To be fair no this is not the area in question. I am just laying out some general facts about the bolted top anchor VS Tree anchor debate. This happens over and over @ many diferent areas and it is usualy based on emotions rather than reality. It may well be that the area in question is a low impact area with low traffick and no erosion problems. if that is the case than perhaps the trees would be ok to use. If the area does in fact see daily traffic then it most likly would be much lower impact to have fixed bolted anchors..
Ultimatly the locals and land managers will have to work out the solution that best suits them.
It is however a hard cold fact that running to land managers and raising a stink about newly placed bolts is allmost gaurenteed to cause serious access problems.

So you don't think that CLIMBERs makeing a big stink about bolts that the town otherwise would never even know existed might just be that activity that adversly affects access?

In fact i would venture that the ONLY people who will pass up a tree anchor for gear TOP ROPE anchor are NooBs learning or practiceing their gear anchors.

Properly constructed top anchors should be just below the top edge of the cliff where hikers can not easily see them.

I'm no Ken Nicols...i'm not about to go and mess with the intergrity of those bolt hangers, not my responsibilty to foil someones effort to "safely protect" climbs. I just wanted to bring this topic up and see the climbing communities view on the matter of placing bolts where they shouldn't be. I am hoping that the individual responsible for this bolting sees the concern other climbers might have and removes what was installed before an area closes as a result...

My general view on bolts is pretty much the same as yours. But, I think the best way to mitigate the damage, especially in the eyes of pissed-off land managers is to remove these bolts responsibly and, ahem, artistically. Climbers created a problem for them. They'll view it as a plus, if climbers fix the problem for them, too.

What kind of bolts are they?

I was climbing at Moss Island yesterday afternoon and took pictures of the bolts. In fact I used two of them to set up a rope. Enclosed are 3 pictures; a back up bolt behind two old ones, the two that I used and two by the Weisner climb (somebody took one of the hangers here).

My impression from yesterday is that the bolts are handy and not very conspicuous.

Obviously you haven't climbed here before, there is adequate gear placement on all of these recently bolted climbs so the trees are not an issue,

Whatever happened to "leave no trace"?

These sound like convenience anchors to me.

Just to clarify I didnt do the bolting. I am just posing the question how can any of us be the judge and jury.

No need to get, ahem, artistic*. Depending on what this means this is the worst thing to do. What about removing all of the hangers and leaving a note. "Hey, I've got all your hangers, give me a call if you want them back. I'd like to talk about what's going on."

Sure, you'll be taking your chances on how this will play out, but you might smoke out mr. gridbolt.

edit to add -- I probably misunderstood what you meant here. At first glance I took this as a euphemistic expression, to hammer down the hangers, or some such nonsense. This probably isn't what you are saying... but hey, I've seen this sort of crap go on...

I haven't seen the bolts yet. I climb a lot at Moss Island so I'll see them soon. Did somebody go too far by putting the bolts there? Does it make it safer? Is the island vegetation actually protected by having the bolts? Will the "authorities" close MI? (Who are the authorities in this case? MI is NOT owned by the city of LF.) Tempers seem pretty high and the cat is out of the bag in terms of the "authorities" so it seems that they will be removed. Should the bolts on the Virgin and Fred P. also be removed? They have been there over 20 years now with no issues that I know of. But they should go if the others go too.