IMBA Meets With Federal Land Agencies
IMBA Trail News
Volume 13, Number 4
Fall 2000
IMBA is working on new national-level mountain biking initiatives with the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. Together these three agencies manage more than 550 million acres of public land.
IMBA board members Ashley Korenblat and Steve Anderson and executive director Tim Blumenthal spent three days in Washington, D.C. in mid-July. The trio met with the three top recreation officers of the U.S. Forest Service, with the Chief Ranger and an attorney of the National Park Service, and with two high level staff members representing the President's Council on Environmental Quality and Department of Interior.
The Forest Service meeting was attended by Forest Service Director of Recreation Denny Bschor, deputy Recreation Director Dick Paterson, and Dispersed Recreation Coordinator Jim Miller.
IMBA wants to assure continuing cooperation between the Forest Service and IMBA on trail projects and education. We also want to enhance the agency's support for mountain biking. A new formal Memorandum of Understanding between our groups has been developed and is slated to be signed some time this fall.
As most IMBA members know, off-pavement bicycling is highly restricted in many National Parks. Meanwhile, the overall quality of National Park visitor experience has suffered because of a proliferation of cars and motor homes--leading to congested roads, parking lots and trailheads. IMBA believes that mountain biking on National Park dirt roads and appropriate trails can help the Park Service solve its crowding problems and maintain air quality. Nearly all National Parks include a variety of lightly traveled dirt roads and doubletrack--many of them used only occasionally by Park Service administrative vehicles. These routes could become sustainable mountain biking opportunities at little or no cost. IMBA is offering the professional consulting services of our Trail Care Crews without charge to any National Park unit that could benefit from their expertise.
Our meeting with the Council for Environmental Quality and Department of Interior lawyers focused on travel management regulations in newly created National Monuments. We were told that the Administration is working to eliminate off-trail (cross-country) use of bicycles and motorized vehicles in these Monuments, but doesn't intend to impose comprehensive on-the-trail bicycle bans.
IMBA and the BLM are working on a new National Trails Training Partnership that is going to be announced to the public at the National Trails Symposium in Redding, California, in late September. We have just signed a new assistance agreement with this agency that encourages IMBA to send its Trail Care Crew to train BLM staffers on trailbuilding and maintenance techniques as well as mountain bike management.
