Central Coast mountain bike community fight for their future
“Removing mountain biking from the bush is like trying to remove surfing from the beach, one simply does not exist without the other”: That was the message from the mountain bike community as it fights for its future on the coast.
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“Removing mountain biking from the bush is like trying to remove surfing from the beach, one simply does not exist without the other.”
This was the strong message from the mountain bike community this week, as they fought to continue riding in the coast’s natural bushland tracks and spaces.
Leif Arnebark, from Central Coast Mountain Bike Club, spoke at Monday’s council meeting in response to Deputy Mayor Jane Smith’s motion for the council to build a dedicated mountain bike facility to exclude riders from environmental land.
Mr Arnebark said the coast was the ideal environment for mountain bikers, filled with bushland and stunning views.
“Yet we do not have even one single metre of sanctioned mountain bike trails within council’s extensive natural spaces,” he said.
“Mountain biking is a key way to conserve our natural spaces. Residents and tourists who engage in active lifestyle pursuits within bushland grow to value that.”
The vote ended up in favour of the bikers, with Cr Smith’s motion voted down. Councillors instead voted to acknowledge the economic and social benefits of mountain biking and continue working on the Mountain Bike Feasibility Study to develop facilities and tracks.
Cr Smith said her motion was “a very much genuine attempt to work with mountain bike community to solve problems.”
“I do have concerns about the pressure to allow mountain biking in our environmentally sensitive lands,” she said.
She said the council’s Coastal Open Space System (COSS) lands were for passive recreation.
“Mountain biking is not passive recreation, it causes damage, it displaces other uses and it displaces wildlife. Kincumber Mountain in particular, much of it is identified as endangered ecological communities and regionally significant vegetation. 22km of a mountain bike will clear the equivalent of a football field.”
Mr Arnebark said mountain biking had a similar environmental footprint to bushwalking.
“This ongoing concept that mountain biking adversely affects the environment has been put to bed,” he said.
“National Parks and Wildlife consider mountain bike trails to be an appropriate use of natural space, NSW has a strategy written on how to construct and maintain sustainable mountain bike trails.
“It is important to note that mountain biking essentially only occurs within environmental lands, bushland is intrinsic to the recreation of mountain biking.”
Fellow mountain biker Jonathan Curtis said any suggestion that mountain biking should be removed from environmental lands is “unrepresentative of the interests of the mountain biking community”.
He said it is not hard to find examples of mountain bikers caring for the environment and taking action against threats.
“We can look to the recent example of trail sabotage in Bouddi National Park as an example of this,” he said,
“While this specific example is outside the jurisdiction of Central Coast Council, it is likely that similar acts which threaten to maim both humans and wildlife will continue if the council supports this motion and invalidates mountain biking in natural environments.”
The issue also made it to NSW parliament this week with Wyong state Labor MP David Harris submitting a notice of motion for Central Coast to work with the mountain bike community to explore the benefits of the activity to the community.