Silent Sports Sounds Off

I could crow about how great it is to be mountain biking again on well-attended-to singletrack out at Standing Rocks near Amherst and within Hartman Creek State Park outside Waupaca. But after taking a slow-motion header on the former, and being unfamiliar with an additional mile of trail at the latter, I’m still pedaling cautiously. With my goal to run a PR marathon less than four weeks from now, I don’t need to risk serious injury.

Still, it’s amazing to pull into a full parking lot at Standing Rocks and then not encounter another soul over more than an hour of trail riding. We’re out there in force but yet able to enjoy the sport in relative isolation and at our own speed.

Contrast that scene with the average mass motorcycle rally, such as the one Garrison Keillor encountered in Washington, D.C., this past Memorial Day weekend :

“A patriotic bike rally is sort of like a patriotic toilet-papering or patriotic graffiti; the patriotism somehow gets lost in the sheer irritation of the thing. … No wonder the Current Occupant welcomed them with open arms at the White House, put on a black leather vest, and gave a manly speech about how he’d just ‘choppered in’ and saw the horde ‘cranking up their machines’ and he thanked them for being so patriotic. They are his kind of guys, full of bluster, giving off noxious fumes, and when they leave town, nobody misses them.”

Read the rest of Keillor’s column here.

If you want to read more expressions of displeasure with the exhaust fumes, violence and lewd behavior that tend to accompany motorcycle rallies, check out this story from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Many of the posted comments are from local residents as sick of these events as the city council.

Don’t worry: Posting this is not an indication I’m branching out from bashing quad riders of public trails to tsk-tsking hog riders on city streets (let alone straying well outside the upper Midwest). The latter group have more than enough of their own foes. I’ll stick primarily to defending quieter, self-propelled forest folk ’round these parts.

But I can’t help but add to the din of protest against obnoxious motorheads whereever they raise their … er … motorheads.

– Joel Patenaude

Ah, there’s nothing like the smell of desperation mixed with ATV exhaust in the morning.

Since the Natural Resources Board (NRB) on April 23 voted unanimously not to allow ATVs in the Northern-Highland American Legion (NH-AL) State Forest, Wisconsin ATV Association (WATVA) President Randy Harden has tried to portray himself and fellow quad members as victims of discrimination.

Having moved on (geographically but not psychologically) to try to keep ATVs running through the Black River State Forest, Harden and cohort Rob McConnell on April 28 sent a screed to several DNR officials blaming unspecified “anti-motorized zealots” and “anti-access advocacy groups” for their organization’s inability to convince anyone of the righteousness of ATV riding on more and more public land.

(The letter linked above and dated May 2 is the same letter Pat Murphy, Black River State Forest Master Plan Team Leader, confirmed she received on April 28.)

In its letter, WATVA also scapegoats DNR officials who understand that birdwatchers and bicyclists need their own paths because they stay away from trails open to ATVers. WATVA dismisses this fact with a truly bizarre, and vaguely threatening assertion:

“The Black River State Forest should be extremely cautious about enthusiastically embracing segregation of this type; it wasn’t good for this country in regards to race relations and certainly is not good public policy for all land management decisions.”

So let’s get this straight. According to WATVA, to argue that safety dictates motorized and nonmotorized trail users have seperate trails is tantamount to supporting racial segregation.

Well, that’s a radical and highly offensive analogy.

To suggest that ATVers suffer daily indignities and violence like racial minorities have in this country is simply outrageous. Far from being forced to sit “at the back of the bus,” ATVers are free to ride their $5,000-plus machines on private land and 8,000 miles of public routes and trails throughout this state.

Segregation of motorized and nonmotorized folks is not only justified, it is necessary. (Does WATVA not believe in sidewalks?) If we agree the health of nonsmokers should not be compromised by smokers, then why should hikers and bicyclists have their lives and enjoyment of parks and trails threatened by ATV speed, noise, dust and damage?

Harden and McConnell are clearly desperate if they’re willing to play the proverbial race card. But they’re probably just voicing what many of WATVA’s good-old-boy members are muttering in frustration.

Still, the organization’s leadership needs a reality check.

Only after the NRB rejected a proposal to develop more than 78 miles of ATV trails in the NH-AL at a cost of up to $14 million did Harden claim that WATVA wasn’t supportive of the project either. If the NRB had actually done the opposite and OK’d the ATV trails, Harden claimed his organization would have “battl(ed) to get it stopped.” This from a guy who served on the stakeholders group which recommended the very trails that were rejected.

So if WATVA’s head honchos aren’t trying to rewrite history, they’re painting thelmselves as victims of Jim Crow like policies. Either way, they’re excuses and vitriol should be rejected as sad and pathetic.

– Joel Patenaude

I sent the following as a letter to the editor of The Country Today, a weekly newspaper about rural issues in Wisconsin and Minnesota, after reading this one-sided, front page news article. Moments after sending it, TCT Managing Editor Scott Schultz called me to say he wouldn’t publish it unless I rewrote it so “that it doesn’t impugn one of my reporters by calling her lazy.”

Here’s what I wrote:

It was sad to see Regional Editor Sara Bredesen fall victim to the ATV industry’s chief spin doctor in her April 29 coverage of the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board’s decision not to permit ATV trails in the Northern Highland-American Legion (NH-AL) State Forest.

Breseden’s reporting was so lazy, her primary source, Wisconsin ATV Association President Randy Harden, was allowed to redefine the issue – an issue that in reality was decided after a two-year process that included many more persuasive points of view rooted in environmental science, recreational trend analyses and fairness to the public at large.

In addition to handing Harden the reins to her story, Breseden made one particularly large error: The DNR proposed a 30-foot-wide ATV trail corridor, not a 60-foot-wide one as she reported. The fact is many of the service roads the ATVs would have followed are already 30 feet wide.

It is dishonest of Mr. Harden to claim to be surprised by the trail widths and estimated costs provided by the DNR for 78.6 miles of the ATV trails recommended by a stakeholders group on which Mr. Harden served.

NH-AL Superintendent Steve Peterson said he told Harden and the other stakeholders early in the process that the ATV trails would need to be wide enough for two-way motor vehicle traffic. “I remember walking the possible routes with them and talking about the need to ditch and crown the trails, which would have to be shared with trucks,” Peterson said.

ADDED: The fact that wetlands, lakes and streams constitute as much as 30 percent of the NH-AL, many lengthy boardwalks and bridges would have been required to accomodate ATV travel, the most expensive aspect of the now rejected project.

The problem is, Harden’s ATV organization is not in the business of building sustainable ATV trails; in fact, he does very little to promote accepted development standards. Harden is primarily in the business of demanding ATV access to public land – any and all public land – regardless of how much ATVs cause environmental damage, noise and air pollution and displace the majority of visitors who prefer nonmotorized recreation.

It was irresponsible of Breseden to allow Harden to claim, without proof or challenge, that the process determining whether ATVs belonged in the NH-AL was “hijacked by silent sport people” and dismiss legitimate concerns for ATVers straying off trail. “He said that might have been the problem 25 years ago in the early days of the sport, but it is not true now,” Breseden reported.

Surely Breseden knows that the number of ATVs registered in Wisconsin has nearly tripled just in the past 10 years, suggesting that there is likely more conflict between their riders and hikers, bicyclists and other nonmotorized recreationists.

All she needed to read was the DNR’s 2005-2010 Wisconsin Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan (SCORP) which states, “It is evident that ATV riding is incompatible with every other land-based activity but snowmobiling.” The SCORP also points out that 85 percent of outdoor enthusiasts in Wisconsin prefer nonmotorized activities.

For further proof that ATVers are very much inclined to stray off trail and trespass, Breseden could have cited a 2007 survey of Wisconsin ATVers by Bob Smail, a graduate student in the UW-Stevens Point’s College of Natural Resources. Smail found 65 percent of trail-riding ATVers admitting they prefer to ride off of maintained trails designed specifically for them. “While this does not indicate that (the majority of ATV) users will disobey trail rules, it does suggest that by staying on-trail, users will be suppressing a preference for riding off-trail,” Smail warned.

It could be argued that Breseden presented both sides in her story. But while the overwhelming opposition to ATV trails in the NH-AL was given one paragraph and a partial quote, Harden got the lede and an additional 11 paragraphs devoted to his POV, however misleading and dishonest it was.

While there was no evidence of independent research or critical thinking on Breseden’s part, it is fortunate the DNR and Natural Resources Board did not take the same approach to the ATV issue in the NH-AL. The state’s largest forest has been spared for those who value safe and serene wild places. Thank goodness.

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– Joel Patenaude