Groups blast effort to allow bikes in wilderness

Fourteen outdoor and conservation organizations from Montana have joined a chorus of opposition to recent proposals to allow mountain bikes in wilderness areas.

Friends of the Wild Swan, Swan View Coalition and North Fork Preservation Association were among 116 groups nationwide to sign a letter sent to Congress on March 22. The letter blasts the Colorado-based Sustainable Trails Coalition’s efforts to introduce legislation that would allow bicycles in wilderness areas.

STC has introduced the Human-Powered Wildlands Travel Management Act of 2016. The bill aims to undo a 1984 blanket ban on bicycles in the wilderness and give local land managers more flexibility in deciding where bikes should be allowed. STC argues that Congress never intended to ban human-powered travel when it first created the Wilderness Act, but that land managers have since misinterpreted the law.

The letter of opposition says these claims are “simply not true.”

“The 1964 Wilderness Act banned all types of bicycles as well as other forms of mechanical transportation in designated wilderness,” the letter states.

The letter argues that for more than 50 years, the Wilderness Act “has protected wilderness areas designated by Congress from mechanization and mechanical transport, even if no motors were involved with such activities. This has meant, as Congress intended, that Wildernesses have been kept free from bicycles...”

“The undersigned believe that this protection has served our nation well, and that the ‘benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness’ would be forever lost by allowing mechanized transport in these areas.”

STC has partnered with a lobbying firm to boost its effort in finding a congressional sponsor for its bill.

Among some of their other goals, they hope to keep sections of the Continental Divide Trail open to cyclists, stop the creation of “recommended wilderness” areas where bikes are being limited, and allow the use of some modern equipment, such as wheelbarrows and chainsaws, to maintain trails in wilderness areas.

Local mountain bike advocacy group Flathead Fat Tires has said they stand behind STC’s efforts.