Coronado National Forest officials are preparing a land evaluation report that, if approved, would designate thousands of acres of land around the Santa Catalina mountains as wilderness land. That designation would prohibit mountain bikers from riding on trails in the area.
Heidi Schewel the Coronado National Forest spokesperson said they try to balance the way national forest land is used.
“There are members of the public who like to do a lot of different things on national forest land that are all acceptable,” Schewel said. “Biking, mountain biking, hiking, shooting, fishing, bird watching — be it what it may, there are a lot of diverse interests that can often compete for use of the national forest.”
Sonoran Desert Mountain Bicyclists president Zach MacDonald said his group isn’t against wilderness designations, but wants to ensure the existing mountain bike trails would remain open.
According to MacDonald, concessions have been made in other states to keep trails open for mountain bikers.
“There have been some really good successes in Washington where they put in a wilderness,” MacDonald said. “Basically they had planned to make one big wilderness and what they ended up doing was creating two wildernesses with a corridor through the middle that followed the route of an existing mountain bike trail.”
Josh Zollinger, who emailed me about the designation, said it was particularly concerning because based on the draft proposals available online, it would eliminate most of the single-track trails from the base of Mt. Lemmon to the summit.
“The East Catalina wilderness proposal looks like it would place one of the most popular Lemmon routes out of bounds,” Zollinger wrote. “Really it is a collection of trails: Crystal Spring Trail, Butterfly Trail, Bigelow, Green Mountain Trail and Bug Spring Trail. This collection is the only single-track route down the south-east side, vaguely shadowing Catalina Highway.”
Schewel said the land-use planners in the Forest Service are looking for feedback about the proposed wilderness areas. She said it was important to explain why or why not you wanted the land to be designated as wilderness.
MacDonald said the SDMB is writing letters to Congress to make sure they know mountain bikers are primary users of the area and ensure the trails remain open to them.
“The thing that is interesting to me on these draft proposals as far as primary users, they list hikers and sporadic camping or something like that,” MacDonald said. “They don’t list mountain bikers as a primary user and they are wrong. They are missing the boat because, especially in the summer time on any weekend we are definitely a primary user.”
MacDonald said he is concerned about the proposals, but thinks they will be able to work it out.
We’ve had some good discussion with the forest service and they are very receptive and very open,” MacDonald said. “The local land managers are very supportive of mountain bike issues. I’ll expect we’ll work though it, but part of it is probably on a bigger scale on a national level where we have got to let them know we are a primary user group.”
The Forest Service is requesting you send your comments here:
Phone: Erin Boyle, Assistant Forest Planner, (520) 388-8300
Fax: (520) 388-8305
E-Mail: coronado-plan@fs.fed.us
Mail: Coronado National Forest
Plan Revision Team
300 W Congress
Tucson, AZ 85701
The mountain-bike community is hoping other cyclists will lend their support and let the Forest Service know that it is critical to keep the trails open to mountain bikes.
Thanks to “E” for the clarification in the comment section.
Other resources:
More about wilderness designations here
Download the draft letter SDMB will be sending to congress members
Here is where I part company with my mountain-biker brethren. There are literally hundreds of thousands of miles of available trail and road networks on the 300 million acres of public land in America available to them.
Not too long ago there were bighorn sheep on Mt. Lemmon. No longer — thanks to people.
One other thing: the Forest Service does not “designate” wilderness. Only Congress does that. The Forest Service simply makes land allocations until Congress makes a decision.
True that. However, the Catalinas offer a significant amount of single-track available to bikes in the Tucson metro-area (pop approx 1 million people). To have those miles eliminated would put an undue strain on the remaining Pima County park trails.
The more miles available to all recreational users minimizes user conflict.
The trails that would be affected if these areas were designated as wilderness areas have been utilized by cyclists pretty much since the time the first mountain bike hit the Old Pueblo, why cut access to this user group now?
@E, I agree that the loss of bighorn sheep habitat is tragic, but I would say that encouraging folks to get outside & into nature, doing any activity, does more to promote environmental awareness than blocking use to all but a few user groups does.
Okay. Cede the Catalinas to the greedy mountain bike boyzzz. They may be happy with that and leave the Santa Ritas and the other sky islands alone…
For a while…
I can’t afford to vacation permanently and ride on the 300 million acres of public land scattered across the U.S. I CAN ride on what is available to me locally. It truly is tragic about the loss of bighorn sheep, but why lay that on mountain bikers’ shoulders? I’d say that has more to do with our exploding population in general, and not what hobby some of those folks choose to do. I agree with Josh that promoting outdoor activities such as hiking and mountain biking do a lot more good for the environmental cause, than harm.
@ Red Star. Why the hate brother? No one’s saying cede the whole Catalina’s to us “greedy” mountain bikers, just don’t add more. Mountain bikers are hardly “greedy”. Where were you when 30+ MOUNTAIN BIKERS volunteered a full Saturday to repair trail damage to Bugs Spring that is just one of the targeted trails? Most of us
Bighorn in the Catalinas have been in decline since the 20’s; how long has mountain biking been around? It’s obviously not just mountain bikers who affect the Bighorn population.
If you want to point fingers at any group that is more greedy than others, I’d say equestrians. On most trails, cyclists and hikers are expected to yield to them, AND they leave huge loads of horse shit all over the fucking place. If my dogs drop a deuce when I take them for a walk around the neighbourhood, I clean that shit up – and my neighbourhood streets aren’t nearly as pretty as a desert trail. Of course, I could be wrong – I’m sure most equestrians are nice people and they’re probably proactive in environmental doings – who knows. Fuck yeah trails. If the world’s gonna end in 2012, we may as well live this shit up now.
No one is asking for the wilderness designation for the entire forest to be denied. Just move the boundaries a bit. It makes no sense that a trail can be ‘in’ wilderness that runs within 1/2 mile of a paved highway with a few thousand cars a weekend traveling along it. When you start designating everything wilderness it detracts from true wilderness.
I am not blaming the loss of bighorn on mountain bikers, I am blaming the loss on people who put their own petty recreational desires in front of preserving incredibly unique and special and irreplaceable things that were put on earth by God. The choice is not the Catalinas or nothing. It’s just a matter of being an adult and realizing that sometimes you don’t get to play wherever you want to.
Wilderness is not a designation for a particular special interest. Too often it gets portrayed (usually by the Forest Service, who should know better) as something for hikers only, as an elitist thing. It’s not. (N.B.: Read the Wilderness Act before flaming me on that point, or you will end up looking dumb.) It’s a designation to preserve to the extent possible what is unique and grand and important in the natural world. If you really want to go there, you can, but you have to do it on foot and it might not be all that easy to get to. That’s life. Suck it up, brother.
Tucson mountain bikers crack me up when they say things like how they can’t “afford” to go on vacation full-time (WTF? Did somebody say you need to?) and enjoy all the other places they can ride their bikes, so therefore we need to keep their particular favorite trails open to them. Dude, just point your bike in a different direction and have fun. Tucson is surrounded, literally surrounded, by federal public lands.
And finally, good grief, listen to yourselves. “I volunteered an entire Saturday, so now give me my trail.” “Fuck yeah, trails, the world is gonna end so live this shit up now.” “There are so many of us that if you don’t give us what we want then we can be trusted to mess up whatever is left.” “If you designate this as wilderness it will make all the other wilderness areas look bad.”
And then you have the nerve to boast about how being outside in the wilderness has made you and your friends more environmentally sensitive. Mmmhmmm. Party on dudes, momma will get to your diapers any minute now.
I was being facetious on purpose, to lighten the mood. I try not to take any of it too serious. The “world is ending” statement, in particular, was especially a joke (I don’t personally believe the 2012 theory).
I imagine a lot of other species of plants and animals that were here before we came along were displaced by ALL of the trails and paved roads in and around Tucson. Should we all feel guilty about it and stop using them (trails AND roads)? I’m not proud of the environmental impact humans have on the world, but am I losing sleep over it? Not really. In order for us to coexist in a way that unique, special, and irreplaceable things would not be displaced, we’d all have to live like monks. Not for me, and I can tell it’s not for you, either, as you obviously have the use of a computer to post here.
I don’t personally ride Lemmon trails often, but I’d like to be able to when I want to. I’m not an environmental scientist, but I can’t imagine that a few trails that are open to mountain bikers would destroy the ecosystem in the Catalinas.
Where’s mommy?! I think I just shit my diapers!!
Good story for the Mtn bikers: A Great Ride:Mike and I and the $100,000 cup of coffee
Mountain bikers love open space as much as any outdoor recreational user – this much we know.
We will speak up when favorite trails are proposed “Wilderness” because bikes are not allowed, but MTB-ers like “wilderness”, aka open space protected from development, mining, etc., etc. We will support the land designations that keep bikes on the trails and keep open space open.
I’m not sure if there is any place in the Catalinas – definitely not in the front range – that offers a true “wilderness” experience due to city noise and light pollution.
I think the degree of distinction between
“outdoors” and “wilderness” is hard for
people to agree on. The ‘use-or-abuse’
argument can’t be made without all
involved understanding the ideas held by
the likes of Leopold and Abbey. Although it
is possible, mountain bikers in general seem
to have a problem with the discipline required
by the ‘tread-lightly’ philosophy.
Wilderness recreation is not consistant with
current-day ‘push-it-to-the-max’ advocacy of
mountain bike producers.
@ Coghauler. Please don’t “generalize” mtn bikers as terrain tearing up holigans by saying we don’t have the discipline to “tread-lightly”. There are always those few who either don’t know or don’t care about the trails to not tear them up. The actual footprint of a mtn. bike tire on the trail is negliable. If you want talk about “treading lightly” look to horses for creating/increasing ruts on your favorite multi-use trail.
@ E. The point of mtn. biking is to be off road, not spinning the same trails every trip. How would you like to be forced to hike the same limited trails? Mountain biker’s volunteering their time show’s we as a community have a vested interest in the quality/preservation of our trails. Your cursing/rant proves your true menatlity.
Bighorn in the Catalinas have been in decline since the 20’s; how long has mountain biking been around? It’s obviously not just mountain bikers who affect the Bighorn population.
If you want to point fingers at any group that is more greedy than others, I’d say equestrians. On most trails, cyclists and hikers are expected to yield to them, AND they leave huge loads of horse shit all over the fucking place. If my dogs drop a deuce when I take them for a walk around the neighbourhood, I clean that shit up – and my neighbourhood streets aren’t nearly as pretty as a desert trail. Of course, I could be wrong – I’m sure most equestrians are nice people and they’re probably proactive in environmental doings – who knows. Fuck yeah trails. If the world’s gonna end in 2012, we may as well live this shit up now.
I have to echo DeepVI’s comments. E, Coghauler…Please don’t trivilaize our effort or mentality. I know that many of mountain bikers are conflicted with this issue because many of us do not want to be considered “anti-wilderness”. The vast majority of us mountain bikers are mature, thoughtful individuals who have spent a great number of years honing our tread-lightly technique, as well as trying to be mindful ambassadors of our activity. This is not a “you’re either part of the problem or part of solution” issue…there is a lot of nuance that needs to be taken into consideration.
All of us know that if we tear up the trails…there won’t be any trails to come back to. Those of us who don’t respect this axiom will, at some point, be “educated” by the wiser members of that specific group.
I think the degree of distinction between
“outdoors” and “wilderness” is hard for
people to agree on. The ‘use-or-abuse’
argument can’t be made without all
involved understanding the ideas held by
the likes of Leopold and Abbey. Although it
is possible, mountain bikers in general seem
to have a problem with the discipline required
by the ‘tread-lightly’ philosophy.
Wilderness recreation is not consistant with
current-day ‘push-it-to-the-max’ advocacy of
mountain bike producers.
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