February 25, 2008
From The Daily Breeze Online
By Josh Grossberg, Staff Writer
Horse enthusiasts and bicycle fans are going to have to learn to get along – or at least tolerate each other – under a plan approved Saturday by the Rancho Palos Verdes City Council.
After hearing from nearly a hundred speakers during a daylong session, the council voted 4-1 to reopen the 420-acre Canyons Ecological Reserve to both four-legged animals and two-wheeled conveyances, with only Councilman Peter Gardiner voting against the proposal.
When the trails will open, however, remains in question.
First, trail signs must be posted, educational material prepared and an enforcement plan put in place. It could be months before any of that happens.
And another thing: The park isn’t called Canyons Ecological Reserve anymore. Earlier in the day, council members voted to change the name to the Portuguese Bend Reserve. They also agreed to change the city’s entire 11,000-acre chain of wilderness areas from the Portuguese Bend Nature Preserve to the Palos Verdes Nature Preserve to avoid any confusion for visitors.
“The minute you step into Torrance, nobody’s heard of it,” Councilman Tom Long said of Portuguese Bend.
Four other less controversial trail plans also were approved. With four more to go, the council decided that after nine hours of discussions it had had enough and voted to postpone further talks until next month.
So many people showed up to the meeting at the Point Vicente Interpretive Center that a television had to be set up outside, and people watched under a steady late-afternoon drizzle.
Although the council conceded that adjustments will probably have to be made, the new plan calls for horse riders and bicyclists to share many of the winding trails.
Other paths can be used by horses, but not bikes. Bikes can use some, but not horses. And hikers get to use all of them.
“We should open it up to all users, provided it’s safe,” Gardiner said.
The majority of the speakers were horse riders who said that while most bicyclists are courteous, many ride down hills too fast, take turns dangerously and generally spook the horses. They also complained that bicycles are eroding the terrain and destroying plants.
“They do what they want when they want,” one speaker said.
It was a refrain heard dozens of times during the day. Horseback riders acknowledged that bike riders had a right to enjoy their hobby. They should just do it somewhere else.
“The only part of nature they enjoy is gravity,” said Rancho Palos Verdes resident Judy Herman.
But bike riders said that while there will always be reckless people, most of them are well-behaved.
“There will always be people who don’t follow the rules,” said Rancho Palos Verdes resident George Hicks. “Embrace the responsible user.”
In the end, most people seemed satisfied with the truce – at least for now. And as Mayor Doug Stern reminded everybody more than once, figuring out how to share such a beautiful piece of real estate isn’t exactly the biggest problem in the world.
“This is a wonderful position to be in,” he said. “You all go out victors no matter what.”
