According to a recent New York Times article, mountain bikers "could have thousands of miles of trails opened up to them" under a new rule by the Department of the Interior.

Mountain biking in remote areas has long been a hotly contested issue, with much vitriol being flung by both sides. Action alerts have been flying in all directions. The American Hiking Society issued an action alert to its members, asking them to send emails in opposition to the measure. Meanwhile, the International Mountain Biking Association has sent an action alert asking its members to email the National Parks Service in favor of the measure.

Many areas are currently open to horses but not mountain bikes, which causes an uproar among the mountain biking community, which argues that horses are far more destructive to trails than bikes. (For one thing, bicycles don't poop. For another thing, they don't weigh 1,600 pounds.)

Jeff Ruch, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, refers to this as "growing user conflict in the national park system." Our national parks are beautiful, and everyone wants to use them. At once. On the same trails.

In 1987, the Clinton administration passed a ruling which required park officials to obtain a special regulation to allow mountain biking, either on an existing or on a proposed new trail. This slowed the approval process considerably, as you might imagine.

The new plan calls for trail usage decisions to be made by individual parks, rather than as a blanket ruling by the National Parks System. This will both speed the process of use change approval, and cause more conflict at the local level. From the perspective of mountain biking advocacy groups, it will also mean that the battle will have to be fought over and over, one park at a time.

One factor driving this possible rule change is the widely reported drop in national park attendance last year. For example, In 2006, Yosemite National Park saw its lowest level of attendance in 16 years. Oddly enough, this comes at the same time as an overall rise in park attendance nationwide. It seems that more people are visiting national parks, but fewer people are traveling far to do so.

Park attendees pay park fees, which keep parks open and pay park employees' salaries. A drop in attendance hurts everyone, both park users and park employees both. Many parks have had to close early for the season, lay off staff, and cut back on plans for new paths, visitor services, and maintenance on existing paths.

Most national parks already allow some mountain biking, typically on designated trails. If you're feeling stir-crazy with this week's nation wide winter weather crisis, you might want to check out Gorp's Top 10 National Parks for Biking list. You might also want to peruse the opportunities for volunteer work with the International Mountain Biking Association, which has an active and well respected trail crew, and coordinates over 60 volunteer bike patrol groups across the country.

Summer will come back some day, right?!