘managed growth’ are not the governing standards under the Wyoming Wilderness Act.

“Instead, Congress has directed the Forest Service to maintain the 1984 wilderness character of the area,” the judge wrote. “That is the primary duty of the Forest Service, and it must guide all decisions as the first and foremost standard of review for any proposed action.”

Back on Teton Pass, Harvey questioned how much mountain biking was going on back in 1984.

“It seems to me that the Forest Service has been awfully casual about biking, and now it’s an established use,” she said.

“This area has been protected for 29 years,” Harvey said. “How much does the Forest Service do to promote that this is a protected area? They do nothing.”

Signs at select trailheads state the Palisades is a Wilderness Study Area, Merigliano said.

“We’re trying to get better information that you are entering a WSA out there,” she said. “We’ll continue to improve on that over time.”

Since it earned the designation in 1984, other aspects of the Palisades’ wilderness character have vastly improved, Merigliano said.

Through the 1990s the forest erected barriers and reclaimed roadways to cut back on growing ATV use in the Palisades. Snowmobile use is also down, she said. In 2000, the forest formally banned motorized travel in the Ptalisades.

“We took that leap because we were seeing a big expansion of [motorized] use,” Merigliano said.

“Motorized use is something that clearly diminishes the area’s eligibility for wilderness,” she said. “Mountain biking use is not going to preclude this area from wilderness.”

Harvey said criticizing mountain bikers is not the objective.

“This [issue] has us in a tricky position, because the last thing we want is to make enemies with the mountain biking community,” Harvey said. “We’re not trying to create an anti-wilderness constituency.”
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Old October 28th 13, 05:09 AM posted to alt.mountain-bike
I love Mike
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Default Mountain bikers more and more the threat to new wildernessdesignation--another example from BTNF by Jackson

Boring....can't you come up with a better argument?
 




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