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
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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
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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
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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
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manner, doesn't have a significant impact on the environment.
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In fact, it's actually beneficial to wildlife. You can tell
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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
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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
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New Zealand, proving that bulldozer racing does no more harm
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than hiking. Another scientific study showed that most erosion
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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
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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
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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
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better it is for the wildlife!
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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.
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Sincerely,
Michael J. Vandeman, 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.)