November 24, 1999 Tony Acosta Director, Office of Parks,
Recreation, and Cultural Affairs 1520 Lakeside Drive
Oakland, CA 94612
Re: Access to Joaquin Miller Park
Dear Sir:
I am very concerned about the arbitrary and
discriminatory management of Oakland's parks. I like
to practice bulldozer racing (also known as
"bulldozer scrambling", or BS, for short). That is
my way of enjoying nature. Who are you to tell me
how I should enjoy nature?! Why
__________________________________________________
is your way of enjoying the outdoors any better than mine?!
____ ____ You allow roller-bladers, equestrians, mountain
bikers, and even hikers in your parks. But I am excluded,
and can't enjoy
________
the parks that I pay taxes for. You obviously like them
better than me, or maybe you belong to one of those user
groups, so you are biased towards them. In any case, you are
discriminating against me and other bulldozer racers, and I
demand that this discrimination, which violates the Fifth
Amendment to the Constitution, stop immediately!
I know that bulldozer racers have a bad name, but
that's just because we are the new kid on the block.
We are a tiny minority. I know that there have been
some problems, such as some people riding
recklessly, going off the designated trails, and
even secretly constructing illegal trails. But those
are a small minority of bulldozer riders. You
shouldn't allow a small minority to give the
majority of us bulldozer racers, who ride
responsibly, a bad name. Why should we be punished,
just because of them, and be forced to walk, just
________ ____ like everybody else?
I also know that some extremist tree-huggers claim
that it's a violation of CEQA (the California
Environmental Quality Act) to allow a new use of the
park trails, and the creation of new trails, without
doing an EIR (Environmental Impact Report). But you
are right: mountain biking and bulldozer racing,
when performed in an environmentally responsible
________________________________________________
manner, doesn't have a significant impact on the
environment.
______
In fact, it's actually beneficial to wildlife. You can tell
__________
that, by the fact that you often see deer tracks on the
mountain biking trails. If the trails didn't benefit them,
they wouldn't use them, now would they? Bulldozer racing
doesn't drive out wildlife. That is a myth. I see lots of
____
wildlife where I ride.
Some people say that we ride too fast to avoid
killing small animals on the trail, such as snakes
-- that we have to pay attention to avoid crashing,
and can't also look out for wildlife. Are they that
slow? What about "survival of the fittest"? If they
are that slow, they aren't going to survive, anyway.
Some HOHAs ("Hateful Old Hikers", as the mountain
bikers call them) claim that bulldozer racing does
more harm to the environment than hiking. But a
scientific study was done in
________________
New Zealand, proving that bulldozer racing does no more harm
_______
than hiking. Another scientific study showed that most
erosion
________________
is caused by nature, and so any additional erosion caused
by bulldozer racing is not significant, by comparison.
Would you rather have the park clear-cut, or turned into
another gated community for the rich? Without the support
of strong environmentalists like us, that's what will
inevitably happen! We are your strongest defense against
development. If a park doesn't have a strong constituency
of recreational users, no
____________
one will care about it, and it will inevitably be lost.
____
(That's what those environmental extremists call "destroying
it, in order to save it". But what do they know?) The HOHAs
____
claim that vehicles make it too easy for lazy, uncaring
people to get into wildlife habitat. But if nobody goes
there, who will protect the park? The more people go to
a park, the
_________________________________
better it is for the wildlife!
______________________________
Another claim is that we compact the soil around
redwoods, killing them! Can you believe that?! In
Muir Woods National Monument, they don't even let
people walk next to them, making
____
them stick to pavement or raised walkways. They must be run
by an environmental extremist tree-hugger!
I know that some HOHAs claim that bulldozer racing
is annoying, and destroys their experience of
nature. I guess they're superior to everybody else.
They are just being selfish. They just don't want to
share "their" trails with anybody else! That's
obvious. The older ones claim that they have given
up going there, because they are afraid of being
hit, or are tired of constantly having to get off
the trail to let bulldozers go by. Isn't that just
evolution -- survival of the fittest? Why should
hikers, or anyone else, have the whole park to
themselves? We pay taxes, too. We have just as much
right to be there as they do. We are just as much
environmentalists as they are. We love nature!
That's why we
____
want to ride there!
When you have spent as much on your equipment as we
have, believe me, it is very frustrating, not to
have any place to use it! We don't, of course,
condone illegal trail building. However, we can
understand the frustration of people whose only sin
is preferring a different way of enjoying nature.
They think that, because they are able to purchase a
piece of equipment that lets them go off-road, the
public is obligated to give them a place to use it.
That's understandable -- isn't that the American
way? Aren't they just like the pioneers?
We bulldozer racers ("BS-ers"😉 belong in the parks
just as much as everybody else. If the HOHAs don't
want us on their trails, because we allegedly create
narrow ruts, and make them difficult to walk on,
then we deserve to have our own trails,
___
which we will gladly build for free. There is plenty of
space for everyone. If the wildlife don't like it, they
can always move! It's just survival of the fittest. As I
said, that's
____
what evolution is all about.
We will even police our own riders, so that you
won't have any additional expenses. After all, how
would you catch a renegade
_____
bulldozer racer? Your rangers would also need to drive
bulldozers, increasing the wear and tear on the trails. We
can do that for you. How about it? There are more and more
of us every day. And we vote.
____
Sin-
cer-
ely,
Mic-
hael
J.
Van-
dem-
an,
Ph.-
D.
===
I am working on creating wildlife habitat that is off-limits
to humans ("pure habitat"😉. Want to help? (I spent the
previous 8 years fighting auto dependence and road
construction.)