Mountain Bikers and Grizzly Bears

[HenryA]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/s...nal-parks.html

Worth thinking about.

[Dino Suegiù]

Do not recreate in the woods where bears defecate.

[merlinmurph]

Originally Posted by Dino Suegiù

Do not recreate in the woods where bears defecate.

In other words, don't go in the woods - period.
Seriously?

[Dino Suegiù]

Originally Posted by merlinmurph

In other words, don't go in the woods - period.
Seriously?

I think your humor/irony meter might need a little re-calibrating I think.

But yes, in my opinion it is just fine to not go mtbing/etc in a known and active grizzly bear habitat. As in, one might also decide that one does not have to go "convert" some isolated islanders off of Japan. Etc. Etc. There are plenty of other destinations to get one's rocks off, in both/all cases. Ymmv.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9M2rXKC5jY

[azrider]

Originally Posted by HenryA

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/s...nal-parks.html

Worth thinking about.

[daker13]

I read that article. The first thing that struck me was the statement that the guy who died was riding "about 25 mph" when he ran into a bear... I thought that seemed awful fast for a mtb'er who wasn't blasting down a descent. But then there was another reference to that speed later in the article. I wonder if it was lifted from his computer or something? A little disturbing that the NYT is giving its readers the impression that mountain bikers typically ride at 25 mph .

There always has to be a 'trend' for the NYT to write about it, and sometimes the trends the writers find are pretty thin. Personally, I thought that was yet another article singling out mountain bikers (which I rarely do anymore, btw) for their effects on wildlife/the backcountry without much to back it up.

[Ronsonic]

Originally Posted by daker13

I read that article. The first thing that struck me was the statement that the guy who died was riding "about 25 mph" when he ran into a bear... I thought that seemed awful fast for a mtb'er who wasn't blasting down a descent. But then there was another reference to that speed later in the article. I wonder if it was lifted from his computer or something? A little disturbing that the NYT is giving its readers the impression that mountain bikers typically ride at 25 mph .

There always has to be a 'trend' for the NYT to write about it, and sometimes the trends the writers find are pretty thin. Personally, I thought that was yet another article singling out mountain bikers (which I rarely do anymore, btw) for their effects on wildlife/the backcountry without much to back it up.

If you haven't noticed by now the NYT is basically crap, let me help.

The whole paper is like that. ALL of it.

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

― Michael Crichton

[Louis]

Originally Posted by Ronsonic

If you haven't noticed by now the NYT is basically crap, let me help.

The whole paper is like that. ALL of it.

Oh please.

I have a lot more to say, but don't want to turn this thread into a political pissing match, so I'll leave it at that.

[billspreston]

A witness couldn’t see what happened but could hear it. “I heard a thud and an ‘argh,’” the unnamed witness told investigators. Then the bear made a noise “like it was hurt.” The bear disappeared before emergency responders arrived.

A few paragraphs later...

“The bear apparently had no time to move to avoid the collision. At a speed of 20-25 miles per hour, there were only one-to-two seconds between rounding the curve, the victim seeing the bear in the trail and impacting the bear.”

So... they were able to determine all this because a guy heard a bear made a noise "like it was hurt"?

Too scientific for me.

[colker]

Originally Posted by Ronsonic

If you haven't noticed by now the NYT is basically crap, let me help.

The whole paper is like that. ALL of it.

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

― Michael Crichton

Well... i think most of the press bashing in recent years is backwards. It´s readers who don´t know to read or too lazy as readers. Every paper has it´s view and opinon. As long as it does not twist the fact it´s doing the good thing no matter how much you disagree w/ the opinion.
You disagree on the views presented in this feature? Go ahead and make your point. Just telling us the NYT is bad or the press is bad sounds like something else and not criticsm.
We are living in dark times; people rather have opinions they like no matter how facts are ignored.

[HenryA]

The part I found bothersome is the look of an underlying opinion that indeed people using the resource are the problem and in this particular case MTB riders. It feels like an argument to close off certain areas to recreation. Sometimes that is a good idea for man and beast alike, but not as the first knee jerk reaction to a perceived problem. It appears that the underlying message or agenda of the article is to provide evidence to support more restriction.

IMO, a resource that goes unused often goes unloved. People who use these places care about them in a personal way lots more than those who don’t. So there is a balancing act between use and preservation. Lots of that balancing act occurs in siloed decision making trains that seem to not acknowledge each other’s validity.

A bear attack is sensational news, but its not a reason to close use of an area, whether as an immediate reaction or a long term policy. “Bad cases make bad laws” seems to fit here. If the energy spent in all the hand wringing and fighting was spent educating the people who use or might use the resources we’d be better off.

[Blue Jays]

Originally Posted by HenryA

"...The part I found bothersome is the look of an underlying opinion that indeed people using the resource are the problem and in this particular case MTB riders...IMO, a resource that goes unused often goes unloved..."

Concur. This entire post is absolutely spot-on correct.
Many of us have seen MTB restrictions in multi-use places result in less maintenance to the point of total land mismanagement.

[Kirk007]

Originally Posted by Blue Jays

Concur. This entire post is absolutely spot-on correct.
Many of us have seen MTB restrictions in multi-use places result in less maintenance to the point of total land mismanagement.

Sure there are mountain bike haters that want closure, and some hikers want areas closed to horses and on and on - easy to point to the other user group and say that they are the problem. But its not a black and white - open and used or closed and abandoned issue.

For starters, nature did just fine before human "management" for eons. Our management of nature typically screws things up. These areas aren't "wasting" if not put to "wise use" for humans, they serve critical functions for the rest of the biotic community on earth; we are but one of millions upon millions of species.

And yeah, some places should be closed to at least mechanized use with temporal restrictions. A good example: the shrinking habitat that provides winter denning conditions for wolverines should be closed to both mechanized (snowmobile) and human powered (backcountry skiing) recreation during the denning period. It is a modest restriction to protect an endangered species (despite USFW's political decision not to list it).

I imagine most folks are sympathetic to the plight of deer in winter who are chased by folks' dogs - a big no no in the hunting and dog community. Why? Because of the stress it puts on the animal at a time when it is already severely stressed by temperature and decreased food availability. Well guess what -- studies over the past decade show that even cross country skiiers can pose similar threats.

And there's valid ecological reasons to continue to keep mechanized recreation out of wilderness areas (indeed there are good reasons to clamp down on all recreation in these areas). There are simply too many people in many of these areas yet the recreation community chafes at permitting and use restrictions - the irony of not agreeing to limit access then going to a wilderness area seeking solace and being pissed off cause there's too many people everywhere you go.

Should you be able to go mountain biking in grizzly country? In general, in nonwilderness areas I think so, and if you're mountain biking in Montana or Idaho and parts of Wyoming you probably are all ready. I forget the citation to the study but there was one in the Glacier-Waterton area that compared GIS data for some hikers/researchers with GIS data for collared bears. Over a rather extended period of time the hikers were in very close proximity to a bear on a regular basis, yet never saw the bears. One takeaway is that despite very frequent proximity, actual encounters, let alone lethal ones are rare. Bears aren't out looking for a fight with humans, quite the contrary, but encounters happen.

A good friend of mine was on an early morning mountain bike ride on a forest service road in Alaska when he came around a corner and there was a griz about 30 yards away. He stopped. The bear bluff charged twice before turning around. He was lucky; he could have been the feature of this article.

Bears, and cougars, are out there; be prepared, make noise, carry bear spray, exercise common sense, consider staying out of grizzly territory at key time periods, like in June when bears are coming out of their dens after hibernation, hungry and cranky. And if you surprise a bear and it turns on you, don't blame the bear - your in its backyard.

[GregL]

Originally Posted by Kirk007

Bears, and cougars, are out there; be prepared, make noise, carry bear spray, exercise common sense, consider staying out of grizzly territory at key time periods, like in June when bears are coming out of their dens after hibernation, hungry and cranky. And if you surprise a bear and it turns on you, don't blame the bear - your in its backyard.

It's not just off-road riding. My closest bear encounter came on a road bike. I came around a corner at the end of a long, steep climb to find a black bear slowly ambling across the road. He looked at the skinny bike rider and decided there wasn't sufficient food to attract his attention. He just kept on going into the woods at a leisurely pace. On the other hand, I was so filled with adrenaline that my fatigue vanished and I was ready for the sprint of a lifetime...

Greg

[unterhausen]

Originally Posted by HenryA

IMO, a resource that goes unused often goes unloved. People who use these places care about them in a personal way lots more than those who don’t. So there is a balancing act between use and preservation.

This is why I support hunting. Nobody listens to mountain bikers and hikers, but they do listen to hunters. If people can't hunt, they'll support paving over the woods.
Penndot was looking into bringing a 4 lane highway into State College from the east and the main proposal had the road destroying a wildlife area and a lot of local hiking and some really great mountain bike trails. If those things still existed, there would be the sound of the Detroit river to enjoy, whereas now it's silent back there. It would have been a travesty. It was crazy even though I see the logic of the route from a simply geographic perspective.