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There are a number of really interesting and solid answers here, and quite a bit of the information is accurate and on point. But because this has become so politically charged, I thought I’d supply an answer that summarizes some of the key differences between the two sets of events, and approaches them on a purely factual and scientific basis without any political slant, finger-pointing, name-calling, or the like. In the end, it’s more important to have as many folks as possible understand the science involved, and potentially apply that to keep others safe than to win an argument and disparage whatever political party I don’t like.First of all, it’s important to understand the current science on how this disease is most likely to spread, and what causes superspreader events.EDIT: It seems that a lot of people don’t really understand what a superspreader event is, or how it works. It has become increasingly clear that a very large number of cases are the product of a small number of contagious people, who are the seed cases. Because certain people are much more contagious than others, rather than spreading evenly from all infected people, a disproportionate number of the infections in COVID’s path have occurred when one person (or a few people) infects a large group of others. Then, among those people, one (or a few) infects other large groups of people. In order for this to happen, there have to be large gatherings of people together in enclosed spaces for extended periods, so that many people can be exposed to that one person. It’s not just a simple chain reaction where each person passes it to the one next to them. For superspreader events to happen, lots of people are exposed to and infected by one person. This generally happens indoors, where people are in the same room together for an extended period of time, and not wearing masks because otherwise the virus is unlikely to be passed from one person to all the others. Here is more detail:Indoor transmission is MUCH more likely than outdoor. That doesn’t mean that the disease can’t ever move from person to person outside, but a vast majority of the cases have come from indoor transmission. If the superspreader or super-emitter is outside, even if he/she is right next to another person, they still don’t infect the people standing 10 or more feet away, due to the virus dispersing. However, in an indoor environment, it is possible for one infected person to infect every single person in the the room, even in fairly large spaces (depending on the HVAC systems). And when those people stay in that space for a a long time rather than moving around, the chance of infection skyrockets.Masks make a big difference. All the available data show that wearing masks helps prevent transmission. Those arguing against this now-apparent fact are usually doing so for political reasons, and citing information from months ago before the dynamics were fully understood. The key to the efficacy of mask-wearing is that it keeps carriers of the virus (including, and especially, asymptomatic ones) from putting high levels of it out into a wide area around them. It’s about outbound transmission more than protecting the wearer. And it works.Long periods of exposure to a contagious person or people are much riskier than brief ones. In order to infect someone, it’s not just a matter of exposure, but exposure to a certain level/amount of the virus for a certain amount of time, so that the person in question takes in enough of the virus to be infected. So walking past an infected person is far less likely to cause an infection than standing in an enclosed space with them. These factors all affect something called “viral load” which is critical to the understanding of infection.Crowding people into small spaces (relative to the number of people) is very risky. The more people there are in an enclosed area, the higher the risk, because of viral load. So even if the numbers aren’t huge, packing a lot of people into a small space can be dangerous. And overall, being unmasked in an indoor environment for a long time with an infected person is very risky, while passing by masked people outdoors for brief periods is much less so.Social events tend to show the worst transmission because people stand closer together and they face each other much more (meaning they are breathing out large quantities of particles into the faces of others, where they can be immediately breathed in). Social events also tend to mean that people are touching each other much more, and for longer.Isolated communities of people tend to be safer than places where “outsiders” come into the area, potentially carrying the disease with them. If there is no infection in a community, there’s nowhere to get the disease except if it’s brought in by someone from outside. It has to come from somewhere.The spread of this disease (and superspreader events in particular) is “clumpy”. Just because there is risky behavior doesn’t guarantee that there will always be transmission, because there are so many factors at play. In general, you don’t see an even curve of infections across all contagious people, you see a huge number of the cases resulting from a fairly small number of concentrated sources, while others “get lucky”. So the infections have a tendency to flare up badly in specific areas or populations, while they remain under control in others. It’s a bit like wild fires, where many fires can just burn out and be non-events, while one or two particular ones can cause a whole section of the country burn, as we are seeing on the U.S.’s west coast right now.Ok, so on to the differences between the events, and why one became a super spreader event, while the other seems not to have:The percentage of people wearing masks at Sturgis was almost nil. In pictures, you can’t even find a single person with a mask, because less than 1% of attendees wore them.Meanwhile, at the BLM protests, it was almost the opposite, with a few people not wearing masks, but the majority wearing them. Sure there were some not wearing them, or wearing them improperly, but the contrast was stark.The BLM protests took place pretty much entirely outdoors, where transmission is much less likely. Furthermore, a large percentage of the protests were marches, where the people keep moving, and don’t stay in any one place in close proximity to others for long periods of time. They were on the move and weren’t able to build up high viral load exposures. By contrast, Sturgis, even though it was a motorcycle event, and had some outdoor gatherings each day, also saw most of the participants going to restaurants and bars afterwards, and socializing indoors.Because Sturgis was a social event, not only were people spending a lot of time indoors as well, but they were spending long periods indoors together, with the same people around them. That meant that if there was an infected person in the room, there was a good chance for them to infect hundreds of others. Meanwhile, at the outdoor marches of BLM, people tended to pass each other fleetingly, and anyone infected was much less likely to be spending lots of time in close proximity to any one group of people indoors. The protestors for the most part went home after they marched. Meanwhile, Sturgis is famous for being a hookup hot spot. What happens in Sturgis stays in Sturgis. That means lots of people interacting closely, trying to pick each other up, and then going to indoor places to get intimate.While the protests tended to feature the participants all facing the same way in marches or demonstrations (and masked), the social events of Sturgis meant that most of these unmasked people were facing each other a lot, and talking/touching closely. That’s a great way to contract an airborne communicable disease.But maybe the biggest difference of all between the Sturgis rally and the BLM protests was sheer numbers. The BLM movement featured lots of marches around the country, and many, many thousands of people participated in total in various locations. But most individual marches included a few hundred people. The larger ones mostly featured several thousand. And they were scattered, moving, and a few hours long. But Sturgis had an attendance of more than 462,182 people and they stayed there for 10 days. Take that in for a minute. Originally expected to be an already huge 250,000, the final attendance was almost double that! It was many times larger and much longer than any BLM protest, in addition to all the other factors already mentioned.Most of the larger protests took place in large cities that had lots of room to march around and gather in clusters outside. They are spaces designed for millions of people to live in. Meanwhile, Sturgis is a small town. And when I say small, I don’t mean that it’s not quite as big as major cities. I mean it’s TINY. The normal population of Sturgis when the rally isn’t going on is LESS THAN 7,000 PEOPLE. Yep, it’s so tiny, it wouldn't even be on most maps. It’s minuscule. And they packed more than 70 times the number of people it’s designed for into the town’s facilities. That’s a recipe for disaster.Not only did Sturgis pack their small infrastructure with close to half a million people in a town build for a few thousand, but those people came from all around the country and world to gather there. That meant that people were coming from places with high rates of infection, and bringing the virus with them all to one tiny place. Those 462,182 people then all went home to the various places they live, and brought the disease back with them, allowing it to spread in hundreds of other places as well. This kind of centralized gathering with participants from a variety of outside areas has a well established history of causing infections. Many other superspreader events have had this type of structure, including the conventions that have been identified as the early sources of most of the pandemic’s spread. Meanwhile, the BLM protests were mostly populated by local residents of the cities they were held in. In fact, the average BLM protest featured between 80% and 92% locals. Sure there were a few headlines about a handful of outside agitators coming in from the suburbs or other cities to stir things up. But the vast majority of BLM protestors were local, so there were far fewer new sources of infection. It wasn’t that different from the population that is normally in those places. And in major cities, most of the people have been traveling far less than usual due to the pandemic. Also, the protestors didn’t then take the virus elsewhere, because they were already in their hometowns.One additional reason that the BLM protests got lucky with their low viral spread (and I use lucky purposely, as there was definitely potential risk involved) is timing. The largest BLM protests took place during widespread lockdowns and mainly in major cities where the virus was already being controlled fairly effectively. So there were far fewer sources of infection present in the local populations. The case counts were falling in New York and many of the other protest sites. Meanwhile, Sturgis took place in late summer, when case counts had started to rise much more widely in various places around the country that hadn’t had widespread infections when the protests broke out. And people came from far and wide to Sturgis, bringing the virus from locales that had outbreaks. A disproportionate number of attendees of the Sturgis rally came from states in which infections had spread aggressively over the summer. So timing was a very likely factor in the differences as well.While Sturgis saw their local population suddenly grow by 70 times and social events flourished, many of the residents of the cities where the protests were happening stayed home. Even though large-ish numbers marched, the total number of people on the streets in most places actually went down, as non-protestors often stayed at home for safety’s sake. Some cities even had curfews. So the aggressive protests, riots, and looting kept the streets bare of anyone else. For better or for worse, this meant much less risk of transmission. And while this was happening, far fewer people frequented local businesses. In a bizarre way, the BLM protests may even have been slightly protective for this reason.All of this said, it was certainly possible that the BLM protests could have borne a few superspreaders of their own, due to the clumpy nature of the epidemiology. There were some inherent risk factors in those gatherings, too, after all. And we are very lucky they didn’t lead to any significant infection clusters. But no matter how much luck they may have had, those events were nowhere near as risky as Sturgis from an epidemiological standpoint, for all of the above reasons. It’s important that we don’t assume that there is no risk for large gatherings of any type going forward. Media outlets may play up or play down risks based on their political leanings, but the virus doesn’t care what you believe or which party you prefer.ADDENDUM (3/16/21): As we have learned more about the virus, and the ways it tends to spread, additional factors have come to light that further explain the chasm between the viral spread attributable to Sturgis and that associated with the BLM protests. One of the most important newer understandings is that super spreaders (the 20% responsible for about 80% of cases) tend to be both older and have higher levels of obesity than the general population. This leads to yet another way in which Sturgis and the scattered BLM protests were quite different. The average age of Sturgis attendees has consistently fallen in the 54–56 year-old range. This is in stark contrast to the BLM protestors, of whom up to 74% were 18–34. And a much higher percentage of the Sturgis attendees were obese. This meant that a much larger percentage of the attendees at Sturgis fell into the groups most likely to be super spreaders.

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Although the terms wildlife sanctuary, national park and biosphere reserve are often used interchangeably, they are actually descending orders of conservation.Wildlife Sanctuaries - Catagory Ia and IbA wildlife sanctuary is a place of refuge where endangered, abused, injured or indigenous wildlife may live without pressure. This is generally a refuge or end-of-line destination for surplus animals. It should be noted that some “sanctuaries” rely on breeding animals for resale to supplement operation expenses. True wildlife sanctuaries do not breed or exploit for commercial activities (including, but not limited to: use of animals for entertainment or sport, sale or trade of animals, their offspring or animal parts and by-products.)A true wildlife sanctuary provides a safe, healthy and secure refuge in enclosures specifically designed for the unique animal which it supports. There are three in California dedicated to caring for former performing animals through an organization called PAWS.Some private sanctuaries are designed to preserve natural settings and do not allow hunting and limit development to maintained trails throughout the sanctuary, such as the Doreflinger-Suydam facility in Pennsylvania.This conservancy is similar to many preserves established by the Audubon Society.Editorial: Unlike PETA, which regularly euthanizes cats and dogs, many small groups and organizations have dedicated their lives to the care and preservation of all creatures great and small. The true champions of animals are never recognized for their contribution, nor do they collectively receive the funds PETA is showered with annually. PETA preserves nothing but an image and protects nothing but an agenda.National Park - Category IIIn New South Wales (NSW) the National Parks are described as large areas of public land set aside for native plants, animals and the places in which they live. Furthermore, national parks protect places of natural beauty. They also protect places important to Aboriginal people, and places that show how people lived in the past.In the UK there are 15 members in the national park family, which are protected areas because of their beautiful countryside, wildlife and cultural heritage. People live and work in the national parks and the farms, villages and towns are protected along with the landscape and wildlife. National parks welcome visitors and provide opportunities for everyone to experience, enjoy and learn about their special qualities.Since 1916, the US National Park Service has been entrusted with the care of national parks stretching from Maine to Hawaii, which currently total 59. The park system was established to preserve the natural beauty and integrity of designated wilderness areas.The National Park Service preserves unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations. The Park Service cooperates with partners to extend the benefits of natural and cultural resource conservation and outdoor recreation throughout this country and the world.In its broadest sense a national park is anything reserved for conservation purposes. Often it is a site of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual nations designate their own national parks differently, there is a common idea: the conservation of 'wild nature' for posterity and as a symbol of national pride.Biosphere Reserve - Catagory VIBiosphere reserves are areas of terrestrial and coastal ecosystems promoting solutions to reconcile the conservation of biodiversity with its sustainable use. They are internationally recognized, nominated by national governments and remain under sovereign jurisdiction of the states where they are located.Biosphere reserves serve in some ways as “living laboratories” for testing out and demonstrating integrated management of land, water and biodiversity. Collectively, biosphere reserves form a World Network. Within this network, exchanges of information, experiences and personnel are facilitated.IUCN Protected Areas Categories SystemIa Strict Nature Reserve: Category Ia are strictly protected areas set aside to protect biodiversity and also possibly geological/geomorphical features, where human visitation, use and impacts are strictly controlled and limited to ensure protection of the conservation values. Such protected areas can serve as indispensable reference areas for scientific research and monitoring more...Ib Wilderness Area: Category Ib protected areas are usually large unmodified or slightly modified areas, retaining their natural character and influence without permanent or significant human habitation, which are protected and managed so as to preserve their natural condition. more...II National Park: Category II protected areas are large natural or near natural areas set aside to protect large-scale ecological processes, along with the complement of species and ecosystems characteristic of the area, which also provide a foundation for environmentally and culturally compatible, spiritual, scientific, educational, recreational, and visitor opportunities. more...III Natural Monument or Feature: Category III protected areas are set aside to protect a specific natural monument, which can be a landform, sea mount, submarine cavern, geological feature such as a cave or even a living feature such as an ancient grove. They are generally quite small protected areas and often have high visitor value. more...IV Habitat/Species Management Area: Category IV protected areas aim to protect particular species or habitats and management reflects this priority. Many Category IV protected areas will need regular, active interventions to address the requirements of particular species or to maintain habitats, but this is not a requirement of the category. more...V Protected Landscape/ Seascape: A protected area where the interaction of people and nature over time has produced an area of distinct character with significant, ecological, biological, cultural and scenic value: and where safeguarding the integrity of this interaction is vital to protecting and sustaining the area and its associated nature conservation and other values.more...VI Protected area with sustainable use of natural resources: Category VI protected areas conserve ecosystems and habitats together with associated cultural values and traditional natural resource management systems. They are generally large, with most of the area in a natural condition, where a proportion is under sustainable natural resource management and where low-level non-industrial use of natural resources compatible with nature conservation is seen as one of the main aims of the area more...