Hi all. I sit on the committee for a small MTB club, we currently have 83 members. I was hoping to get some advice from others who have been in a similar position who have been successful in acquiring designated land for riding. Currently we have one designated area. There are other trail networks which are essentially illegal and on areas which are all marked for development now. Any thoughts and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
One of the keys is to consider tenure - whose land is it and what's the purpose of its current designation. Some land will never be available for recreation (military, Council Operational land etc). Appropriate land tenure and access agreements is usually essential for accessing public funding (ie grants) too.
Personally I think private land is way too risky for clubs, your hard work is at the whim of someone whos best interests may be served by selling or developing the land at a future point. I always try to find land that's in public ownership/management close to the population your looking to service. What sort of trails you want to build is critical in land choices too of course, no point accessing flat public land for DH
. Then think about scale, how long do you want the trails to be? That will dictate how large a parcel you need to source approval to use. For example one of our local trails is 4.5km long and very tight, and that takes most of a 20ha reserve.
If you have a number of parcels that would suit your needs and theyre under different land managers then you need to start selling MTBing to those land managers, you may well find some sympathy in some agencies, youll also likely run into issues, insurance is often raised so make sure you have answers before you step through the door.
When you do meet with land managers be clear in what it is you want, show examples (preferably local) of what you want and how it can work, use IMBA guidelines to provide credibility, describe your large membership (as mentioned above) and the recreational and health benefits (if public agency), preferably have some generic concept maps, but be clear that your flexible, nothing worse for a land manager than someone proposing to build recreational trails through areas of significance (and you may very well not know that a parcel is significant, therefore be flexible with your ideas)
You may need to abandon some of your existing illegal trails but starting with a fresh slate can be a good thing, particularly if you get security of tenure as a result.
Agency approaches/attitudes do vary across agencies and states. Sometimes this can be attributed to conflicting community pressures, ie its often difficult to get approval for trail development within urban areas, whereas rural/regional clubs often have much more amenable agencies to deal with, they want to get people onto theyre ground rather than fighting to keep them off.
And final thought, offer something in return. Offer to undertake clean Up Australia Day on that (or nearby) sites, do weed control works, set yourselves up as a bushcare group (which also builds trail), put up some cash for signage etc if you have it - contribute and make the land managers life easier, rather than harder.
Happy to offer more detail on any of the above (yes I work in public land management
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