And in some respects we would be our own worst enemy in such an effort
giving the opponents all the ammunition they need. All opponents would
have to do is show knee deep bogs created where none existed before
from endurance rides run in conditions where the soil conditions could
not support such an event and we would surly lose that argument.
Horses can cause damage, in fact hikers can cause damage when trails
ill equipped for foul weather use are used in foul weather. There are
plenty of examples of such use in endurance rides that could be pointed
to.
Given how difficult it is for the AHC - who use professional lobbyist -
to get the "right to ride" bill which impacts all recreational horsemen
through Congress, I think the AERC which represent a small hand full of
recreational riders getting a bill that makes a major change to the
Wilderness act would be a nonstarter.
Truman
Barbara McCrary wrote:
From long experience, I know that many of
the promoters of land preservation, most often non-horse people, cannot
(or will not) believe that horses do not cause destruction. It might be
worth trying, but this would be a long, hard fight, which AERC would
probably lose.
The Wilderness Act was well intentioned and has much good about it.
The problem is that, like strip mining, it went to extremes. We,
through the AERC and other means, need to work toward not eliminating
Wilderness designation but improving it. Moving away from the extreme
and toward moderation, that allows non-destructive uses such as
endurance rides.
-- “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in
higher
esteem those who think alike than those who think differently
“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct
him to
hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think
differently.”Friedrich Nietzsche
