The Eco-Challenge gets challenged

E: The Environmental Magazine, August, 1995 by Jim Motavalli

If you call your event "ECO-Challenge," the last thing you want is bands of environmentalists waving angry, in-your-face placards for the TV cameras at the starting line. But that's just what happened in April, with the U.S. debut of "adventure racing," inspired by the grueling, French-sponsored Raid Gauloises.

Adventure races thrive on teamwork. Competitors divide into groups of five (including at least one woman), and if any one racer drops out the whole team is disqualified. Eco-Challenge chose a very demanding 370-mile course that took 50 international teams through southeastern Utah's backcountry, most of it owned by the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Racers ran, rode on horseback and mountain bikes, climbed mountains, swam, even whitewater rafted.

What makes it an eco-race? English-born founder Mark Burnett, a Raid Gauloises veteran, adopted a "pack it in, pack it out" strategy from the beginning. "We have a major responsibility for how we treat this land," he told the racers.

No one doubts that southeastern Utah is environmentally sensitive. Race organizers had to plan a route around the nesting sites of rare peregrine falcons, and the lambing grounds of endangered big-horn sheep. The desert surface surrounding the course includes delicate cryptobiotic crust, which can take decades to recover from trampling feet.

Eco-Challenge says it spent months researching the best low-impact route, and issued race guidelines that included "packing out" all waste, staying on trails at all times, and avoiding contact with wild-life. Race organizers worked with BLM Outdoor Recreation Planner Jaynee Levy in setting up the course. "We tried very hard to create a route that would avoid any unnecesary environmental degradation," she said. "As long as the racers stayed on the trails, there shouldn't be a problem."

The protesters -- a coalition that included the Wilderness Society, the Utah-based Four Corners School of Outdoor Education and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance -- filed an appeal to the Interior Department designed to revoke ECO-Challenge's BLM permit, but it was rejected just weeks before the race began.

Kevin Walker, a protester from Moab, Utah, said that "250 racers can really remove large swathes of vegetation." One racer with divided sympathies was Cory Shane of Fairfax, Virginia, who works for outdoor clothing supplier Patagonia. "The last thing I'd want is to come out here and harm the environment. I'm torn," he said.

It was, indeed, possible to see both sides of the story. As one media observer put it, "Yes, there may have been some damage from this race, but as an issue it hardly compares to the more important challenges we face from the current Congress."

Contact: Eco-Challenge, 10 Universal City Plaza, 33rd Floor, Universal City, CA 91608/(818)505-7848; Four Corners School of Outdoor Education, P.O. Box 1029, Monticello, UT 84535/(801)587-2156.