Sylvie Paillard
[email protected]
The provincial government may soon acknowledge something many Squamish residents have known for a long time: mountain biking is good for the economy.
On Tuesday (Jan. 10), representatives from four B.C. ministries met with various mountain biking groups, including the Squamish Off-Road Cycling Association (SORCA), to begin working out policies for biking on provincial Crown forest land. SORCA was the only bike club invited to the meeting, and that's a testament to the club's enduring work in promoting the relatively new sport, said SORCA representative Bryan Raiser.
"It takes quite the work for a new sport to become legitimized and Squamish is a community that has truly embraced mountain biking as a legitimate activity," he said. "People see how Squamish the town and our bike club have worked together to bring fantastic events and our completely volunteer trail network."
Along with the provincial ministries, the working group also includes Parks Canada, the Mountain Biking Tourism Association, Cycling BC, Grassland Conservation Council and the Outdoor Recreation Council of B.C.
The group's mission is to establish policies that will ensure a cohesive approach to biking on B.C. Crown forest land; it means being proactive in addressing conflicts instead of reactive, said Raiser.
"You have everyone from naive kids with no idea what proper trail construction means to experts building great things in the woods," he said. "Conflict comes from someone getting hurt on the poorly made things. If you at least have rules it gives you something to work with."
The group will address a myriad of recreational biking issues including freedom from conflict with other trail users and tenured land/resource users, prevention of trail degradation, minimization of environmental impact and legal liability, and prevention of disturbance to nearby property owners.
The group began the process with an information meeting where stakeholders were given a copy of a recently completed report on non-commercial mountain biking drafted for the Ministry of Tourism Sport and the Arts, which is the agency responsible for managing trail development on B.C.'s 48 million hectares of Crown forest land.
Although SORCA would like to see policy implementing a new recreation park designation, "any policy that helps biking is great," said Raiser. "An acknowledgement of mountain biking is a good start."
The working group will meet on several occasions throughout the winter and spring to accomplish the numerous tasks necessary to bring informed recommendations to the province. Recommendations are expected by March 31, 2006.
