The very purpose and role of national parks is being drawn into question over a proposal by Big Bend National Park officials to cut a dual-use mountain bike trail into a hillside near Panther Junction.
In some aspects, the proposal underscores the gist of a Traveler column from last month, one in which we broached the subject of the popularity of having a national park nearby but the often-resulting opposition to many of the rules and regulations -- and even restrictions -- that come with such an entity on the landscape.
At the heart of the issue, as opponents to the mountain bike trail note, is the role national parks were created and the mandate given the National Park Service to manage them. While public enjoyment and recreation are certainly key to the parks, resource management is foremost the role of the Park Service.
Against that mandate, questions are being raised over whether Big Bend officials are holding to that mandate, or bending over to placate a special interest group that already has more than 300 miles of mountain biking opportunities in the park.
Big Bend officials are preparing an environmental assessment into a roughly 10-mile-long network of trails that would be cut into an undeveloped part of the park. Part of the project would include parking for a trailhead and a picnic area near the Panther Junction Visitor Center, and a second trailhead near Grapevine Hills Road.
While the park describes this trail as an added recreational outlet for park visitors, members of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees see it as little more than a "promotion of the mountain bike industry" and a move that facilitates "the regrettable trend toward parks becoming venues for extreme sports."
This project did not arise overnight. Indeed, back in 2007 it was seen as a "centennial project" by Interior officials under the George W. Bush administration. Back then, the International Mountain Bicycling Association was a strong proponent, and had promised to come up with half of the $12,000 cost then estimated for the project.
The proposed loop trail would start near the visitor center at Panther Junction, cross the Chihuahuan desert and wrap Lone Mountain while providing sweeping views of the Chisos Mountains, the southern-most mountain range in the country.
While Big Bend officials say the trail is simply another recreational outlet for park visitors, they do note that it's part of a deal IMBA struck with the National Park Service years ago to explore more mountain biking in the park system.
The purpose of the proposed project is to provide park visitors a trail-based recreational opportunity in an area of the park where none currently exists. The proposed action is in keeping with a 2002 Memorandum of Agreement between NPS and the International Mountain Biking Association that encouraged identifying mountain biking opportunities in the national parks, including new trail construction in appropriate areas. The primary objectives of the proposal are to: 1) create new recreational opportunities for park visitors, and 2) provide a trail-based recreational opportunity in the vicinity of Panther Junction.
That arrangement with IMBA is part of the issue cited by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility in their objections.
"The project is a collaboration between the south Texas national park and a private mountain biking group, raising disturbing “pay-to-play” questions about user groups carving out park lands for special purposes," the group said in comments it filed with the Park Service.
Most of the backcountry trail would be single-track – approximately the width of a bike, with one-way traffic moving counter clockwise. Horses would be barred from the trail.
“Big Bend calls this a ‘multi-use’ trail but it is clearly designed for high-speed, high-thrill biking. Any hikers foolish enough to venture on this path risk tread marks across their backs,” said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that the EA dryly concedes “some visitors might not enjoy their experience sharing the proposed trail with mountain bikers.”
“We are not anti-mountain biking," said Mr. Ruch, "but are concerned that scarce public dollars may be diverted to promote exclusionary recreation scratched out of national park backcountry.”
In their comments on the proposal, members of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees said Big Bend officials seem to be "pursuing an agenda not supported by law, policy and common sense."
"The mountain bike trail construction proposal for Big Bend NP raises serious questions regarding the purpose of National Parks. Through law, Congress and the courts have clearly established that resource protection must always come before visitor enjoyment," Rick Smith, who chairs the coalition's executive committee, wrote to the park. "While there may often be a tug of war between those who place enjoyment first and those who place preservation first, the law clearly states which of the interests has priority.
"Further, NPS Policies articulate this legal precedence into coherent direction for the agency to place resource protection as the primary role of the agency in managing our parks," he added. "In the case of this EA we believe that single-track mountain biking may be enjoyable for the participants but we do not believe it is necessary or appropriate for experiencing the value and purposes for which national parks are set aside by Congress and construction of a single use trail certainly does not conform to the resource protection deference over public enjoyment the park must honor."
Carving this stretch of bike trail, wrote Mr. Smith, "provides no additional means of appreciating park wilderness beyond that available on existing backcountry roads, particularly on roads with very low speeds and levels of vehicular traffic."
"There is nothing about single-track mountain biking that adds a unique opportunity to appreciate the natural and cultural resources of this national park. On the contrary, the rough, rocky terrain combined with hazardous vegetation detracts from that opportunity. In addition there are hundreds of miles of single track opportunities on nearby private and state lands where mountain biking is being actively welcomed and promoted."
PEER's other concerns include:
* This would be the first trail constructed from scratch on undeveloped park land to accommodate mountain bicycles. A pending rule change, also supported by IMBA would open millions of acres of national park backcountry, including recommended wilderness, to mountain bike trails;
* Big Bend already has 200 miles of trails and roads open to mountain biking and there are another 900 miles of bike-accessible trails and roads on state and private lands surrounding Big Bend;
* This trail would be expensive to maintain and vulnerable to high erosion. Yet Big Bend, like other national parks, has a sizeable backlog of maintenance needs on existing facilities, and;
* While the proposed trail is not in designated wilderness, the project would likely preclude the land from ever being designating as wilderness.
“The plan at Big Bend is without precedent in the national park system,” added Mr. Ruch, who is urging members of the public to send comments to Big Bend National Park before the comment period on the park's Environmental Assessment runs out April 2. “This is part of the steady degradation of our parks into settings for thrill sports rather than preserves for enjoyment of natural and cultural features.”
Currently, bicycles are allowed on park roads, dirt or paved, as well as on trails in developed areas, such as the South Rim Village at the Grand Canyon. Backcountry trails are generally reserved for hikers and horseback riders. IMBA began its campaign to gain access to national parks trails in 2002.
A copy of the park's environmental assessment is attached below. To voice your opinion on this project, head to this site.
Comments
Recreation area
[color=#336699]http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online...ps/anps_5g.htm[/color][/url]
POLICY ON THE ESTABLISHMENT AND ADMINISTRATION OF RECREATION AREAS
See the following examples from the council created by Executive order #11017, of April 27, 1962
#6 in primary criteria section... Read the last sentence again and again.
" Within National Recreation Areas, outdoor recreation shall be recognized as the dominant or primary resource management purpose. If additional natural resource utilization is carried on, such additional use shall be compatible with fulfilling the recreation mission, and none will be carried on that is significantly detrimental to it. "
Reading both the primary and secondary objective criteria I did not notice any mention about preserving anything but the ability to recreate!!!!!
Recreation area has zero to do with this argument, it is a national park, not a national recreation area...and regardless, if it is an NPS unit it still all boils down to the Organic Act which states that preservation is just, if not more, important than providing recreation...feel like I am hitting my head against a wall here...
Hikers speak as if their hiking through national parks was not recreation. Come on, it is a form of recreation just like mountain biking. It's different, but neither better nor worse.
As for Ryan, the Act was reinterpreted in 84. Furthermore, if you read Mr. Stroll's research, notes from Congress had indeed contemplated having people riding their bicycles in wilderness. I and many others contend that the Wilderness act does not ban bicycles, anymore than it bans carbon fiber hiking poles, or pedal powered kayaks.
Back to Big Bend, all the criticism around that trail has little to do with the trail itself and is all based on fear mongering. Calling cyclists thrill seekers is really a lousy way of arguing. If the trail is indeed a moderate trail designed for beginners, there won't much thrill to be seeked.
It's always interesting to see what kind of argument people come up with to exclude cyclists.
Man what a read.
That Julie then Ryan Followed by Anon. Strong. But, you have to give Mr. Siglin due respect . Any opinion coming from the heart has merit.
I hope this is not going to be like those movies where you root for the good guys only to be left hanging at the end wondering what really happened. There comes a point that some of us wonder if we will be around to find out. I give this one about three years and 500 K in studies and Lawyers.
Kidding aside, how big is this park? Must be pretty small if there isn't enough room to accomodate different people with different interests. Need to make the park bigger. And I also wonder about this mechanized deal. Are we sure they were including bikes when they wrote this stuff. Big difference between a bicycle and motorized equipment. Read all the definitions on mechanical and mechanized, That will surely take a gang to figure out exactly what anyone intended when that stuff was written. And that thing about wheel barrows, I'm not believing that. If there is anything that belongs in the wilderness, its a wheelbarrow.
I thought this was going to be a good one. I make it 60 / 40 but not sure which side is winning. How about everyone standing up and saying at one time, " YOU WIN ".
Knowing Kurt, he's got another one waiting in the wing, soon as we finish this one.That's the only problem, we never get to finish one of these things. Never discover that perfect little answer. Just shut down the computor night after night in frustration that we arn't smart enough to cooperatively solve a single problem in our National Park. Oh well. hope everyone has a good night.
For those of you who don't know the actual site of the proposed trail: it's at the main visitor center, between the junction of two major roads. There are no maintained trails there but if you climbed the mountain the bike trail will circle, you'd be in sight of a road at all times.
If you were to hike cross-country and off-trail in Big Bend, as I have, you'd go somewhere else. So the site isn't quite "frontcountry" but it's close.
Like horseback riding, biking is clearly higher-impact than hiking or canoeing. It's lower-impact than ORVs or snowmobiling. The parks allow a lot of horses for historic reasons, and not so many bikes, also for historic reasons. It's hard to justify favoring horses over bikes for resource reasons.
At Big Bend, the big threat to wilderness is the huge dirt road network. Let's keep an eye on that.
I say all that as a way to put this trail in perspective. Of course we should avoid new impacts, and this would be a new impact. But as part of a package deal that reduced some other impact elsewhere in the park -- closing, say, the dirt road to Hot Springs, which is also accessible by a short trail from RGV -- I'd say it's a reasonable trade-off. The quasi-frontcountry location is well chosen to reduce the impact on other visitors.
So: open a bike trail but close something else so there's no net impact. Again, I'd vote for the Hot Springs Road.
The national parks could use some biking opportunities, and I think trade-offs are the way to go. In Yellowstone, for example, how about converting the old stagecoach road from Mammoth to Gardiner to a bike trail too? Maintaining it as a road is silly.
We can fight over the use of our public lands, then when there are so few users the mining companies can come in and say; look at all that unused land , let us strip mine it, it's not being used for anything else. United we can all enjoy nature, divided we can walk up and down the sidewalk.
Peer also opposed a project for a Rails to Trails project in the Merced River Canyon. That trail would have opened a corridor to Yosemite Valley without riding on the dangerous and crowded highways. There are no bike lanes on these roads. The other two highways to Yosemite Valley have tunnels which substantially increase the risks to cyclists. PEER does oppose mountain biking and Rail Trails. They have an agenda to regulate bike use to roads.
How many members of our National Parks Staffs belong to PEER?
How many retired Parks Staffers are responsible for the National Parks defacto policy of Wilderness or Winabegos?
How about a factual statement about the the trail opportunities for bikes available in Big Bend if this trail is derailed by PEER just as they killed the Merced River Rails to Trails proposal. PEER threatened lawsuits in that case. I predict they will again. Their objections sound too familiar; almost like a formula printout. It is a repeat of the objections to a bike path to Yosemite Valley.
I see prejudice and inflamatory misrepresentations. I want to know what park Jeff works/worked in and whether he is also part of the Retirees group. The pretended representation of all National Parks employees is a sham. The objections to bike use in the National Parks is a personal opinion backed by irrational assumptions with an agenda that all trails in National Parks should be in wilderness for JEFF AND HIS FRIENDS.
This proposal has taken the better part of a decade to reach a point of action. The real question which needs to be answered honestly by Jeff, a federal public employee, is: where can we have any bike trails in any National Parks? I suspect the real exclusive use is the hikers and Equestrian use in Our Parks. It is time to broaden the trail franchise. I also expect Jeff to come clean and admit he wants no bike trails in any National Park.
Matt and several of the Cape Hatteras ORV crew like to point to some documents that refer to their favorite place as "Cape Hatteras National Seashore Recreation Area" (or something similar, and use that as justification for why there should be increased off-road vehicle access. In any case, I'm thinking that the Organic Act still applies, and when there's an issue with the Endangered Species Act it will probably take precedence. Most "National Recreation Areas" are either urban lands with historic resources (Golden Gate, Gateway) or areas with dammed lakes and primarily water-based recreation (Lake Mead, Lake Powell, etc). At Golden Gate NRA there are access issues with regards to a threatened species.