Does mountain biking impact wildlife, any more than hikers and horseback riders do?
More specifically: could rapidly-growing numbers of cyclists in the backcountry of Greater Yellowstone negatively affect the most iconic species—grizzly bears—living in America’s best-known wildland ecosystem?
It’s a point of contention in the debate over how much of the Gallatin Mountains, managed by the U.S. Forest Service, should receive elevated protection under the 1964 Wilderness Act. The wildest core of the Gallatins, located just beyond Yellowstone National Park and extending northward toward Bozeman’s back door, is the 155,000-acre Buffalo-Porcupine Creek Wilderness Study Area.
Not only is the fate of the Gallatins considered a national conservation issue, considering its importance to the health of the ecosystem holding Yellowstone, but lines of disagreement have opened within the conservation community.
The Gallatin Forest Partnership, led by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, The Wilderness Society, Montana Wilderness Association and aligned with mountain biking groups, is seeking to have 102,000 acres protected as wilderness in the Gallatins, but it doesn’t include the Buffalo Horn-Porcupine.
Meanwhile, another group, Montanans for Gallatin Wilderness and its allies, want 230,000 acres elevated to wilderness status, especially the Buffalo Horn-Porcupine. Their proposal has attracted widespread support from prominent conservation biologists, retired land managers and well-known businesspeople and citizens across the country. They say they aren’t anti-mountain biking; rather, they are “pro-grizzly bear” and favor foresighted wildlife protection in an age of climate change, a rapidly-expanding human development footprint emanating from Bozeman and Big Sky, and rising levels of outdoor recreation.
One flashpoint playing out publicly has been an online forum called the Bozone Listerv, which functions essentially as a digital community bulletin board. There, cycling advocates have claimed that riding their bikes in grizzly country does not cause serious impacts—certainly none worse, they insist, than hikers, horseback riders and motorized recreationists.
If the Buffalo Horn-Porcupine has its status elevated from being a wilderness study area to full Capital “W” wilderness, motorized users, as well as mountain bikers, would be prohibited. However, illegal incursion and blazing of trails by motorized users and mountain bikers have already occurred in the wilderness study area with little enforcement coming from the Forest Service.
“So far I have only seen people who want mountain bikers to sacrifice and the assumption [is] that this will help wildlife,” wrote Adam Oliver, founder of the Southwest Montana Mountain Bike Association recently on the Bozone Listserv. “Show me the science, prove me wrong or be willing to give up something yourself.”
Photo: USFS
If Mr. Oliver desires to be shown the professional science relating to mountain bikes and concerns about grizzlies, he need only contact Dr. Christopher Servheen. Servheen, retired from government service, spent four decades at the helm of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Grizzly Bear Recovery Team in the West. He is an adjunct research professor in the Department of Ecosystem and Conservation Sciences at the University of Montana.
Servheen says that despite assertions by mountain bikers, the scientific evidence on impact is pretty clear based on human-bear incidents that have happened and thousands of hours of field observation and radio tracking of grizzlies.
“I do believe that mountain bikes are a grave threat to bears—both grizzly and black bears—for many reasons and these are detailed in the Treat report and recommendations,” Servheen told Mountain Journal. “High speed and quiet human activity in bear habitat is a grave threat to bear and human safety and certainly can displace bears from trails and along trails. Bikes also degrade the wilderness character of wild areas by mechanized travel at abnormal speeds.”
By “Treat report,” Servheen is referring to a multi-agency Board of Review investigation into the death of Brad Treat who was fatally mauled by a grizzly on June 29, 2016, after colliding with the bear at high speed near the town of East Glacier, just outside of Glacier National Park in Montana. Servheen chairs that board and others investigating fatal bear maulings.
Investigators surmised that Treat was traveling at between 20 and 25 miles an hour and rode into the grizzly around a sharp turn in the trail, leaving him only a second or two to respond. The bear then responded defensively, demonstrating no pattern of otherwise being aggressive and no interest in consuming Treat. Treat was not carrying bear spray, a gun or a cell phone.
•••
Mountain bikers often write on social media of how they enjoy getting hardy workouts over long distances which means they need to ride fast. Some also boast of their love for careening down steep trails.
Denial about impacts on wildlife is a common defensive response from mountain biking groups now pushing for the construction of more riding trails on public lands, seeking to reduce the size of areas being proposed for federal wilderness status, and even enlisting lawmakers to amend the federal Wilderness Act so they can gain more access to wild country.
Photo: Studio 7
Servheen and others have seen claims made by mountain bikers who try to suggest there is no scientific evidence they’re affecting wildlife. “Some selfish and self-centered mountain bikers are especially prone to this,” Servheen said. “The key factors of mountain biking that aggravate its impact on wildlife are high speed combined with quiet travel. These factors are exactly what we preach against when we tell people how to be safe when using bear habitat.”
For years, mountain biking advocates—as they did at a SHIFT outdoor recreation conference in Jackson Hole—have suggested it makes no difference whether one is riding in Moab and the Wasatch, the Sierras, Colorado Rockies or northern Rockies. Impacts to wildlife, they insist, are nominal.
None of those other areas possess the same level of large mammal diversity Greater Yellowstone does and, save for the Crown of the Continent/Continental Divide Ecosystem in northern Montana, they don’t have grizzlies, considered an umbrella species for a long list of other animals.
According to Servheen and others, capital “W” wilderness areas are biologically important for bears because they are notably different from the busy pace of human uses found on public lands managed for multiple uses. Wilderness does accommodate recreation but the emphasis is on users moving at slow speed.
“Wild public lands that currently have grizzly bears present have those bears because of the characteristics of these places: visual cover, secure habitat, natural foods, and spring, summer, fall, and denning habitat,” Servheen said. “All these factors can be compromised by excessive human presence, high speed and high encounter frequencies with humans. To compare places without bears, like Utah, to places with bears, like Yellowstone or all the wilderness areas with bears, is a flawed comparison.”
Sharing the Board of Review’s findings and other scientific analyses, Servheen said, “I see mountain bikes as a threat to human and bear safety in grizzly and black bear habitat and as an unnecessary disturbance in wilderness and roadless areas.”
As part of its forest planning process which will guide management for a human generation, Custer-Gallatin officials will be compiling public comments about differing options being advanced for protecting the Gallatin Range and other parts of the forest as wilderness.
Observers note that should Gallatin managers choose to “release” wilderness study areas for motorized recreation or mountain biking (and the growing controversy over e-bikes) those lands will be disqualified from Wilderness designation in the future.
Photo: Margaret Donoghue
That’s why, given growing population pressure, proponents of more wilderness say the Custer-Gallatin needs to think proactively, anticipating the fact that habitat for grizzlies will shrink and become ever-more fragmented by rising intensity of recreational use. Further, once a use is established, it is extremely difficult to reel it back in. By the time wildlife field personnel realize that grizzlies are being displaced, it can often be too late.
•••
Bear biologists say that because hiking and horseback riding happens at slower plodding speeds, such behavior is more predictable for grizzlies. Both mountain bikers and motorized users increase the likelihood of surprising bears and the fact that riders are focused on the trail, to avoid hitting a boulder or colliding with a tree, they are not as attentive. It’s the growing numbers of mountain bikers overall, and the volume of riders on any given day, that concerns Servheen.
To show how fast mountain biking has emerged as user entity, reference the voluminous document titled “Forest Plan Amendment for Grizzly Bear Conservation in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem” released in 2006. The plan pertains to all of the national forests in the Greater Yellowstone region and highlights changes necessary to solidify grizzly conservation in advance of them being removed from federal protection under the Endangered Species Act.
The document contains hundreds of thousands of words but “bike” is mentioned just twice. Today, mountain biking may be the fastest growing outdoor recreation pastime in Greater Yellowstone and forest supervisors, as a whole, admit they don’t know what the impacts are on wildlife now and, most importantly, what they will be in the future.
Ten years after the document mentioned, above, was released, the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee released its “Conservation Strategy for the Grizzly Bear in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.” In that document, the importance of “secure habitat” in the core of the ecosystem, which includes roadless stretches of the Gallatin Range, was spelled out:
“History has demonstrated that grizzly bear populations survived where frequencies of contact with humans were very low. Populations of grizzly bears persisted in those areas where large expanses of relatively secure habitat were retained and where human-caused mortality was low,” it states. “In the GYE, this is primarily associated with national park lands, wilderness areas, and large blocks of public lands. Habitat security requires minimizing mortality risk and displacement from human activities in a sufficient amount of habitat to allow the population to benefit from this secure habitat and respond with increasing numbers and distribution.”
Mountain bikers already have hundreds of miles’ worth of trail riding options within a relatively short driving distance from Bozeman and Big Sky on public and private lands, including over 50 miles of trail at Big Sky Resort and the Yellowstone Club. Ecoystemwide, they have thousands of miles if old logging roads and motorized trails are included.
Photo: Vincent Van Zalinge
Wildlife, however, does not have such a range of options. Grizzly bears fare better in solitude and they settle where necessity bring them. Besides bruins, some elk calving areas are many generations old—places where mothers, who were taught by their mothers, and so on, go to calf and raise their young where they are less likely to encounter human disturbance.
“There are two main impacts of roads and trails on bears: displacement and increased mortality risk,” Servheen explains. “These impacts occur with both motorized and non-motorized access. As human use increases, the importance of areas where there is little or rare use by humans increases. If recreation increases to the point that bears have few secure places to be, then there can be many complex impacts.”
Servheen cited the example of adult male bears seeking and using the most secure backcountry areas thereby forcing females with offspring into areas closer to humans and human disturbance as they try to avoid the adult males.
That’s, in fact, precisely what happened with famed Jackson Hole Grizzly 399 whose first cub was likely killed by a large male bear a decade and a half ago. She then moved from the backcountry of the Bridger-Teton and Grand Teton National Park to riskier roadside area to raise broods of cubs.
“Fortunately, we have yet to get to the point of extreme displacement in most areas of grizzly habitat, but it certainly is possible if human use continues to increase in important bear habitat,” Servheen explains.
The point is not having human uses of backcountry areas proliferate to the point where that happens. In the past, it was documented that old logging roads were linked to higher levels of elicit killing of grizzlies because they provided easy access. That’s not Servheen’s worry with recreation trails.
“As for poaching, I define poaching as intentional vandal killing of bears. I doubt that increased human use will result in more poaching but it could result in more self-defense kills of bears as bears are surprised and perhaps defensive in more remote areas, he said. “I worry less about direct deaths than I do about continual displacement and stress on bears trying to avoid humans wherever they go.”
•••
A dozen years ago, in 2007, Jeff Marion and Jeremy Wimpey published an assessment, “Environmental Impacts of Mountain Biking: Science Review and Best Practices.” Most of the review focused on such things as soil erosion and minimizing conflicts with other users. Notably, it was published as a companion to IMBA’s widely-circulated how-to book on trail building titled “Trail Solutions.”
While no mention was made of grizzly bears—in fact, just two viable grizzly populations exist in the Lower 48—Servheen speaks favorably of Marion’s and Wimpey’s recitation of the science.
“Trails and trail uses can also affect wildlife. Trails may degrade or fragment wildlife habitat, and can also alter the activities of nearby animals, causing avoidance behavior in some and food-related attraction behavior in others. While most forms of trail impact are limited to a narrow trail corridor, disturbance of wildlife can extend considerably further into natural landscapes.”
They went on, “The opposite conduct in wildlife— avoidance behavior —can be equally problematic. Avoidance behavior is generally an innate response that is magnified by visitor behaviors perceived as threatening, such as loud sounds, off-trail travel, travel in the direction of wildlife, and sudden movements. When animals flee from disturbance by trail users, they often expend precious energy, which is particularly dangerous for them in winter months when food is scarce. When animals move away from a disturbance, they leave preferred or prime habitat and move, either permanently or temporarily, to secondary habitat that may not meet their needs for food, water, or cover. Visitors and land managers, however, are often unaware of such impacts, because animals often flee before humans are aware of the presence of wildlife.”
Thus, here is a contraction: mountain bikers are told to make noise in order to alert bears of their presence and yet making noise, particularly if it involves people over a long period of time, might displace grizzlies from habitat.
•••
The Board of Review report examining Treat’s death states, “There is a long record of human-bear conflicts associated with mountain biking in bear habitat including the serious injuries and deaths suffered by bike riders. Both grizzly bears and black bears have been involved in these conflicts with mountain bikers,” the authors wrote then drew the following comparison between prime grizzly areas around Yellowstone and the Canadian Rockies near Banff National Park.
“Safety issues related to grizzly bear attacks on trail users in Banff National Park prompted Herrero to study the Moraine Lake Highline Trail. Park staff noted that hikers were far more numerous than mountain bikers on the trail, but that the number of encounters between bikers and bears was disproportionately high….Previous research had shown that grizzly bears are more likely to attack when they first become aware of a human presence at distances of less than 50 meters. Herrero…concluded that mountain bikers travel faster, more quietly and with closer attention to the tread than hikers, all attributes that limit places on a fast section of trail that went through high-quality bear habitat.”
“Herrero” is Dr. Stephen Herrero, an animal behaviorist considered a world authority on bear attacks. He wrote the widely-cited book Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance. The Board of Review ended its report with this: “There is a need for enhanced safety messaging at trailheads and in the media but it is usually aimed at hikers. However, mountain biking is in many ways more likely to result in injury and or death from bear attacks to people who participate in the activity. In addition, there are increasing numbers of mountain bikers using bear habitat and pressure to increase mountain bike access to areas where black bear and grizzly bear encounters are very likely.”
There is also this analysis done in Jackson Hole. In 2014, consultant A. Grant MacHutchon was hired to compile a risk assessment on human-bear interaction in the Moose-Wilson road corridor. It connects Teton Village and dense development along the west side of the Snake River in Jackson Hole with Grand Teton National Park.
Again, it’s not only displacement of grizzlies, as Servheen and others note, but a matter of human safety.
“Trail riding with mountain bikes is currently not allowed anywhere in the Moose-Wilson Corridor nor is it being proposed in any of the alternatives for the MWC,” MacHutchon wrote. “However, there is more information available on the human safety risks associated with mountain biking than there is for road biking on multi‐use pathways; consequently, I used this information for my assessment of the proposed multi‐use pathway.”
Based on his congealing of studies, he said a sudden encounter occurs when a person approaches within 55 yards of a bear, apparently without the bear being aware of the person until the person is close by.
“Mountain biking is often characterized by high speeds and quiet movement. This limits the reaction time of people and/or bears and the warning noise that would help to reduce the chance of sudden encounters with a bear. An alert mountain biker making sufficient noise and traveling at slow speed (e.g. uphill) would be no more likely to have a sudden encounter with a bear than would a hiker. However, on certain types of trails (e.g. flat, moderate downhill, smooth surface), the typical bicyclist can travel at much higher speeds than hikers, which increases the likelihood of a sudden encounter.”
Matthew Schmor, a graduate student at the University of Calgary, summarized survey data he collected from 41 individuals in the Calgary‐Canmore region who had had interactions with bears while mountain biking. Some of the interactions were aggressive encounters in which a bicyclist(s) was charged or chased by a bear(s). Most of the interactions (66 percent) were with black bears (27 of 41), 32 percent were with grizzly bears (13 of 41), and in one case the species was not identified.
Of the 41 bear‐bicyclist interactions reported by Schmor, most occurred on flat trails (51 percent vs nearly a third—29 percent—on downhills, and 15 percent on uphill riding. Equally as revealing is that 61 percent happened at speeds of 11 and 30 km/hour, a quarter at between 1 and 10 km/hour. Three-fifths of the incidents involved two or less riders.
“Interestingly, Schmor found that 78 percent (32 of 41) of encounters occurred in high visibility areas with greater than 16 yards of open ground between the bicyclist and the bear. Schmor also found that 76 percent (31 of 41) of mountain bike riders had not contacted officials about their bear encounters.”
The latter finding is extremely important because each encounter can result cumulatively over time in bears being disrupted and opting to abandon prime habitat for terrain where food and security cover is much less optimal. For grizzly mothers in their reproduction years, biologists tell Mountain Journal that poorer nutrition and more stressful environments can actually result in fewer successful pregnancies and fewer cubs.
If grizzly bears in an ecosystem like Greater Yellowstone are going to persist and thrive, weathering changes brought by growing numbers of people and a shifting climate, they protecting the best bear habitat should be a priority, Servheen says. “You are correct that I see mountain bikes as a threat to human and bear safety in grizzly and black bear habitat and as an unnecessary disturbance in wilderness and roadless areas,” he said.
Photo: CC
What’s the key to keeping free-ranging wildlife populations on the landscape? What’s the value of wilderness? What should conservation-minded recreationists be paying attention to? “Intactness is the first thing that comes to mind. There are few places left intact in our highly fragmented world,” says Gary Tabor, president of the Center for Large Landscape Conservation based in Bozeman but involved with wildlife issues around the world.
“I think mountain biking and rapid recreational expansion into the backcountry is symptomatic of a growing push to build roads and sub-roads and trails everywhere we want to go without regard for the other beings out there and the high values inherent in leaving those places alone.”
Tabor says the thinking about wildness has changed in an era focused on personal use and extreme athleticism. Lost is a literacy and understanding of ecology, an empathy for what uncommon creatures need in the rare spaces they’re able to inhabit.
“Backcountry used to be backcountry,” he says. “It’s not just mountain bikers crisscrossing places and riding fast to notch dozens of miles in a day. People are doing 50-kilometer walks and running their own ultra-marathons, covering as much ground in hours where you used to spend a week unwinding.”
Tabor has watched the debate over Gallatin wilderness unfold on social media outlets and he has witnessed professional conservationists affiliated with the Gallatin Forest Partnership become defensive when other groups say that more habitat protection is better than promoting more human use. It isn’t hard to know which conservation option is better for wildlife.
“Groups that are working on behalf of the conservation community to represent conservation values should be open to peer review from other members of the conservation community,” he said. “They should not look upon it as criticism but welcome it as peer review to put forth a better conservation plan because we probably have one chance to get it right. Just because you are one of the few in a negotiating room doesn’t mean you capture all of the conservation values that need a louder voice. As the fragmentation of nature accelerates and the future of the Gallatins is being decided, I think we all can ask ourselves, “Is no place sacred?”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Tim Hawke, a member of the Southwest Montana Mountain Biking Association, asserted on social media in response to this story that Mountain Journal and its founder Todd Wilkinson are “anti-mountain biking.” Here is what Wilkinson wrote as a reply: “I am not now, and have never been anti-bike. There’s a reason why we still have grizzlies in Greater Yellowstone and why they don’t and will never exist in other wildland areas, that is owed to two things: landscapes not dominated by people and wildlands that are not fragmented. There are plenty of excellent places to mountain bike that are not as critical to wildlife as the central core of Greater Yellowstone. Your colleague, Adam Oliver, wrote this on the Bozone listerv: “So far I have only seen people who want mountain bikers to sacrifice and the assumption is this will help wildlife. Show me the science. Prove me wrong.” It was an intriguing statement so I went to the chief of grizzly recovery for the last several decades. I think he answered the question about science posed by Adam. He and other biologists have a question of their own: When does anyone ever ask wildlife what they are willing to sacrifice? The extraordinary abundance of wildlife that exists in Greater Yellowstone and nowhere else in the Lower 48—grizzlies, animal migrations—is exceeding rare in the world. We mountain bikers have exponentially more habitat to play in than grizzlies do to survive in.”
This article originally appeared in Mountain Journal and is reprinted here with permission.
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What are non-cyclists sacrificing for the good of grizzly habitat?
Exactly. It sounds like ‘Humans’ are bad for bears, not bikes. Let’s provide a secure, safe area for them and keep ALL people out… if hikers and equestrians can’t get behind that then it’s not really about bears at all, is it?
bullshit.
You bring zero data, just fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Horses are much worse than bikes in my experience, and here’s why:
– they degrade the trail extremely fast (a single horse going on one trial is the equivalent of 500 people going on that same trail, or 1000 bikes)
– they poop everywhere in areas were human introduced horses – this is not just unpleasant for humans, it deter other wildlife
But also:
– hikers leave more trash than either horseback riders or mountain bikers, as the later are always moving they don’t settle in a space and “forget” their trash
Now I’m fully aware that:
– some hikers dislike bikes because they don’t always hear them coming
– horseback riders are afraid a bike will spook the horses (specially when most of the riders are tourists that have no idea what they’re doing on the horse)
These are valid concerns, but they’re very different from “mountain bikes are killing bears” aren’t they.
I’d rather mountain bikers go on dedicated trails in the park, rather than doing so illegally which is far more dangerous for everyone involved, just because you hate that there are more and more people who like biking outdoors. For the record, where I live, mountain bikes are banned from most trails and will still go on them. And you know what? I think they’re right. They actually do a lot less damage than hikers and it’s very easy to see that when you hike every weekend. And heck, they don’t poop.
It’s apparent from all of the real scientific studies and expert opinions that bikes do much more trail damage than horses or hikers. Of course bikes do not belong in Wilderness or Wilderness Study Areas. They are mechanical devices that are specifically and explicitly excluded. That’s not the point of this article.
Bikes are much more frightening to bears than hikers or horses. This is absolutely true as anyone that knows bears can attest. Bikes have no business in bear habitat.
Yo Bob, historically, hikers cause the most catastrophic damage to Wilderness areas by being the cause of massive wildfires. Ban them? (https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/us/15wildfires.html). But good to know from your experience that bears are more frightened about bicycles than rifles.
Yo James, regarding those unsightly ruts in muddy conditions: How do they look after mud has turned into soft-ish dirt and then turned into hard packed Summer dirt?
kind of disagree that hikers do less damage than bikes. It depends on the area. I live in the east and have hiked a 3 mile loop trail near my house for almost 20 years. bikes have been using it for the last 2 years and have destroyed the trail. when it’s wet the bikes leave long ruts that run with the trails which means the trails don’t drain and low areas become mud pits. I can’t speak for the more arid areas but i imagine the bikes don’t do too much damage as long as the riders aren’t sliding around turns too much.
You obviously didn’t read the article. It’s not about damage to the land. I’m a passionate mountain biker and would love to expand riding to more public lands but I also don’t pretend to know everything about how a bike affects the Ecosystem of an area or the wildlife in it.
There are so many logically fallacies in this article I could write for a really time to rebut them all. Instead I will focus on the issue of avoidance since the author implies it is unique to mountain bikes.
“Thus, here is a contraction: mountain bikers are told to make noise in order to alert bears of their presence and yet making noise, particularly if it involves people over a long period of time, might displace grizzlies from habitat.”
“Visitors and land managers, however, are often unaware of such impacts, because animals often flee before humans are aware of the presence of wildlife.”
Last time I checked making noise was the same advice given to hikers and all other backcountry users. Presumably hikers and horses are also displacing bears they just don’t know it because the bears flee regardless of the mode of transportation.
That is why in the summary of their report for Banff National Park to researched stated, ” “there is no ecological rationale that we are aware of for managing cyclists to lessen habitat disturbance without also managing other user groups and developments.”
If grizzlies are in the area or the areas is critical habitat, the answer is clear, the area need to be closed to all human use. There is no justification for the selective exclusion of bikes.
The death of Mr Treat continues to be used as justification for bike restrictions. While there has been one recorded death to a mountain biker, in the last year alone in Montana and Wyoming during hunting season, two hunters were killed and another 5 were mauled, and 4 bears were killed.
I think for every trail they close, we get to build a new one some where “legal” and “out of the way”. This is an attack on mountain bikers.
Excellent points, Wlkr. It seems a shame that a potential ally in the effort to preserve wild places–meaning mountain bikers–is being alienated, not to mention inaccurately painted with such a broad stroke. It’s clear the author of this piece and the scientists he quoted have an admirable amount of knowledge about bears. Unfortunately, it seems they know almost nothing about mountain biking.
Dang it, meant to reply to Maxwell.
Our wild lands are not a muddy gym. If someone want an adrenaline rush, exercise, a good workout, a flow trail, a good pump, a rad ride, or whatever; let them go to a gym in LA. We don’t want them here and they sure don’t belong in a Wilderness Study Area.
Likewise, if you wanted a heavy hike, a silly stomp, a flouncy forage, or whatever, throw on your favorite boots and climb aboard the stair master. See you at the gym! (The one in L.A.)
In all seriousness, your all-or-nothing approach to trail policy won’t work. And excluding an entire demographic based on “we don’t want them here” has historically never turned out well. It’s apathetic at best, and repressive at worst.
I agree that areas that are set apart and closed off are closed off for a good reason. Let’s protect the wildlife and habitats we have while we still have them! Our national parks are disappearing, both by a lack of funding and human environmental impact. It’s up to us, the trail users, to make the difference and speak for those with no voice.
That being said, mountain biking has been an activity enjoyed by generations (!!!) of people. Meaning, it’s not a fad, it’s going to be around for a long time. In fact, there is now a market for electric powered bikes (don’t get me started, it’s a mess) that further proves the point. Restricting the average mountain biker’s legal trail usage doesn’t solve your mountain biker problem. Instead, it forces mountain bikers to use more of the same trails, which means the hikers that also use the trails get more upset. If anything you should WANT us to have our own, deliberate trail systems that aren’t on protected lands. To be clear, we also want YOU to have your own safe haven of hiking trails (of which there are a vastly greater number than dedicated biking trails).
This is the most anti-mountain biking article I’ve seen in Adventure Journal. I thought we were friends. You even have a section called All Things Bike that focuses mostly on non-paved riding and at times borders on worship of long-distance backcountry exploits. I’m sensing some contradiction between your typical coverage and the reprint of this article.
This is also a very long read for this website. I suspect most readers will get a little way into it and move on, with the main takeaways being the title and the couple of numbers cited near the top. After reading the whole article, I think a more appropriate title would be Griz Expert Says Mountain Bikes Are A Grave Threat To *Grizzly* Bears *in southwestern Montana*. Because that is the very specific species and location of concern here. Without mention of those, a casual reader might extrapolate the idea in the title to apply to all bears everywhere. And if they already agree somewhat, then just ‘all living things everywhere because mountain bikers suck’.
I’m trying to be objective and put aside my mountain biker defensiveness that is aroused by the eternal (and unproductive) arguments between us, hikers and equestrians (and hunters and OHV riders and land managers). In general, I agree with the idea that humans should not encroach on or bisect high-value wildlife habitats. Especially when there is already trail nearby that isn’t problematic. That should apply to all public land users. What this article does is single out mountain bikers for ‘newly discovered’ factors that I frankly don’t accept as true or common enough to affect policy.
Specifically, the idea of mountain bikers in the backcountry being ‘fast and quiet’. It rings true to people who don’t mountain bike, but a little analysis argues otherwise.
I have lots of experience mountain biking in all settings, including backcountry. I can say the backcountry is where cyclists are slowest. I’m not the fastest, but faster than average, and I average 6 mph ‘moving speed’ over an entire ride in places like the Arizona Trail, Colorado Trail and most any backcountry trail. In races on those trails, even the fastest riders are around 10 mph average. Do I ever reach the 20-25 mph cited in the article? Maybe 20 mph for a few seconds at a time on the steepest downhills. Most mountain bikes aren’t geared for those speeds, so only on a downhill can you reach them. And most sections of trail, downhill or not, won’t support those speeds – there are turns, you’ll run into something.
The author claims to not be anti-bike, but two statements reveal the opposite by being inaccurate, sensational or irrelevant:
“Investigators surmised that Treat was traveling at between 20 and 25 miles an hour and rode into the grizzly around a sharp turn in the trail”
Impossible. You cannot take a sharp turn at 20-25 miles per hour on a bike on any surface. The investigators did their math wrong and have no experience riding bikes. Or maybe they meant he was going that fast (which I still don’t believe) and then slowed for the sharp turn. Either way, the speed is either a lie or irrelevant. If he was going 1 mph and then met a bear in a turn, same tragic result. From the many grizzly attacks I’ve read about, the common factor is surprising a bear within 50 yards – as stated in the article. Why include the sensational 20-25 mph figure except to elicit a head-nod from everyone who has ever witnessed a mountain biker going too fast?
And then this:
“Mountain bikers often write on social media of how they enjoy getting hardy workouts over long distances which means they need to ride fast. Some also boast of their love for careening down steep trails.”
“Often” and “some”, my favorite proofs. Quite a generalization out of nowhere. Almost Trumpian in its wording. A hardy workout over long distance does not require riding fast; it could instead mean riding long – it always does in my case. And I doubt very many who ‘often write on social media’ of such things are riding in grizzly-laden areas. There just aren’t the numbers of people or locations to support the generalization. And when I boast of a love of careening down steep trails, I’m not doing it in the backcountry. Do I want to crash, wreck my bike or body, and die of exposure because I’m a week’s crawl from help? There’s a difference between instagramming ‘man I love shredding with my bros’ with a picture of a bike park, and actually doing high-risk riding in Darwin-award winning situations.
As for ‘quiet’, mountain bikes are only quiet when the pedals are turning. When coasting on flat or downhill, most rear wheels makes a loud buzz that resembles a rattlesnake’s warning. I sometimes feel bad for how loud I’m being in an otherwise quiet setting.
Most rides have equal amounts of uphill, downhill and flat – due to the tendency to start and finish at the same place. Even point-to-point rides typically start and finish at human-friendly elevations – roads, trailheads, campgrounds – thus the same effect: what goes up must come down and vice versa in mostly equal portions. Going uphill, speeds are let’s say 0-8 mph. Flat: 7-15 mph. Those are the speeds at which you may be ‘quiet’. And on flat terrain, you tend to pedal and coast in equal amounts, needing to slow for turns or just to recover. ‘Fast and quiet’ isn’t the usual state of a mountain bike. You’re either fast and loud or slow and quiet. Also, riders in bear country are encouraged to have a dangling bell that jingles as you ride.
Even if we want to call these ‘quiet’ speeds ‘fast’ enough to risk grizzly attacks, mountain bikers are not the only ones doing it. Fast hikers and trail runners can cover the same miles over the course of a day, even hour-by-hour – as stated near the end of the article – and those users are ‘quiet’ all of the time, not half the time.
But we were worried about moment-to-moment fast and quiet, not daily averages. When what really seems to matter is surprising a bear at close distance. Or were we concerned about humans in bear country at all? Or was it having trails in bear country? Or is it humans on trails in bear country? Where were hunters in this piece? Aren’t they the most at-risk group of grizzly attack? I’ve never seen a hunter on a hike/bike/horse trail, because they’re deeper in the bush, where the bears live.
Or are we just trying to push a new pseudo-fact into the neverending trail user infight?
What happened to the 3rd option put forth by the Montana mountain biker that the author quoted and then ignored for the rest of the article: be prepared to give up something yourself. Either make this area off limits to all trail users, or don’t. But don’t single out one type of user based on a sensational but statistically insignificant tragedy, or information that those of us who know, know is wrong.
Good point about the title – been changed to reflect that this is concerning a particular wilderness area. The opinions in the piece are the author’s — ones that seemed like an interesting jump off point for discussion. Thank you for this well-argued comment! We’re going mountain biking this evening, by the way.
i totally have to agree with your rebuttal. you are very correct in your statements, these claims of ‘some’, ‘few’, ‘certain’ are the attributes of hearsay and not actual survey or research.
according to the author’s logic we have to set a speed limit for hikers and runners or prohibit running.. a good trail runner is quite a bit faster uphill (>10% grade) than most mountainbikers.
i fact, that’s why i stopped trail running in dense bear country such as glacier np after two close encounters (speed 10 min/mile). there is no difference between someone on a bike or in running shoes.
I’m an avid mountain biker but would never ride in Griz country. Call me a wuss and I probably am, but having seen grizzes up close in the wild twice and knowing how much more aggressive they are than black bears I just wouldn’t do it. At least when you’re hiking in grizz country you can make noise and you’re moving slow, you’d likely have time to deploy your bear spray if a charge happened. But to come around a blind corner and see a grizz in the trail like that poor guy in 2016, holy smokes you’d have no chance.
That animal just sends chills up my spine and to me the risk isn’t worth it.
No bikes in any Wilderness, anywhere, ever. There are 7 billion too many humans on this planet, and only about 2% (two percent!!!) of the lower 48 landmass is designated Wilderness. If anyone is so insanely and irrationally selfish enough to think their chosen form of recreation (whatever the hell it is) is more important than preserving these tiny slivers of remaining wild lands and wild creatures, they have serious questions to ask themselves about what being a decent human means. American Wilderness, love it or leave it the hell alone. Also, I ride a mountain bike.
Then that would mean no humans at all in wilderness because I’m pretty sure, hiking, horseback riding and camping are all forms of recreation.
I’m sympathetic to the idea that we need to give bears more space, but the anti-bike emphasis is really hard to bear, er, take.
Statements like this are just absurd: “Tabor says the thinking about wildness has changed in an era focused on personal use and extreme athleticism. ”
Tell it to Muir or Audubon — they put in plenty of “extreme athleticism” days, and they did so for their own, therefore “personal,” reasons.
Hmmm covering a lot of ground at high speeds? Better ban trail runners too.
You guys are surprised that a journal focused on the outdoors (i.e. nature) is reporting on conservation? That’s a bad sign.
The crybaby response is disturbing “(I thought we were friends”). Guy #1 arrogantly tells us he rides bikes where they’re banned Guy #2 tells us for every trail closed he’s going to build one “legal” and “out of the “way”.
An agency rec manager told me the mt. bikers he deals with are worse than the motorized crowd: petulant, self serving and can’t take no for answer. I can see what he means.
There is inspiring pushback on new multi-use trail proposals all over the west because we are redefining our values and so much is at stake.
Habitat first.
Adventure Journal: more please.
thanks for the information and posts
I very much hate to agree with the author (to a very limited point) because his article drips with bias. However, I bikepack all over back country areas, including areas mentioned here. It’s not “mountain biking” per se, as if you are shredding. It’s touring, in no hurry, like a hiker would do but somewhat faster, with plus size tires in the wilderness.
That said, last year I ran right up on a grizzly and on a black bear. One in the Banff area and one in MT. WAY too close both times. Both times a stare me down and a retreat, but I consider that lucky. One time because I was rounding a curved section and the other going downhill. Had I not been on the bike I would never have gotten so close because it takes some time to recognize what’s happening or to see the bear. It happens so fast. It made me really think about the one and only downside I see to my adventures via bike and that’s running right up on a bear too quickly.
I totally agree that horses dumping shit all over and hooves carving up the ground aren’t cool, when there are so many places to ride horses that wouldn’t impact every inch of trail like horses and donkeys do (i.e. the grand canyon trails right off the rim that are full of horse shit and flies and force hikers to stand still as they pass). I also agree that hikers, by virtue of their sheer numbers, wind up leaving way more trash than bikers.
But I have to admit, in this one limited case concerning grizzly habitat, I do kind of agree about the surprise factor and I’d be willing for my bike to be part of a comprehensive human ban. But it should be equal for all. Bikers should not to be singled out by the author.
I very much love National Parks. I also love mtb. This is almost an attack on mtb. There is no freaking way you can rip throu a turn at 20-25mph. These are very isolated incidences. And, a trail is only at the max 25ft wide, MAX. Thats not a lot of land. If we are “harming” your land. Then give US (MTB) land of our own to make trails. Hiker and researcherless. I very much respect the wilderness and preserving it, if you close all of the trails, you lose funding( if you have to pay to get into this area). Mtb is a great way to enjoy high speed and great views and just be in nature. Now they tell us to go the gym and screw off. It will be harder than you think to get us off the trails.
Sorry, 15ft max for trail with.
Recreation impacts on grizzlies is worthy of discussion and debate, but your framing of the issue as bikes or grizzlies perpetuates emotion-fueled rants instead of thoughtful discussion about whether wilderness designation is the appropriate tool to protect grizzlies. While you present anecdotal evidence that mountain bikers may have greater potential for grizzly encounters than other backcountry users, the quality and weight of evidence presented does not come close to supporting a conclusion that mountain bikers and grizzlies cannot coexist. Most mountain bikers support land conservation including wilderness. The issue at debate for mountain bikers is whether more wilderness is needed, especially in areas where there is already a lot of it. I am not proud that some members of my tribe have aligned themselves with questionable allies via support for the Sustainable Trails Coalition, but I understand their frustration with the limited success of the International Mountain Biking Association strategy to preserve mountain bike access through boundary negotiations. Losing trail access makes us defensive. I offer a few thoughts to explain our “selfish and self-centered” behaviors.
1) The USDA Forest Service has land management designations available specifically for the protection of wildlife – National Game Refuges and Wildlife Preserve Areas – that are more appropriate if the intent is to protect wildlife. The Wilderness Act is focused specifically on preserving wild land for the benefit of people (https://www.wilderness.net/nwps/legisact). It only briefly mentions wildlife and specifically in the context that designating wilderness does not modify State rights to manage wildlife. Similarly, roadless designation offers a means to protect unfragmented landscapes and to exclude extractive industries where these are major conservation concerns. Mountain bikers are frustrated that The Wilderness Act is applied for purposes beyond its intent as if it were the only conservation tool available on federal lands.
2) The science on recreation impacts to wildlife suggests that, across a wide variety of taxa, mountain biking has similar effects as activities like hiking and dog walking
(https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0167259). The Larson et al. study does not specifically address bike-grizzly conflicts and it is limited in its ability to describe the ecological significance of effects, but it suggests there is little evidence that mountain bikers are especially disruptive to wildlife compared to other recreationists. It frustrates mountain bikers to be continually singled out by land managers and conservationists based primarily on anecdotal evidence and interpretation of how recreation may interact with wildlife behavior to ill effect. The University of Calgary grad student’s data were interesting and do suggest there may be something to the hypothesis that increased speed leads to increased grizzly encounters. We should encourage more empirical work like this to test whether the expert opinion and interpretation featured in this article holds true.
3) Even if mountain bikers have a greater negative impact on grizzlies than hikers and equestrians, the decision to ban mountain bikers is not justified by a specific management goal for the grizzlies. For example, an appropriate analysis would frame grizzly management goals in quantitative terms (e.g., population targets, health metrics, or human encounter rates) and then assess whether goals can be met with or without mountain bike activity using the best available science. “The non-timber variables have been given increasing weight in forest management planning, and they are often imprecise and vague…However, such ill-defined concepts may well include information about the preferences and beliefs of people” (Kangas and Kangas 2002). Framing this issue as “mountain bikers are worse than the others” puts us first on the chopping block without actually asking the important questions about the status and trend in the resource (grizzlies) and what it takes to maintain or improve the resource to the desired condition. It could be possible that the status of the resource is great with mountain biking, or that the status will not be great, even after banning mountain biking. Natural resource management is arbitrary without well-defined goals and appropriate monitoring metrics to assess outcomes. You made strong arguments that mountain biking may negatively impact grizzlies, but you did not make a convincing argument that grizzlies are in peril due to mountain biking. The use of “threat” in the title implies you accomplished the later.
4) Mountain bikers should not be labeled as “selfish” for wanting to preserve their recreational access. Adding an extra 128,000 acres of Wilderness is inconsequential for most Americans, but it can transform the way people in a specific community interact with the land in their backyard. The USDA Forest Service has a multiple use mandate that requires it consider the impact of land management decisions on social, economic, and cultural values including recreation. It is completely valid and appropriate for stakeholders to oppose measures that affect their use of the Forest, especially when management alternatives accommodate their use and “competing” objectives. Your narrative supports the view that mountain bikers are selfishly taking something, in contrast to the reality that mountain bikers in some places have already made large concessions and are grasping to maintain dwindling access to backcountry trails.
Thanks for stoking the debate. I like bears and mountain bikes. I want them both to thrive across the great expanse of the western US.
I have seen this search of scientific evidence to justify the displacement of a group. But normally there is another motivation…maybe the author had a bad encounter with a punk on a bike… or could be he just wants to get bikers having fun away from the trails the author hikes.
Evidence and premises listed on this article are inconclusive and relative… bears won’t go extinct because of mountain bikers more than other forms of recreation.
I recommend the author to look at his ego and save the planet by being a better human.
We can hardly blame cyclists for being suspect of articles like this. The record of anti-bicycle misinformation and NIMBYism on ALL types of public land may be thick, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t legitimate concerns about bicycles in Wilderness and elsewhere. The underlying question in all these debates (from bears to trail impacts to user safety or aesthetics) is whether simply banning bicycles – or accepting an existing ban – is good policy or whether it’s better to apply many decades of recreational lands management experience to specific places and concerns – just as we do for non-cyclists.
Historically, conflict and negative ecological impacts having nothing to do with bicycles but instead stemming from feet, horses, skis, boats, hunting, etc. on Wilderness lands and beyond have been managed by a range of techniques far short of blanket exclusion. Public and private entities have been educating visitors; improving/modifying trails; experimenting with signage; issuing permits; applying specific, local remedies and restrictions; and otherwise engaging with land users to influence their behavior and guide their expectations when visiting public lands.
Does anybody remember the time before mountain bikes when encounters between humans and bears were unheard of? Of course not. Did the first human run-in with a bear result in the blanket exclusion of humans from all bear territory? That would have been ridiculous, right? Instead, what we’ve tried to do is examine the factors and causes that may have contributed to those encounters and we have developed tools and strategies to measure, minimize, and mitigate those impacts.
Mr. Wilkinson’s implies that we should leapfrog right past our management experience and simply exclude bicycles. In a nearly 4,000 word essay, there is virtually no mention or discussion of any management practice that might be applied, save for the inclusion of a graphic drawn from the USFS Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee that hints at remedies short of an outright ban on bicycles. Instead of trying to justify widespread exclusion based on anecdote and scant data, maybe we should first encourage exactly the same type of further research, discussion, and solutions we have long applied to non-cyclist interactions with bears.
As others have pointed out, there are a number of assertions in the article that beg better examination. Mr. Wilkinson writes, “The Board of Review report examining Treat’s death states, “There is a long record of human-bear conflicts associated with mountain biking in bear habitat including the serious injuries and deaths suffered by bike riders.” That specific text doesn’t appear in the report linked to by Mr. Wilkinson, but instead is contained in a separate set of management recommendations (http://igbconline.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/160629_BOR_Recomm_Treat_NCDE.pdf). Either way, the statement is untrue. What we actually have is a very short record of human-bear conflicts associated with mountain biking. The long record of conflict is between bears and non-cyclists. The report references just seven incidents involving cyclists across Canada and the US since 2004.
Mr. Wilkinson highlights another quote that appears within the Recommendations document: “Safety issues related to grizzly bear attacks on trail users in Banff National Park prompted Herrero [and Herero (2000)] to study the Moraine Lake Highline Trail. Park staff noted that hikers were far more numerous than mountain bikers on the trail, but that the number of encounters between bikers and bears was disproportionately high.” However, senior park staff today state that no comparative user counts were recorded and no specific data exists to support such a conclusion. Staff observations and other anecdotal information from trail users can be useful in trying to identify concerns, but they are not sufficient for setting or defending broad policies of exclusion.
The Board of Review report on the Brad Treat fatality that Mr. Wilkinson heavily relies on was chaired by Dr. Christopher Servheen. But Dr. Servheen’s bias is immediately evident when he offers several non-scientific objections to bicycles such as his reference to bicycles, “degrad[ing] the wilderness character” or when he, and the author, casually extrapolate allegedly disproportionate grizzly encounters and impacts to all wildlife everywhere. In defense of Dr. Servheen and the four other members of the Board of Review, however, their Recommendations document (linked above) makes no mention of blanket exclusion but, instead, points to a range of potential remedies including education specifically targeting cyclists, seasonal restrictions or closures, and trail-specific risk assessments (trail design, site distances, geologic/topographic features, presence of bear food sources).
To be sure, there are many trails – in Wilderness and elsewhere – that should remain closed to cyclists. The same can be said about other forms of use as well. The central question is whether designations like Wilderness, bear habitat, or simply “my favorite hike” are good criteria for making such access decisions. The unsettling part of Mr. Wilkinson’s piece is his effort to enlist science and data (either non-existent, limited, or deserving of much better qualification) to justify the complete exclusion of cyclists – not just in grizzly country, not just in bear country, but, seemingly, anywhere that wildlife might be found.