Re: [pct-l] Banning Horses? Nah!

[reynolds@ilan.com]

You seem to negative to horses in the wilderness and I am not. You seem to
think the the Sierra is degrading do to overuse of backpackers and horse
packers and I do not. We both have noticed the encroachment of air
pollution from outside the region. I don't know what your emphasis on the
HIGH [emphasis is yours] Sierra is. I certainly go as high as any horse
does.

Your solution is to WRITE letters to politicians to back your position. My
solution is to send MONEY to BUY politicians [they call this political
donations] to back my position. Who do you think will win?

I am not trying to be a jerk here! I am trying get you to understand that
by advocating shutting out certain people [horse people for example] from
the wilderness you are weakening the political base of people who are
trying to preserve the wilderness [maybe not exactly as you want to and
maybe not as pristine as you hoped but still, by and large preserve it].

Interestingly, my reaction to the Tahoe '97 Confrence you refrence was
'Another bunch of extremists smelling their own gas'. True DDT was a
problem but we [the world] were also supposed to be out of oil by now and
the greenhouse effect was supposed to raise the temperature 10 degrees by
now.

I advocate [and have so stated in this forum] raising the fees on packers
and limiting the number of stock on the trail of stock per day. This seems
to me a reasonable solution to most of the horse shit  while still allowing
people to use horses [at a significantly incresesd price] and packers to
stay in business -- if they will simply allow the law of supply and demand
to work. I advocate this primarily because I want to reduce the horse shit
on the trail and reduce the sometimes huge horse parties. I believe that
this would increase most peoples enjoyment of the trail and increase
support for the wilderness.


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