Interesting read!
 

Saw this on one of the local off road forums.

"There is a cost to operating a motorized vehicle in the desert beyond the expense of buying a quad or a four wheel drive car: the cost of NO2, CO emissions polluting the environment, the cost of stirring up particulates in the air, and the cost of ruining the ecology of the desert from killing the microbes, plants and insects in the soil to the birds and mammals that eat them. Yes, the desert is public land, and you are imposing a cost on public land called an externality, a cost that does not appear on the books and which you don't pay for. A hiker on a trail does none of that. The grease monkeys do not have a right to impose costs on public land. In addition, only a phillistine would want to escape the industrialized world by taking a loud internal combustion engine into a wild life area or a wilderness area with him. What escape from the factory, the freeway or the metal shop is that? You take about Constitutional rights but know nothing about them. Hardly any are absolute rights. You obviously know nothing about chemistry or ecology. You only care about your right to do whatever you want to do, and to heck with any regulations which would impinge on your ersatz and puerile manhood. Instead of living in harmony with the Earth, you want to dominate it in a small, under-educated way which gives you a strong, powerful identity in your own mind. "

Obviously written by someone who has never owned a bike and gets their kicks by sitting in nature nude after dropping a few hits of cid.

Are they right? Yeah kind of! No disputing that bikes are loud, cause some damage and stir up some dust, and probably scar a few native animals. How much effect does this damage have in the grand scheme of things? Sweet FA. Mother nature inflicts so much more damage in a single bout of 'Natural Disaster' than all the bikers combined would in a year. I don't need a degree to tell you that if you don't ride a particular section of ST in 6-12 months it is unrecognisable that a trail was ever there. I'm sure conditions in the desert change much quicker than in the scrub and forest over here in Australia too.

Farrking hippies should put some pants on and throw a leg over a bike and expand their apreciation of all things.

Written by someone that has never experienced "the thrill of victory" only "the agony of defeat".

You got it in one there , we call them ramblers here , its thier way or no way , they soon forget the distruction they cause up the hills and mountains straying from the paths by the thousands , also the roots of thier foundation came from illigally tresspassing on private land .
Practice what you preach i say.

For an introduction on Ramblers see this link...LOL.....

http://greenlanecrew.proboards.com/i...ad=1343&page=1

Those freeks make nice berms and woops :D !

Didn't realize my manhood was part sawdust. Learn something new every day it seems. Amazing how much this writer knows about me. I guess that's the kind of wisdom mental giants like him have over dumb folk like me. I just hope he's wearing a pair of the latest tevas, some nice craghopper pants, and using a marmot bag in his mountain hardware tent when he's out communing as one with nature. After all, the resource gathering and manufacturing processes for all those products is not at all harmful to the microbial population of planet earth. :rolleyes:

Dont forget the process to create the "green" Prius.

What a freak, sad thing is wacko's like this guy are actually a larg part of the reason public riding areas are shrinking at an alarming rate.
If this guy had his way we'd all be living under a rock.

I always thought that the AMA and every other offroad organization should spear head a land buying program.
Lands are better protected from the likes of this guy if you own them.

Well, you could ask the poster in your local forum how he/she justifies the costs on nature and pollution caused, by his/her own internet browsing? Electricity does not appear out of nowhere... Not to mention the all the lands ruined by all the cables laid down. Put to that all the terrible chemicals used in computers.. :D

Anyway, I have seen studies here in Sweden where the flora and fauna on the mx tracks are actually thriving, and the constant stir of the earth is actually providing a wonderful habitat for speices that are in trouble in our concrete industrial world.

Not saying one could ignore environmental effects, but we need to look at the grand scheme of things first. There are other more dire threats to the environment than a few dirt bikes in the desert.