When Compromise Doesn’t Work

We were asked to attend a meeting at our local forest service office one evening last week. FS has come out with a new travel plan, and the hard work is done, but there was a dispute between various users over the status of eight local trails. Local hikers, who sat on a consensus panel, asked for some moral support.

It was an odd experience. There at a table sat representatives from hiking groups, motorcyclists, horsemen, landowners, and bikers. The object was to come up with a plan that allowed all of them access to the trails. Alliances had formed – strange alliances – horsemen and bikers and landowners were supporting motorcyclists. Hikers sat alone, four groups allied against them. No wonder they asked for support.

It was an odd twist, a screwed-up process – almost everyone was polite – when someone got angry, the moderator quickly stepped in with a time-out. Yet what was going on was a royal screwing of the public interest. Hikers represent 80% of the trail users in our Bozeman area, yet were outnumbered four to one.

They are making a stand. The motorbacks circulated a plan for shared use – on it, motorcycles would enjoy everyday access to seven of the eight trails with five exceptions – on one day each, five trails would be limited to hikers and stock. (The eighth trail would be open to bikers, but not motorbikes.)

Five trail days, eight trails, seven days a week – five out of 56. That was their compromise. During a break I overheard motorcyclists talking to one another – a guy actually said something like “Geez – they won’t compromise. They want everything.” He was talking about hikers!

The process is ongoing – parties have agreed to disagree. They’ll be back.

But here’s the bottom line: My wife and I are hikers and backpackers. We don’t have a problem with horsemen, bicyclers, and respect landowner rights. Our problem? Motorbikes and ATV’s. They don’t belong. Maybe the riders are nice people, but the machines are obnoxious. They make noise, pollute the air and scare off the animals. They degrade trails – riders aren’t very good at self-policing, and so they make new trails. Forest Services doesn’t have the personnel the monitor them.

It’s a joke that we are even talking with them. They don’t belong.

As we were hiking the Wind River Mountains this summer, I thought about the trail we were on – two feet wide – it’s been that way since I was a kid, and long before that. It goes back generations, perhaps centuries. A two-foot strip in a wilderness. It will stay that way for my grandkids and theirs save one problem – motorbikes and ATV’s can do more damage in a month than hikers have done in a hundred years.

They don’t belong. Don’t tell me to share – it makes as much sense as smokers telling non-smokers to “share” the air supply. Compromise is defeat for quiet trails and preservation of land and values.