Nature in the City MEDIA ALERT
Ecologically Destructive Bicycle Race
As if economic collapse, massive budget deficits, and continued Bush Administration attempts to gut the Endangered Species Act aren’t enough, last weekend San Francisco’s parks and natural areas were the scene of a massive act of ecological destruction.
“The participants in this bicycle event are so innocent--but to those of us who have been dedicating our lives to preserving the biological values of these areas, the race is anything but. The destructiveness of this activity is beyond describing, undoing what thousands of hours of our labor have accomplished, not to mention tens of thousands of years on the part of nature. It's gone.” – Jake Sigg
See the SF Flow video of this uncontrolled and un-permitted mountain bike race. Websites for information about the race, held on November 16th, and attended by 400 people, include:
You know, it’s ironic. Earlier today, I was cycling home with my two boys from school, and they were jumping, astride their little mountain bikes, off of every curb they could find. And now here I am, railing against 400 people who were just out to have a good time, by jumping their bikes along trails, free from the constant danger of death machines (automobiles).
But just like it’s my job to teach my children how to ride safely on city streets, and to advocate for a reclaiming of the built environment for people, as opposed to cars, it’s equally my job to be the voice for what’s left of our great city’s nature and biodiversity. And my friends, it ain’t much. So I really hope that media, policy-makers and bicycle enthusiasts, particularly mountain bikers of course, will see reason and see that – just like McCain vs. Obama – we have a clear choice: 1. We take care of San Francisco’s natural heritage, which includes making the necessary public investment to manage and monitor biodiversity, as well as recruit volunteer stewards and pursue aggressive local environmental education, or 2. We continue, as we have since the Spanish took the land from the Ohlone, to treat the Franciscan bioregion as something to be exploited, neglected, and dominated.
I’m actually hopeful because I imagine that the bicycle community in general is a more reasonable bunch than, for example, the off-leash dog walking advocates, who practically pushed through the tall glass windows of the Presidio’s Golden Gate Club, during a GGNRA public meeting a few years back. After all, isn’t the city’s bicycle community in general a cultural ecological revolutionary bunch, who, in addition to wanting to take back the streets, become traffic, and drastically decrease our reliance on fossil fuels, they want to enjoy the wind in their hair, views of the bay, and smelling sweet wildflowers instead of diesel fumes?
Perhaps, but just like we will likely have strong resistance to licensing for-profit commercial dog walkers on our public lands, it’s certain that some subset of the mountain biking community will be resistant to any control whatsoever of their urban eco-(destructive) transportation adventures.
The wholesale disconnection of us – people, from nature - all other things not produced by us, means that we feel that we are somehow separate from nature, and that we can just go about our business, and everything will be just fine. Not true, and what we at Nature in the City attempt to do is to break down the false, historical dichotomy between humans and the rest of nature, so that we can restore positive relationships with native plants and animals, and literally re-inhabit the land in ways that respect the other members of the natural world.
But we can’t do this as a young scrappy, non-profit organization working with a few individual citizens. We need your help, the help of the media and the help of the City’s decision-makers – politicians and department heads – to prioritize, finally, the conservation, restoration and stewardship of San Francisco’s natural heritage.
Last weekend’s bicycle race would not have happened if, as a City, we were more advanced in how we treat our natural landscapes. We need financial, human, and infrastructure resources to protect, steward and interpret nature in the city for future generations of young mountain bikers, naturalists, and dog lovers alike.
The race went through endangered species habitat at Twin Peaks, McLaren Park and San Bruno Mountain, and through rich California native grasslands at Bernal, Mt. Davidson, and Glen Canyon, special natural places in the heart of San Francisco.
-Peter Brastow