Marin IJ Readers’ Forum for May 19, 2024

Keep mountain bikers off Sorich Park Trail

I often hike the Sorich Park Trail between San Rafael and San Anselmo. Right now, only hikers and equestrians are allowed. Recently, I learned that San Anselmo and Marin County officials are considering mountain bikers on the trail. I understand there are options for how it would look, including the possibility of two trails —one for hikers and one for mountain bikes. But, to be clear, I think a widened multi-use trail that allows bikes would be a mistake.

I hope my fellow hikers will fight against allowing bikes on the trail. In my experience, many (but not all) mountain bikers are less than polite. Some don’t even give a warning when they are coming up behind an unsuspecting hiker.

I am now 80 years of age, but I still love my almost-daily walks and hikes. It seems to me that bikers always get priority and win access. I think it’s because they have a lot of support from their very strong coalition. We hikers have not much of a chance to win our cause against them.

I am just shocked and sad about the possibility of allowing mountain bikes on Sorich Park Trail.

— Ute Brandon, San Rafael

Elk fence study result is first step for Point Reyes

The news published May 14 with the headline “Point Reyes seashore study favors elk fence removal” is a welcome development that is decades overdue. But it’s only a first, small step to cleaning up what’s so dirty and corrupted in this beloved Bay Area national park.

The fence exists only to “manage” tule elk. I think that’s a euphemism for either passively letting elk starve inside the fenced reserve or by shooting them to death outside the reserve should they dare reproduce successfully. This latter “shoot to cull” policy remains in the new environmental assessment.

The accepted killing of elk — by fence or by rifle — is just a sarcoma of the Point Reyes cancer: the cattle industry.

Beef and dairy operations have so corrupted this national park’s mission, for so many decades, that the public has lost sight of what a healthy Point Reyes would look like. Worse, portions of the public refuse to see that ranches are inarguably the park’s top source of land degradation, water contamination and greenhouse gas emissions.

I urge everyone to comment at parkplanning.nps.gov/tpap. Support “Alternative B” to remove the infamous 3-mile fence. But also tell park officials to remove the cattle ranches and their additional 300 miles of fencing, which locks in thousands of cows and locks out many humans every year. Approximately 28,000 acres — one-third of the park’s 71,000 acres — are cattle-fenced off to visitors.

The big “fence-down” win for tule elk was made possible by a combination of concerned citizens, outspoken activists, lawsuits and media outlets. All will be essential in finishing the job of “rewilding” Point Reyes. Policies must keep improving until they stop favoring the for-profit livestock operations and, instead, favor the wild elk, wild animals and wild lands for which the park was created.

— Jack Gescheidt, San Rafael

Those urging cease-fire have a right to protest

During the Vietnam War, there were protests on college campuses and demonstrations in streets of cities throughout the country. I recall a psychiatrist being quoted in The New York Times as saying, “I don’t worry about those who demonstrate. I worry about those who don’t.”

Subsequently, there was surprisingly little protest against our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though Americans were dying or coming home with disabilities and/or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Although I don’t condone violence and destruction of property, nor blocking traffic, it is gratifying to once again see protest in calling for an Israeli cease-fire in Palestine as it responds to the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack.

We need more people to speak up against wrongdoing and injustice whenever and wherever they occur.

— Dr. Ann Troy, San Anselmo

Jan. 6 capitol riot hearing was impressively complete

In a letter published on April 24, Tim Peterson wrote that former Rep. Liz Cheney, when she was a representative of Wyoming in Congress, “helped produce what I believe was a fraudulent report that looked at none of the questions around the (Jan. 6 insurrection) event.”

I watched the hearings that led to that report. Nearly every witness was a Republican associate of the former president. The staff work was impressive. If there were questions that were not explored, I would love to know what they were.

— Charles Kelly, Fairfax