Saguaro National Park General Management Plan
The Mountain Bike Advocate's Guide to Planning and the United States Forest Service
Sarah Craighead
Superintendent
Saguaro National Park
3693 Old Spanish Trail
Tucson Arizona 85730
June 13, 2005
Re: Saguaro National Park General Management Plan
Dear Superintendent Craighead:
We have reviewed the draft alternatives for the Saguaro National Park General Management Plan, and on behalf of the Sonoran Desert Mountain Bicyclists would like to submit our comments, using the questions from the comment form.
Below are my comments on the General Management Plan Alternatives, using the questions from the comment form.
1. Have we presented a full range of alternatives? Is there another alternative concept that we have not considered?
Only one alternative, Alternative 3, provides for bicycle access beyond what is already permitted. As a recreation trail advocacy organization, we cannot support any other alternatives as currently written.
2. What do you like or dislike about the concept for each alternative? Could any of these concepts be improved? If so, how?
Alternative 2:
This alternative is the least friendly to recreation and shared use trails, and seems excessively restrictive.
Alternative 3:
As mentioned above, this alternative is the only one that provides additional trail access for bicycles, and as such, the only one we can endorse. Beyond that, we feel this alternative is more realistic making the park accessible to the general public.
Alternative 4:
While we cannot support this alternative because it does not allow for bicycling on trails in the expansion areas, it does have some language we like, including opportunities for interpretation. This alternative attempts to minimize visitors to the Rincon Mountain District while opening up recreation opportunities (except mountain bicycling) in the Tucson Mountain District. Given the projected growth near the Rincon unit, this seems backwards.
3. What are the most important elements that you think should be part of the preferred alternative and why? (These elements can be from any of the alternatives.)
In Alternative 4 the plan mentions "providing primitive recreation opportunities that complement adjoining land use patterns." If you would substitute "nonmotorized" for "Primitive" it could allow more mountain bicycling opportunities.
Most of Tucson Mountain Park is wilderness, which excludes mountain bicycling. It strikes us as patently unfair to treat the remaining acreage as wilderness, and exclude mountain bicycling, especially in the expansion areas, which had seen mountain bike use before the park acquired that acreage.
The preferred alternative should provide, as much as possible while protecting resources, opportunities for visitors, including mountain bicyclists, to enjoy these areas.
4. Do you have any comment on the management zones?
We would like to see the research justifying the definitions of non-designated Wilderness in the park as sensitive, primitive or semi-primitive. These designations seem inappropriate, given prior use.
5. Do you have any comments on the NPS approach to addressing carrying capacity?
Our only concern is that carrying capacity issues may be manipulated to influence management and planning approaches that exclude visitation, despite the availability of other solutions that are more inclusive
6. Do you have any comments on the trail types and criteria?
The alternatives do not go into much detail on trail types and criteria. We strongly oppose separate use trails, which were mentioned. Separate use should be one of the last tools employed, and then only if safety or resource protection concerns leave no other alternative. We have seen numerous studies showing that different user groups share trails without social or resource protection issues. Separating use can have more severe impacts on trails by reducing the amount of trails available to individual user groups. But the worst consequence of separating use is that it can actually encourage user conflict by creating a wrong assumption that different user groups cannot share trails, and that one user group may be less desirable than another.
The Sonoran Desert Mountain Bicyclists are committed to sustainability, and urge that all trails in the park - existing and future - should be sustainable.
7. Is there anything else the planning team should know?
We would encourage the planning team to review RS 2477 Rights Of Way as they apply to prior use of the expansion areas. We feel that this applies to the old roads and routes on those properties, which should be available for nonmotorized use.
Sincerely,
David Barger
Chairman
