cheryl
Administrator
Staff member
Traveling Fast and Silent: Mountain Biking With Grizzly Bears - Counter Punch
The impacts of mountain bikers on wildlands and wildlife is at the center of a heated nation-wide debate fueled by increasing numbers of increasingly well-organized bikers intent on gaining access to backcountry areas. There is no better example of the contentious debate between mountain bikers and wilderness advocates than in deliberations over how to manage remaining roadless areas on the Custer-Gallatin National Forest in Montana. Proponents of mountain-biking feature rights and equity in a rhetoric that unambiguously places ego front and center. Opponents feature moral imperatives to protect intrinsic values as well as irreplaceable wildlands for future generations.
Debates such as this one arising from fundamentally different ethical stances—even visceral impulses—are rarely resolved through the invocation of evidence. Under such circumstances most people selectively promote or disregard information in service of ideological purposes. Even so, I remain incurably optimistic about the prospects for empiricism.
The impacts of mountain bikers on wildlands and wildlife is at the center of a heated nation-wide debate fueled by increasing numbers of increasingly well-organized bikers intent on gaining access to backcountry areas. There is no better example of the contentious debate between mountain bikers and wilderness advocates than in deliberations over how to manage remaining roadless areas on the Custer-Gallatin National Forest in Montana. Proponents of mountain-biking feature rights and equity in a rhetoric that unambiguously places ego front and center. Opponents feature moral imperatives to protect intrinsic values as well as irreplaceable wildlands for future generations.
Debates such as this one arising from fundamentally different ethical stances—even visceral impulses—are rarely resolved through the invocation of evidence. Under such circumstances most people selectively promote or disregard information in service of ideological purposes. Even so, I remain incurably optimistic about the prospects for empiricism.