Montini Higher Use rationale

Higher Use Rationale to Keep the Montini Trail Free of Dogs

Hikers feel like they are the highest use and to back up this claim there is the US Park Service, wilderness areas and CA State Parks among others where the management philosophy is to provide quality space for people to enjoy and be inspired by nature. Dogs and other multiple uses are not permitted. John Muir, H. D. Thoreau, Aldo Leopold and Edward Abbey, Edward O. Wilson are among people providing high-level philosophical justification to appreciate land and nature for its own sake. The land is set aside to let nature be what it is, for people to enjoy and appreciate. What people bring to these landscapes is minimal. People don’t bring town and all their domesticity to nature and then expect to find anything special.

In contrast there is Gifford Pinchot and the multiple use philosophy of the Forest Service and the BLM. On these lands you are likely to find logging, livestock grazing, mining, commercial use, many motorized uses, hunting and dogs. Hikers (people) notice immediately these differences when entering multiple use land; it is not as pristine; the common denominator is lower. Hikers see these uses as degrading the potential of the natural land to inspire, provide solitude, peace and quiet. Hikers see dogs on trails as lowering the quality of the hiking experience.

This is how hikers see dogs on Montini. Dogs dilute the experience by disturbing wildlife in multiple ways, by threatening people, crowding hikers off the trail, threatening other dogs, jumping up, leaving waste, running off leash, and being generally antithetical to the conservation values described in the first paragraph. Dog use on the Montini Preserve stands in contradiction to the explicit Conservation Values explicitly stated in the primary controlling document of Montini Preserve land use, the Conservation Easement, where the same motto used by the Park Service is invoked, “preserve and protect”.

That dogs are nice, fun animals that people love is a separate issue. Dogs are just not appropriate in many contexts. In fact, almost all public contexts prohibit dogs: stores, theaters, concerts, work, meeting halls, village greens and on and on. Why? Because enough people fail to control their animals that dogs in public contexts are a known problem. These same problems extend to trail use as well.

All public land users feel they have a right. Because mountain bikes and motorcycles exist people want to use them and demand lands for such use. Because people have dogs they feel these animals have land use rights. Battle after battle gets fought between hierarchies of user groups who feel they have superior, intrinsic, higher rights than others.

Yet there are “higher” uses and purposes and these are justified by the existence of such agencies as the Park Service and California State Parks where these higher uses are specifically set aside. Dog free public lands are an existing precedent with a wide body of supporting evidence. Other uses are limited on these public lands so that people can maximize the salubrious effects of unspoiled nature. This higher quality feeling is noticeable immediately on entering protected lands.

Is it even possible to argue that dogs are congruent with low impact use? No. The best dog users can do is to postulate there is no problem. If this same argument doesn’t hold water in other cases, why would it now? This is not to say that dog owners and dogs don’t deserve a dog park. In Sonoma they already have nature trails and hills to go to with Bartholomew and Maxwell Parks.

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The Montini-Overlook trail system has a chance to reflect a mini-version of Park Service type land use values and attributes. Yes there are cattle, as a sign of Sonoma’s agricultural roots, but they will only be there 3 weeks a year when the trail is closed to people. And since there are cattle for 3 weeks is that then justification to allow all other uses as well? If the common denominator is lowered does that then justify a race to the bottom? If dogs why not bicycles and horses?

I hope the powers that be who will decide this issue, will focus on what the primary users, people, hikers on foot, can gain from limited use land and that this is a separate issue from any fairness or justice for dog lovers who are lacking a nice dog park in Sonoma. The highest and best use for public land as a nature, open space preserve, is to reserve use for people on foot only. To have land of this quality, and the Montini preserve is very nice land, immediately adjacent to the center of Sonoma will be a special and great benefit to many generations.