Kudos to Bike Magazine and author Lou Mazzante for their coverage in the current issue of the bicycling and Wilderness issue in Montana. It’s hot up there, particularly around Bozeman. Montana has not had a Wilderness designation bill pass for more than 20 years. Perhaps the tactics of the Wilderness movement there help explain why.
The Bike article is mostly about the issue of how to manage a batch of national forest Wilderness Study Areas that Congress created a while back, as well as management of Forest Service Recommended Wilderness, which the agency creates. In Montana, but not necessarily elsewhere, the agency bans bikes in any area recommended for Wilderness in a forest plan. Unfortunately, the Regional Forester who decided that policy, Gail Kimball, recently became Chief of the whole U.S. Forest Service in D.C. The article notes that Congress supposedly reserved to itself the designation of Wilderness, but isn’t the Forest Service policy essentially the same action, without the legislative blessing?
The article gets in wrong in one place with its statement that “the rules are clear” that bicycling is prohibited by the 1964 Wilderness Act. That’s not true. It was rulings by the land management agencies, not Congress, which banned bikes.
I highly recommend that you run to your local newstand and pick up a copy of the May, 2009, Bike magazine.
– Gary S
Cover of the May, 2009 Bike magazine