I don't know where this article on Brown's Woods came from.  Most of it is
pretty accurate.

There is one major incorrect item in the article -- the last line of the
first paragraph.  The two miles of trails that were built through the
preserve were NOT for bicycles, they were for foot traffic.

Although Kirk Brill and his students were very involved in both efforts to
"save" Brown's Woods, Sierra Club, Des Moines Audubon, Izaak Walton League,
Sy Runkel, the Plymouth Congregational Church ecology group and others were
involved in the first effort, too.

In the second effort, Kirk brought his students again, but there were many
other concerned citizens who attended that night, too -- retired attorneys,
retired board of supervisors members, garden club members, Des Moines
Audubon, Central Iowa Sierra Group, reporters who had covered the first
round -- there were 300+ people who attended the hearing.  Kirk still lives
in the Des Moines area and has retired from teaching.

I was serving on the Polk County Conservation Board at the time and was
featured in a Duffy cartoon in the Des Moines Register.

I'd be interested to know the source of this article.

Jane Clark

>
> The Case of Brown's Woods
> _________________________
>
>        Brown's Woods, one of the last stands of native forest in central
Iowa (southwest of DesMoines), illustrates these issues. It was saved from
logging and development in 1972 by the S. E. Polk (High School) Ecology Club
and their sponsor, biology teacher, Kirk Brill, for which they won a
national award. Motorized vehicles were banned, "because of the threat they
posed to the environment and to persons walking there" (Wayne Bills, Polk
County Conservation Board (PCCB) Executive Director, 1972). The students
worked hard to earn money to build two miles of bike trails through the
preserve.

>        However mountain bikers illegally built 4 1/2 additional miles of
trail ("bikers have gouged more than six miles of trail, up to 30 feet wide
and a foot or more deep in spots" (Loren Lown, PCCB Natural Resources
Specialist, 1996)). Wildlife were disappearing, elderly hikers were driven
out, and vegetation was destroyed. "Already the bikers have caused permanent
irreparable damage to this pristine area" (Ben Van Gundy, PCCB Director). It
was called "ecological vandalism". Last year, once again, Brill and his
students were forced to campaign to save the preserve, this time from
mountain bikers, and won, getting a unanimous vote of the PCCB for a "total
and permanent ban on the use of mountain bikes" in Brown's Woods.
>

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