• The Publisher’s Notebook •

The Malibu Paragliding Paradox

BY ANNE SOBLE

Since we ran the first in a series of articles on Aug. 14 about the recent fatal paraglider accident and the response by public agencies to what was allegedly widespread unauthorized use of publicly-owned lands for paragliding instruction and flights, we have received numerous emails from paragliders urging that local residents support keeping as many Malibu locations open to the sport as possible.
The early tenor of some of these communications was that paragliders have the same right to use public lands as everyone else, but that tone has been modified as pilots learned that people and groups that claimed to have authorization to use these lands did not. If tough talk from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy isn’t enough to prevent unauthorized use of parklands, the agency may have to go the route of the Los Angeles City Department of Water and Power and seek court action to protect its sites.
Malibuites are beginning to ask why this unauthorized land use that often involved trespass, and which was anything but surreptitious, went unchecked for so long that some paragliders developed a proprietary mindset with regard to these locations.
Photos of paragliders with obvious backdrops of Malibu Bluffs Park and Corral Canyon have appeared in many types of publications, and paragliding groups openly posted photos on numerous websites. The perception that prevails on many of the sport’s numerous blogs is that, if there wasn’t outright approval, there appeared to be tacit consent. The expression “turning a blind eye” is repeatedly used to describe the public agencies’ behavior.
Paragliding is often described as the simplest form of human flight. Non-motorized paragliders have a foot-launched inflatable wing made of rip-stop nylon from which the pilot is suspended by lines. The pilot is clipped into a harness in a sitting position. The paraglider literally can soar like a bird, utilizing currents of air. Having gone on tandem rides in British Columbia and New Mexico, I agree that it offers an extraordinary sense of airborne freedom.
But paragliding has risks—even if it is statistically safer than entering an automobile—so site selection has to take the general public into account. Accidents occur, and the potential for a serious one taking place over Pacific Coast Highway, or at a park site that is thronged with picnicking families, is reason to urge that, before authorization is granted in a community like Malibu, public safety issues are carefully vetted.
Those who yearn to make the Icarian dream a reality have done so with the paraglider, but they are not above the law, and they may face a similar fate.