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Author Topic: E-bikes  (Read 5332 times)

Offline Bullkllr

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Re: E-bikes
« Reply #15 on: June 24, 2019, 10:40:12 AM »
Pretty much all of the land owners or management agencies I looked up do not allow them in non-motorized areas.
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Offline actionshooter

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Re: E-bikes
« Reply #16 on: September 19, 2019, 08:34:54 PM »
Heard about this last week and thought it was interesting... the feds are taking a stand on e-bikes loosening regulations.

https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/elips/documents/so_3376_-_increasing_recreational_opportunities_through_the_use_of_electric_bikes_-508_0.pdf


Offline KFhunter

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Re: E-bikes
« Reply #17 on: September 20, 2019, 12:29:11 PM »
I wonder about an electric pusher trailer?

I got a spot I'd love an electric bike, its six miles downhill from the truck with the option of going much further, the gated road has a lot of soft sandy areas which sucks riding uphill through it.   It's so easy to bomb down early in the morning flying over the damp sand in a fatty, but getting back up to the truck in the dark sucks when the sand is dry     :chuckle:   and that's without hauling meat

ebike still a bit spendy for components,  rad bikes use bafang parts, but to get those parts its expensive!  they want over $500 just for a battery which I think is ridiculous


$1500 for a rad bike isn't bad, and some of the accessories isn't bad either from rad bikes. 

thinking a pusher trailer with 1000w hub motor would be cool

Offline Bob33

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Re: E-bikes
« Reply #18 on: September 22, 2019, 07:50:20 AM »
Sun., Sept. 22, 2019, 6 a.m.

By Rich Landers
For The Spokesman-Review
Bicycling – a force against nature? I never thought I’d see THAT day come. But I have.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s recent ruling to authorize battery-boosted bikes on roads and trails closed to motorized vehicles is another misstep down a slippery slope. It ignores the growing trend of recreation joining development as a threat to wildlife on public lands.

Mountain bikes have advanced wildly in recent years. They can go just about anywhere, and therefore some mountain bikers think they should.

It’s time to reel in that mindset to mesh with the real world of shrinking habitat. E-bikes only exacerbate the growing impact the mountain biking community already is inflicting by building trails wherever they want, with impunity.

Hiking on Spokane’s Beacon Hill recently, I met a mountain biker at a junction. We were chatting when a whitetail doe and fawn darted across a trail just ahead. Running into another trail above, the deer turned and sprinted past us the other direction – where they ran into another trail.

I pulled out my camera to snap a photo as the whitetails froze. Then another biker coasted by on a trail up the slope, sending the deer fleeing downhill. I could see them cross at least one more trail before disappearing into the pines where even more trails had been carved into the slope.

Observing those deer trying to find a place to hide was merely a glimpse at the issue that’s affecting public and private lands from city and state parks to national forests. Beacon Hill’s tight web of trails is generally not authorized. They’re focused on making fun out of the terrain without being scrutinized for impacts to resources.

Enlightened public access management – including trail making – can concentrate human activity in spaces or corridors and leave the larger landscape function with less disturbance. For example, riparian areas are important to a wide range of wildlife, including birds and fish. It’s best when possible to build trails above them rather than through them.

Wildlife biologists get it when they’re in the driver’s seat. Just 3,200 acres of the 22,000-acre Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge are open to public access. The Endangered Species Act gave U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists the rare clout to call for gates on many North Idaho forest roads to protect grizzly bears.

Meanwhile, wildlife is depending on the rest of us to set limits on human access since we have been failing in human management. Washington’s population alone has nearly doubled since 1980, from 4.1 million to 7.7 million.

I love bicycling. I’ve pedaled through Greece, Finland, and across the USA. For 40 years, I commuted to the office on two wheels for eight months a year. I wear my broken clavicle like a mountain biking badge of honor.

But there’s a trap in assuming that this quiet, clean, healthy mode of travel is all good. Even hunters get caught up in the euphoria of an easy ride to success.

Roads closed to motorized traffic have factored heavily into my choice of Blue Mountains elk hunting spots. While open to periodic timber harvest, the Umatilla National Forest gates are locked in this particular area during the fall hunting seasons.

I leave camp and hike about 7 miles round trip every day to access the prime hunting spots. Other hunters hike in, too, but we all make the effort with some assurance that only the occasional off-road vehicle rider will sneak around gates and foul our hunts.

I’ve enjoyed those closed roads immensely for hunting, and also when pulling elk meat out on a game cart.

Every year I see more mountain bike traffic where I hunt. That’s fine. They’ve been nonmotorized, legal and legit. Up to a few years ago, I might see a mountain-biking hunter in the road-closure area once or twice. Last year I saw one cycling hunter four times in one day. He was on an e-bike.

That observation isn’t scientific, but it pans out in logic. A mountain biker will cover more ground than a hiker. E-bikes, which are improving by the month, have the potential to vastly increase the number of users, trips and mileage. That translates to more impact.

If I’d have caught up to that e-biker, I’d have pointed out that the Umatilla National Forest is laced with 4,577 miles of roads. Only 46 miles of those Blue Mountains roads have seasonal closures during the hunting seasons. With 99 percent of the roads OPEN to motorized use, there’s no NEED to break the rules on a motorized ORV or e-bike, except to be greedy and disrespectful of those to who heed the signs.

Consider the perspective of Oregon research wildlife biologist and mountain biker Mike Wisdom.

In 1987, he started working with the Starkey Experimental Forest out of La Grande in association with legendary wildlife biologist and former Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas. In one of many studies, Starkey researchers tracked the movements of radio-collared elk as the forest was exposed to controlled doses of human activity. Hikers, equestrians, mountain bikers and off-road vehicle riders were allowed into the forest’s road and trail systems on separate blocks of days. Each group’s activity was followed by periods of no human disturbance. This was repeated spring through fall for three years.

The study documented that recreational disturbance displaced elk into less preferable habitat and cut into their opportunity to forage. Given a nine-day reprieve from human access, the elk would resume normal behavior. ORVs had the most impact and hikers had the least impact while mountain bikers were in the middle, researchers found.

“The elk spent more time running while expending more energy and less time gaining essential nutrients,” said Wisdom, team leader of the Starkey Ungulate Ecology Team.

Among the lessons learned: Minimizing disturbance, especially motorized and mechanized entry, can help elk store more fat and energy reserves. That can translate into better reproductive success and better odds of surviving drought conditions, predators and a tough winter.

“The 1990s research results were very clear that closing selected roads could provide strategic benefits to wildlife even if just seasonal,” Wisdom said.

Environmentalists joined scientists and lawyers in the 1990s to curb destructive large-scale logging and road-making into national forest roadless areas. But with bulldozers tamed, another beast became the rage. All-terrain vehicles were taking outdoors enthusiasts where they had never ridden before. New unauthorized trails were being pioneered like crazy, and conflicts with nonmotorized recreation spiked.

In 2005, U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth made a gutsy stand for natural resources by initiating the Travel Management Rule to curb cross-country ORVing. The rule essentially prohibited motorized vehicle use on all national forest roads, trails and open areas except where ORVs were specifically allowed. The rule stemmed from years of efforts to post road closures only to have the signs ripped off so ORVers could ride in and, if caught, simply say they didn’t see a notice.

The rule has helped reduce unauthorized motorized traffic, but not completely. ORV damage continues in many areas largely because plausible Bigfoot sightings outpace public contacts with Forest Service law enforcement.

“The question is no longer, ‘Can my ATV make it to the top of that ridge?’ but rather, ‘Am I willing to take my ATV to the top of that ridge?’ ” wrote Matt Sheppard, Idaho Fish and Game Department conservation officer, in a 2005 media release. “Unfortunately, plenty of people are willing to try and this is where the problem begins.

“All it takes is one person heading toward a ridgetop to create a trail. Other irresponsible riders follow not considering the impact their actions may have on the land, the wildlife, or another hunter.”

The point is, we’ve been down this trail before, and here we are again.

Wisdom says he regrets the proliferation of legal and illegal trail networks he sees expanding in Oregon mountain biking hot spots such as Bend and Eugene.

“They’re receiving unbelievable amounts of mountain biking use, which has been a little surprising to recreation managers,” he said. “The thinking on nonmotorized recreation has often been the more the better, but now we’re seeing a lot of undesirable resource effects of unmanaged recreation.”

User trail-making, once considered beneficial with the reduction in agency-funded trail crews, has become too much of a good thing in some areas.

“Mountain bikers are a user group that’s growing rapidly,” Wisdom said. “They know the country and they’re developing it.”

They’re physically fit and capable of moving a lot of earth with a pulaski.

They’re tech-savvy so they share their routes like wildfire over the internet.

And then along comes the new wave smitten with its e-bikes adding to the wildlife impacts of drones buzzing critters and trail cams monitoring wildlife movements 24/7 with notifications to our smart phones.

It’s always something else. And that’s why we must harness the work of passionate trail builders for good rather than just for thrills.

And we must always be ready to draw the line. My body is older and highly susceptible to being seduced by easier transportation. But e-bikes are powered vehicles and therefore should be included when motorized travel is restricted

© Copyright 2019, The Spokesman-Review | Community Guidelines | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | Copyright Policy

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/sep/22/landers-urging-mountain-bikers-onto-a-sustainable-/
Nature. It's cheaper than therapy.

Offline KFhunter

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Re: E-bikes
« Reply #19 on: September 22, 2019, 09:51:49 AM »
Hogwash article, full of bias and half truths.

USFS used to pride themselves on keeping roads open, brushed out and in good condition. Now gates hang where we used to drive freely, roads are in terrible shape with many nearly impossible to even walk let alone zip merrily along on an ebike like this article tries to paint. 

If trails are good enough to ride ebikes...., then there's already lots of human presence.

Also back when USFS prided themselves on having nicer roads, there was far more game and wildlife than now. Hrmmm?

Concentrating humans (on purpose) is meant to create conflict, conflict which that can be leveraged to further concentrate people, generate more and more cascading conflict to the eventual goal of locking up more and more areas away from camping, hunting, road use and other activities.

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Offline Bofire

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Re: E-bikes
« Reply #20 on: September 22, 2019, 02:04:59 PM »
When the chips are down..... the buffalo is empty!!

I do not shop at Amazon

Offline KFhunter

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Re: E-bikes
« Reply #21 on: September 22, 2019, 06:47:28 PM »
Ebikes it appears they're now legal on all federal lands where a normal bicycle would be legal, but the state could still prohibit them behind gates where no motorized vehicles are allowed.  We'll have to see what Washington does with it, I suspect they'll be legal same as federal rules at some point. 

private timber can make whatever rule they like, for or against.


I'm really curious what idaho, CO, MT, WY and other states do with them

Offline KFhunter

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Re: E-bikes
« Reply #22 on: September 22, 2019, 06:50:35 PM »
Don't get anything bigger than 750 watts motor! 



Offline JimmyHoffa

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Re: E-bikes
« Reply #23 on: September 22, 2019, 06:54:18 PM »
For the state, to be "non motorized" they need to be under 750 W, under 20 mph and have pedal assist.  DNR still doesn't allow them, even on "non motorized" roads (not trails, gated roads).  The guys at the bike shop have told me that the DNR is waiting for all the counties to be on the same page regarding E bikes before they make further determinations.  They supposedly don't want to have to deal with people in one county getting in trouble while not in the other county, while in the same DNR parcels.   :dunno:

Offline cem3434

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Re: E-bikes
« Reply #24 on: September 22, 2019, 07:31:49 PM »
Tagging along to see how this turns out.
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Offline idaho guy

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Re: E-bikes
« Reply #25 on: September 23, 2019, 12:32:17 PM »
I have thought about these but not sure I am interested. One thing I found are some companies doing a rent to own type thing. It appears to be fair(meaning you don't end up paying for 3 bikes to get 1) so you could test one out and not throw 1500 or a lot more at something you don't use much. I am not big on use restrictions on public grounds but I do see problems with the massive influx of mountain bikers. Some of the worst wrecks and almost wrecks on my horse have been due too mountain bikers, motorcycles are actually better because you actually hear them and can prepare a little. Mountain bikers seem like they are coming down trail at 50mph and bam they are in your horses face.  :dunno: Still I am in the camp if you don't want deer and elk overstressed reduce the predators and then worry about mountain bikers,4 wheelers and hikers. No way a human passing through stresses elk out more than a pack of wolves constantly on their butts 24/7 night and day.   

Offline Stein

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Re: E-bikes
« Reply #26 on: September 23, 2019, 02:35:41 PM »
I just read a report on the impact of roads and human traffic.  The researchers tested levels of something in their droppings to measure stress hormones.  The area tested was in Eastern Washington and the conclusion was that human presence and even just roads causes a ton of stress on elk.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4bef/3bfce7dbca7e28e7796edd361a89951ef9bf.pdf

I read another study that wolves only encounter elk about every 9 days in NW Wyoming, vs roads which can have much more frequent traffic.  WY was trying to figure out if wolves have a larger impact than what they actually kill - are they running the elk around such that they are weaker, breed or calve less, etc.  Their answer was no, the impact is pretty much limited to the ones they actually catch.

Anyway, interesting read but not really anything we didn't know - elk don't like people or dogs.  It is nice to see WY spend some time and legit science to figure out why they had to cut the tags in that unit 50-75% while the same thing is happening in WA and WDFW doesn't seem to be as curious to the reason or dedicated to addressing it if possible.

Wow, I just got really off topic, sorry!

Offline idaho guy

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Re: E-bikes
« Reply #27 on: September 23, 2019, 03:18:10 PM »
Interesting article. There is no doubt humans can stress wildlife.  I don't believe that wolves only impact the elk they kill. There are quite a few herds that have moved into town as the result of wolves in the mountains. They are choosing to live among people,cars,dogs etc to get away from wolves so I don't buy that argument at all.

Offline Stein

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Re: E-bikes
« Reply #28 on: September 23, 2019, 03:45:52 PM »
Yeah, some of the reading I did drew big distinctions about how elk deal with people.  The data shows that during the daylight hours of fall they are well away from roads, yet they will go there in the spring and summer - clearly avoiding people more during hunting season.  As we know, they also avoid areas they get shot in and frequent areas that are historically safe - like towns and ranches that don't hunt.  There was a cool study about the probability of them getting killed decreasing with age until at age 9 a cow elk has a near zero chance of being shot.

It's a complex system, everything places a load on the elk and if they crash it is probably almost always a combination of humans, predators, habitat loss and maybe other things we don't know about yet.

E-bikes are certainly cool though, I would buy one if I had the scratch laying around.  Personally, I think they should be treated like motorcycles and allowed wherever they are.  To me, it's like saying we need different highway regulations for a Tesla than we do a Civic.

Offline idaho guy

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Re: E-bikes
« Reply #29 on: September 24, 2019, 09:28:45 AM »
Yeah, some of the reading I did drew big distinctions about how elk deal with people.  The data shows that during the daylight hours of fall they are well away from roads, yet they will go there in the spring and summer - clearly avoiding people more during hunting season.  As we know, they also avoid areas they get shot in and frequent areas that are historically safe - like towns and ranches that don't hunt.  There was a cool study about the probability of them getting killed decreasing with age until at age 9 a cow elk has a near zero chance of being shot.

It's a complex system, everything places a load on the elk and if they crash it is probably almost always a combination of humans, predators, habitat loss and maybe other things we don't know about yet.

E-bikes are certainly cool though, I would buy one if I had the scratch laying around.  Personally, I think they should be treated like motorcycles and allowed wherever they are.  To me, it's like saying we need different highway regulations for a Tesla than we do a Civic.

I agree its complex. I feel like a lot of the biologist "studys" contradict what I see with my own eyes and its hard to believe some are not biased.This one seems pretty straightforward. I think all areas are probably a little different. One area I am thinking about last year in Idaho was amongst 20 up to max-150 acre parcels and the elk had moved down from the mountains(which appears to be perfect habitat outside of running into wolves and wolf sign constantly ). This was  a place that everyone that could legally hunt there did. I shot my elk on property there last year. I cant think of any reason a bunch of elk would choose that versus millions of acres of forest outside of the abundance of wolves that showed up.  I agree with the e-bikes just being treated like a dirt bike. If they allow them in non motorized areas  I am lazy enough to try one out  :chuckle: Thanks for posting the study  :tup:

 


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