A Republican U.S. senator from Utah has introduced legislation that could open wilderness areas to mountain bikes. Sen. Mike Lee said his Human-Powered Travel in Wilderness Areas Act is needed to "enrich Americans’ enjoyment of the outdoors by expanding recreational opportunities in wilderness areas.”
Under the legislation introduced this week, federal land managers -- including the National Park Service -- would be given the authority to decide whether to allow and how to regulate non-motorized travel in wilderness areas within their jurisdictions.
The Wilderness Act of 1964 prohibits the use of motor vehicles, motorized equipment, motorboats, and other forms of mechanical transport in officially designated wilderness. Current Interior Department policy considers non-motorized mountain bikes to be “mechanical transport," the senator noted.
If enacted, the bill would insert language to the Wilderness Act to ensure that the rules restricting “mechanical transport” do not include forms of nonmotorized travel in which the sole propulsive power is one or more persons.
Through the years there have been many efforts to open officially designated wilderness to mountain bikes. Back in 2017 legislation was sponsored by U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, R-California, to open wilderness to the bikes. Opposition came not only from the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, which worried that hikers on the iconic footpath that runs from northern Maine to Georgia could find themselves dodging bikers on some sections of trail, but also from the International Mountain Bicycling Association.
“Mountain bikers and the recreation community depend on public lands and thoughtful conservation. Public lands are being threatened at an unprecedented level right now, and it's imperative that public land users come together to protect these cherished places and offer our voices in this critical dialogue,” Dave Wiens, IMBA's executive director, said at the time. “We know Wilderness hits some mountain bikers’ backyards, and we understand why those riders support this legislation. To continue elevating mountain biking nationally, IMBA must remain focused on its long-term strategy for the bigger picture of our sport.”
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Diana, I asked my good friend Stewart Brandborg, who died a year ago and who carried the W Act over the finish line after Howard Zahnizer died, about bikes in Wilderness. He said the intent was clearly to prohibit mechanized transport in W. It is the biker revisionists who claim otherwise. I don't think you were at the table either. Yes, the FS failed to enforce the W Act in this regard for 20 years. Not surprising, given that the FS opposed the W Act from the get go. The FS has likewise failed to enforce the Montana Wilderness Study Act for 40 years up until recently and is now actively trying to rewind that enforcement due to political pressure from the bike industry.
Larry Campbell, I don't believe Stuart Brandborg (or Zahniser) was ever a member of Congress or worked for a federal agency. He was part of a special interest group that did help make the Wilderness Act a law (after much compromise, by the way), but his 1960's or 2010's feelings about bicycles have no more weight on what congress enacted and what the USFS implemented than what you and anyone else prefers. I suggest folks stop living in the past and pretending that bicycling is not a legitimate form of backcountry exploration.
Actually, this is not correct at all and is based on a popular myth. Forest Service regulations did not address bicycles for 20 years. There's a huge difference between what the law requires or prohibits and what agencies address in regulations. The law, naturally, is the controlling language and clearly prohibits all forms of "mechanical transport." Recreation is definitely part of wilderness and is even included in the definition of wilderness in Section 2(c) of the Wilderness Act. BUT, the type of recreation opportunity to be provided was also specified: "outstanding opportunties for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation." This has never been interpreted to include bicycles, nor could it be given the prohibitions of Section 4(c) of the Act.
I believe most mountain bikers agree that there are places -- such as wilderness -- where mountain bikes do not belong. It is sad that there are a few mountain bikers who either do not understand this or simply do not care. Their claims that the plain language of The Wilderness Act does not ban mountain bikes, that Congress did not really mean to ban mountain bikes, or that agency regulations legitimately allowed mountain bikes in wilderness for 20 years are completely baseless.
These claims are thoroughly debunked in these pieces by Doug Scott http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/wildly_sill... Tim Lydon https://therevelator.org/mountain-bikes-federal-wilderness/ and George Wuerthner https://www.thewildlifenews.com/2018/02/08/mountain-biking-threat-to-wil...
The opposition to Senator Lee's bill is not coming from a few ultra purists. Here is a letter signed by 150 conservation organizations, both big and small, from across the country -- including mine, RESTORE: The North Woods -- strongly opposing the 2018 version of this harmful bill. https://wildernesswatch.org/images/wild-issues/2018/06-05-2018-Mtn-bike-...
Most of America is crisscrossed by roads and trails. Our public lands have thousands of miles of trails and back roads open to mountain bikes. Only a tiny percentage of our nation is protected as wilderness. We cannot allow a small minority of recreational users to gut one of our most important environmental laws so they can ride mountain bikes on a few more miles of trail at the expense of wild nature and those of us who care about it.
"land managers would never allow bike use in such areas" - Except those land managers who are also mountain bikers, or friendly to mountain bikers. Trails quickly being overgrown due to lack of use? Awesome! Let nature have it. Cyclists are most active trail maintainers - no doubt! They LOVE to dig more than ride, and make new trails too. The proud fact that MTBs are good trail maintainers is not germane to the policy of excluding mechanical trasnport.
Diana Boyer, Read the Wilderness Act. Read the legislative history. It doesn't just say "no motorized transport." It also says "no mechanical transport." Bikes are mechanical transport. Part of the careful crafeting of the law was eliminating all unnecessary words. If they meant to exclude motorized transport but allow bikes, they would not have put in those words "no mechanical transport." The authors of the Act knew that technology is always evolving and that new forms of transport would be invented over time. There were road bikes in 1964, but mountain bikes didn't even exist in 1964 (yes, I was around then). Even by the early 1980s there were very few mountain bikers entering the backcountry. The authors of the Wilderness Act didn't say bikes were fine, they didn't say bikes were permitted, they didn't say bikes "were intended to be included from the get-go." This is pure fabrication. They didn't specifically name bikes as a prohibited use because mountain bikes weren't a thing yet. What they said is "no mechanical transport," which obviously includes bikes.
The first and primary mandate for management of Wilderness is not recreation. It's PROTECTING WILDERNESS CHARACTER. Recreation and other uses may occur only to the extent they do not destroy wilderness character. Since by definition, Wilderness is free of motorized and mechanized transport, filling it with bikes or other machines destroys its wilderness character. Wilderness makes up a mere 2.7% of the land base in the lower 48 states--why can't this tiny remnant remain free of machines? Why do you have to have it all? There are millions of acres of public land already open to mountain bikes. Let wildlife have a little bit too, undisturbed by racing machines and dense networks of habitat-destroying trails.
Mountain bikes have always been banned from Wilderness Areas. The Wilderness Act clearly says "no other form of mechanical transport." The 1984 ruling by the Forest Service was just a clarification of the Wilderness Act, not a change of the Wilderness Act. so Hmm is totally wrong on this one.