THE SIERRA Club worked out a compromise with
Mountain-bikers 7 years ago called the Park ciy
Agreement which lays out where the Sierra Club thinks
Mountain-biking is appropriate. There is now a
proposal before the Board of Directors to change this
poicy and to adopt the same standards that the Sierra
Club reccommends for OffRoad Vehicles(ORV's) i.e.
limit them to double track trails.
The following came up in the discussion:
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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