Letter: Keep the outdoors wild
(Brian Maffly | The Salt Lake Tribune) Birders Heather Dove, right, and Kenny Frisch, observe birds Saturday at Olympus Hills Park in Holladay, where Salt Lake County officials are considering a proposed bike play area. Critics fear such a development would degrade habitat in one of the county’s best urban birding spots, where 90 species have been recorded.
Natural spaces that maintain wildness, where plants, trees and animals find habitat, give so much more to our community than mountain bike trails. They are the spaces within cities that give us solace, keep us connected to nature, allow us all to relax, feel renewed and part of the natural order.
Allowing a mountain bike terrain park to destroy this lovely wooded sanctuary of Olympus Hills Park in the city is just wrong.
Holladay Mayor Rob Dahle refers to taking that acreage and “maximizing the use of it.” Inferring that maximal use is development for mountain biking, or something other than leaving it a natural wooded space.
The article also referred to mountain bike teams from nearby high schools using the wooded area for training purposes, I struggle to understand why some want to tame and cause damage to the few wild spaces left in our valley.
Cindy Bur, Salt Lake City
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