Mountain biking is inherently anti-environment, since : it is itself destructive. As hiking can be. However, I believe a trail can be maintained. As long as there is not OVERUSE, from any activity, the trail will not deteriorate. Overuse (related to overpopulation, which is the greatest threat to the environment), is the problem with trail destruction. The impact on wildlife is a separate, but obviously important, issue (see below). : This is a deliberate distortion of the truth. Bikers (but not bikes) are : allowed wherever hikes are allowed. Maybe if you would be honest, you : would get more respect
! Your sentence here implies that hiking in these areas is OK. But in other posts, you imply that ANY area that doesn’t have human development, you want NO human contact. Which is it going to be? I agree that certain areas should be set aside for wildlife, with little or no human contact. There should be more of these areas than there are today. However, where wildlife will not suffer from human contact (and I do believe there are such places on Earth, hiking, biking, …., should be allowed. I also agree that in _certain_ (NOT ALL) instances biking can have a greater impact than hiking on the environment (wildlife). Therefore, as the Park City agreement states and I agree with, biking should be restricted from sensitive (e.g. Wilderness) areas.
Why isthis such a difficult concept? If anything, in the bigger picture of things, encouraging biking in any form is beneficial to the environment. Many of the MTBers I know commute by bike to work, even though their original intent when buying the bike was off-road riding. I’d like to see more people get excited about biking, just to get more cars off the road. Biking is _still_ more enviro-friendly than even mass transit! I’ve avoided responding to your other posts, because frankly, your arguments are _very_ inconsistent. After reading literally tens of your posts, I still don’t have any idea what your “goal” is. In addition, as a SC member myself, I see your arguments as nothing more than inflammatory, and an embarassment. If you represent mainstream SC (and I don’t think you do, based on my friends that are SC members, and by reading the Park City agreement), I’ll turn in my membership today