On 7/15/2011 10:14 AM, Ronsonic wrote:

This whole conversation is absolutely bizarre to this Floridian. Here the
greatest threat to our wildlands and their flora and fauna are wild / feral
pigs. You can use an army of motorcycles to drive entire herds of horses
each dragging a mountain bike through our forests and marshes and it
wouldn't cause the damage these hogs do. Seriously. This is paper cuts to
chainsaws.

Well in many states, including California, they definitely have problems
with horses. It's not just the enormous trail damage (it's estimated
that one horse does more damage than 50 mountain bikes or 50 hikers),
but the mess, the smell, and the pollution. If we could buy each
equestrian a mountain bike to ride our parks would be much better off.

The problem with MV is that he hasn't studied any science because he
knows that the actual science totally contradicts his position. It's
called "argumentum ad ignorantiam" (argument from ignorance).

Every study shows that the impact of mountain bikers on erosion, plants,
and wildlife is less than or equal to the damage of hikers, and far less
than the damage of horses.

Mountain bikers move through an area quickly, minimizing the time that
they are disrupting wildlife, compared to hikers. Here's a similar
example: today we were kayaking in Elkhorn Slough near Monterey. One of
the volunteer docents that travels around by kayak asked us to move more
quickly through an area with sea otters (we were stopped watching them).
She said that to minimize the disruption to their activities it's better
to go through the area quickly. This is the same thing that mountain
bikers do.