This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee have teamed up on the "Human Powered Travel in Wilderness Act," which would allow bicycles as a mode of transportation in federally designated wilderness areas at the discretion of land managers.
An argument commonly used in defense of this dreadful idea is that restricting travel in wilderness to walking or riding a horse is unfair to people who prefer biking, which is no more damaging to the land, or only marginally so. Leaving aside the question of damage to the land, why not allow forms of air transport such as gyrocopters and hot air balloons as well? Wouldn't it be unfair to exclude them? And what about very old and disabled people who can't walk or ride a horse or a bike and whose only means of access to wilderness requires a motor vehicle, such as an ATV or helicopter? Where should the line be drawn, and why?
If we are willing to water the idea of wilderness down by making an exception for bikes, why stop there? Without an obvious rationale for stopping, the slope is steep and slippery. The risk is that eventually both wilderness and the possibility of enjoying a wilderness experience may disappear altogether.
Mechanical means of transport do not belong in wilderness because they are incompatible with the idea of wilderness, which, according to the Wilderness Act, is "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man ... retaining its primeval character and influence ... protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation."
Bicycles will degrade the quality of the experience for others in much the same way that the sound of a loud chain saw echoing from the cliffs would. They would both be wrong in the same way that talking on your cell phone during a symphony would be wrong. Are we being unfair by not allowing people to talk on their cell phones during a symphony? What if they just whisper?
One often hears the last ditch argument that it is pointless to try to protect wilderness because there is no longer any place on Earth that is true wilderness in the sense of being totally unaffected by human activity. But this argument is as silly as saying that because we can't prevent our death we might as well hasten it. Wilderness doesn't have to be perfectly pristine in order to merit protection under the Wilderness Act. It just has to satisfy certain basic, realistic statutory criteria.
There is no unfairness in excluding bicycles from wilderness in the first place, for the obvious reason that anyone who can bike into wilderness can walk into wilderness. If one's interest is biking, then let him or her access the millions of acres of public land where bikes are permitted. But if one's interest is visiting wilderness in order to make intimate contact with wild nature, then let him or her go about it the right way by walking and observing and reflecting.
I doubt if either Hatch or Lee has ever had a wilderness experience or knows what one is. (Clue: It's not just being conscious while in a wilderness.) One suspects that their real intent with this bill has nothing to do with fairness at all, but is to undermine the Wilderness Act and to pander to a select constituency.
Kirk Robinson is executive director of Western Wildlife Conservancy.