Fall of the wild: why pristine wilderness is a human-made myth

Re:Fall of the wild: why pristine wilderness is a human-made... by davidw on Friday September 13, 2024 @11:19AM (#41532032)

As someone who loves long, mellow rides on my mountain bike, I'm conflicted about Wilderness areas. I like the idea of protecting more land, but the idea that you can ride horses into a Wilderness area, shoot an elk and pack it out, but can't push a stroller in (because wheels) or ride a bike seems kind of odd in terms of the impactfulness of those activities.

I'd love it if things were mostly left up to local decision makers. Some trails aren't appropriate for bikes and that's fine, Wilderness area or no. Some trails within Wilderness areas would be no problem at all for bikes.

And tactically, maybe environmentalists would gain some allies if they weren't trying to push cyclists out.

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Re:Fall of the wild: why pristine wilderness is a human-made... by cruffle_duffle on Friday September 13, 2024 @11:48AM (#41532325)

And despite all that, the FAA can still route a large percentage of all air traffic on approach to a major international airport right over the top of the “wilderness area”.

Nothing like listening to few hours of planes on approach to SeaTac to spoil the whole “untrammeled by man” thing.

(Not that I have a good solution to this problem. Air traffic noise abatement involves a ton of tradeoffs)

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Re:Fall of the wild: why pristine wilderness is a human-made... by shawndrost on Friday September 13, 2024 @12:43PM (#41532870)

I too love biking in the woods. But I would oppose your specific policy prescription (leave it up to local decisionmakers) on the grounds that I would expect OHVs, loggers, etc to lobby against the aims of the current designation in small or big ways.

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Re:Fall of the wild: why pristine wilderness is a human-made... by davidw on Friday September 13, 2024 @01:45PM (#41533428)

I don't think it's really a slippery slope. It's easy to say "no motor-powered vehicles", including eBikes. A horse is far more destructive to trails than bikes are. Even "no bikes except where allowed" would probably be fair. You could ask decision makers to designate a few trails as ok.

It's very clear that Wilderness areas are not meant for commercial exploitation. I believe a few of them have grandfathered in grazing rights, perhaps to get them over the line politically, but that's about the extent of it and I would not expect that to change.

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