🚀 go-pugleaf

                                   September 28, 1995
Board of Directors
Recreational Equipment Company
1700 45th Street East
Sumner, Washington 98390

Re: Your Support of Mountain Biking; Your "Cycling Gear Guide '95"
Catalog

Gentlepersons:

     Thank you for removing the photos of (apparently) illegal
mountain bike riding from your catalog! I am not naive enough to
expect any business to really care about the environment (i.e.,
give higher priority to wildlife than profits), but I do expect REI
to give it more consideration than other businesses, since you are
in the business of helping people get into the wilderness, and
hence probably want to preserve some wilderness to get into!

     Mountain (off-road) biking is always harmful to the
environment. It is very damaging to the soil, and to organisms that
live on and under it. It is well known that desert soils are easily
destroyed, and require tens or hundreds of years to be recreated.
But other soils are similarly vulnerable. The "knobby" tires
preferred by mountain bikers (and lugged soles worn by ignorant
hikers) are extremely destructive, causing a large increase in
erosion, harming soil-dwelling organisms, and killing plants that
many animals depend on. But probably even more harmful than these
direct effects is the way bikes simply make it easier for people to
get farther into the wilderness, and hence crowd wildlife out of
its preferred habitats. This leads to habitat fragmentation and,
eventually, extinction. Surely, you don't believe that old myth
about needing to get as many people as possible into the wilderness
(under whatever circumstances), in order to protect it? I thought
that Aldo Leopold (speaking about "loving Nature to death") put
that one to bed long ago.

     On page 27 of your above-mentioned catalog you depict 12
different styles of deeply lugged tires, none of which have a
                                         ____________________
legitimate use. The only possible uses for such tires are (1) to
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attain speeds at which the appreciation of nature is impossible, or
(2) to ride on grades which are so steep, or soil that is so soft
(e.g. wet), that there is a great danger of erosion. In both cases,
they vastly increase the risk of injury to the rider. They also
greatly increase rolling resistance -- one good measure of your
effect on the environment. The fact that some public or private
agencies are stupid enough to allow such tires to rip up the land
under their stewardship is no excuse for you to participate in that
destruction. Would you sell guns? Bows and arrows? Fishing gear?
ORVs are just as destructive.

     I offer the following thoughts from my review of Extinction:
                                                      ___________
The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearance of Species,
___________________________________________________________ 
by Paul and Anne Ehrlich:
     The Ehrlichs are particularly vehement in condemning another
such frivolous abuse [of wildlife] -- off-road vehicles: "When it
comes to pure recreational destructiveness, however, off-road
vehicles (ORVs) far surpass powerboats. ... It is a rare
environment indeed where a vehicle can be taken off-road without
damage. ... Standard ORVs with their knobby tires are almost ideal
devices for smashing plant life and destroying soil. Even driven
with extreme care, a dirt bike will degrade about an acre of land
in a twenty-mile drive. ... Not only do the ORVs exterminate
animals by exterminating plants, they attack them directly as well.
Individual animals on the surface and in shallow burrows ... are
crushed. ... One great problem with ORVs is that they supply easy

access to wilderness areas for unsupervised people who have ... no
conception of the damage they are doing." (pp.169-171) (Although
mountain bikes had not been invented, or were hardly known, when
this was written, it is obvious that the same applies to them.)

     The reason that knobby tires are so destructive is that as the
knobs touch the ground, the entire weight of the bike plus rider is
concentrated in a very tiny area (pressure = weight per unit area),
causing the knobs to exert tremendous force on the soil, breaking
the surface. The speed with which mountain bikers like to ride is
also a big factor, since a large amount of force gets applied to
the tires (and concentrated on the tiny knobs) during acceleration
and braking -- hence the ubiquitous skid marks, where the topsoil
gets ripped off.

     I have been getting more and more disillusioned with REI over
the years, and will shop there only if I have no other choice. I
suggest that you seriously consider removing deeply treaded tires
and hiking shoes from your stores. I have never noticed any
disadvantage to the relatively smooth tires and soles I have used
for the last 52 years.

                                   Sincerely,

                                   Michael J. Vandeman, Ph.D.

P.S. I am sharing this letter with all of my friends and all
interested people on the Internet.