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Green Ally Learns It Bicycles With Wolves

 by John G. Lankford

Providents News Service

September 7. 2002

    Senator Barbara Boxer (D Ca) this past summer cold-shouldered mountain bicyclists and usual environmentalist allies seeking exceptions to her California Wild Heritage bill. Mountain bicycling interest groups the International Mountain Bicyclists Association and the Warriors Society, IMBA's southern California affiliate, charge Boxer's staff concocted an ersatz group to quote in unqualified support of the bill, expecting many would think it speaks for most devotees of the sport.

Both groups oppose the bill in its current form. The come-lately organization also misrepresented the IMBA's own position, the established groups contend, and Boxer posted the misstatements on her senatorial website..

    The abruptly shunned IMBA supports the thrust of Boxer's California Wild Heritage (Wilderness) bill (S 2535), but wants it adjusted so bicyclists will not be excluded from a number of their favorite trails by Wilderness designations the bill would impose on 2.5 million acres of federal lands in California. All mechanical vehicles, including mountain bicycles, are barred from areas designated as Wilderness.

    The Warriors Society, the IMBA southern California affiliate, is charging that Boxer's staff during the summer helped form Mountain Bicyclists For Wilderness (www.MB4W.org) to make it appear cyclists support the bill despite its denying them access to many trails.

    IMBA Advocacy Director Jenn Dice agreed with the Warriors charge, saying, "Mountain Bikers for Wilderness is just a group Boxer and the California Wild Heritage Campaign put together. They aren't a club, just a collection of names."

On July 30, MB4W displayed on its website a letter to Senator Boxer supporting the bill and claiming several "chapter presidents" of IMBA agree. The same day, the group issued a press release announcing the letter.

    On her senatorial website sub page "Boxer Bills" (http://boxer.senate.gov/senate/b_2535.html), headlined by the Wild Heritage bill, Boxer posted the press release under the headline, "Mountain Bikers Announce Support of California Wild Heritage Act." "As anyone who is familiar with IMBA knows," fumed Warriors Society Executive Director Chris Vargas in a

club action alert, "IMBA does not have 'chapters,' they have affiliated clubs. There's no such thing as an IMBA 'chapter.'"

The clubs don't support the wilderness bill," Vargas said, adding. "How do I know? The presidents of these 'IMBA chapters,' I mean clubs, are members of the Warrior's Society."

    "That is fine and done all the time in political campaigns," Dice commented.  But Vargas termed it "corrupt tactics" and "an attempt to deceive the mountain bike community as well as the general public."

    Introducing her bill May 21, Boxer told the Senate, "While wilderness designation means the wilderness areas are closed to mountain bikers, they remain open to a myriad of recreational activities, including: horseback riding, fishing, hiking, backpacking, rock climbing, cross country skiing, and canoeing." It is the canoeing, or, specifically, kayaking enthusiasts Vargas claims compose most of the Mountain Bikers for Wilderness organization. "The group claims to be mountain bikers, but they are actually rafters and kayakers that want the Wild and Scenic Rivers designations passed," Vargas' action alert said.

    "We found this out by the meta tags in their web page html code ... References to paddling were in these codes," Vargas wrote. He said Warriors researchers found connections with kayaking for some listed MB4W organizers on Internet search engines.

    The Wild and Scenic Rivers designations would stop hydroelectric damming projects proposed for the North Fork Feather River, one of the kayakers' favored runs, Vargas explained. Boxer's bill would place the Wild and Scenic designation on portions of 22 California rivers. MB4W's letter to Boxer included the reminder, "let's not forget the free-flowing rivers, clean water and biodiversity these areas offer." "Mountain bikers and motorized vehicles have 100,000 miles of road and trails in California that are not touched in my bill," Boxer said in her May 21 Senate speech.

    "California already has over 100,000 miles of roads and trails that we can access on our bikes," MB4W's July 30 letter stated. "We support S 2535, the recently introduced California Wild Heritage Act of 2002, and hope that you will

support it as well," the group's letter told Boxer, who had introduced it, adding, "We request you, likewise, to support this piece of landmark legislation that honors one of the most unique characteristics of California: our wild heritage."

    IMBA and the Warriors have withheld support of the bill pending further amendment. The two organizations tried unsuccessfully to avert a resolution passed by both houses of the California legislature August 29, Vargas said, "The vote was along party lines and the Democrats being the majority won." Democrats control both houses of the state legislature, and the California Democratic Party has endorsed the bill as written.

    Both the Warriors and the IMBA through Director Jim Hasenhauer urged the resolution be rejected. Boxer's senatorial website promptly announced the resolution's adoption and thanked legislative floor leaders for steering it to passage.

The tactical target of the resolution is California Senator Diane Feinstein, who sits on the Senate Resources Committee to which Boxer's bill has been referred. Feinstein has taken no public position on it, but was the only Democrat to join New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici's "Save Our Forests" pre-August-recess press conference advocating relaxation of environmental obstacles to mechanical cleaning, involving logging, of national forests to reduce forest fire risk and intensity.

    Prior to the bill's May 21 introduction, Boxer's staff held extensive hearings with various interest groups statewide. During that period, borderlines were adjusted to take some mountain bikers' favored trails out of Wilderness areas. Those planned for inclusion in politically sensitive Orange County were excluded. But the IMBA and the Warriors maintain too many popular trails would be closed to their members in the bill's present form. Both groups propose more Wilderness boundary lines be adjusted in some areas and that the hard-line Wilderness designation be modified to permit mountain bicycling on trails included in Wilderness areas.

    The MB4W entity's press release and the fact some trails were excluded from Wilderness-designated areas as a result of pre-introduction negotiations induced widely-read outdoors columnist Tom Stienstra to report mountain bikers had scored a "coup" and four IMBA "chapters" (as the MB4W release states) had joined in unqualified support of the bill. But the group most prominently named, MB4W, did not exist while IMBA was negotiating with Boxer and other interest groups.

    "The four IMBA clubs that are identified as chapters (minor misstatement) endorsed proposed wilderness in their areas after negotiating bicyclist priorities. They did not endorse the bill (major misstatement)," Hasenhauer wrote in response to questions on the column published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The world wide Boulder, Colorado-headquartered IMBA and the southern California Warriors Society take different positions on exactly how their members should be accommodated. The Warriors generally favor access to some or most trails not only for mountain bicyclists, but also for some motorized offroad vehicles. All-terrain and four-wheel-drive groups

usually make the point that excluding all motorized vehicles excludes the physically challenged and the elderly from sharing in enjoyment of deep-wilderness vistas.

    The IMBA, however, indicates mountain bicycles, being unmotorized, should be allowed access with hikers and horseback riders where motor vehicles are excluded. Alerting its members to comment on a Bureau of Land Management review of mountain biking regulations affecting over 200 million acres of public lands, IMBA urges its members to stress the distinction between muscle-powered and engine-powered sports. IMBA also supports Wilderness provisions that exclude all logging and mining.

    But such provisions are normally interpreted to prohibit mechanical cleaning of forests and private wood gathering, sometimes single-operator, single-pit pick-and-shovel mining on registered claims, and even so-called rock hound amateur geologists' sample collecting. Where such activities are not prohibited outright, no-win operating plans or other paperwork burdens may be imposed, or, in many cases, access roads on public lands are closed, choking off such activities even on hobbyist scales.

    The Boxer bill appears destined for conflict with the Healthy Forests Initiative announced by President Bush in August, as well as other pending and yet-to-be-introduced bills aimed at general reviews of environmental policy. In an alert letter to Warriors Society members, Vargas warned against divide-and-conquer tactics used by environmentalists to deny outdoor recreation enthusiasts access to public lands class by class.

    In south Florida, hunters recruited to help environmentalists achieve public acquisition of Addition Lands expanding the Big Cypress National Preserve subsequently found their erstwhile allies trying to exclude them from the terrain. "Wilderness advocates will not rest until they get all the designations they originally wanted, if not now, in the future," Vargas warned. "Whether an area qualifies for wilderness or not, they will seek this designation to the detriment of sound forest policy and at the expense of our ability to prevent the fires devastating our forests - as well as the recreational access of the public." 

Mr. Lankford can be reached at jglankford@yahoo.com 

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. [Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml]

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