As part of the ‘Shape your state’ initiative being currently undertaken by the NSW government, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) is seeking comment from us – the Mountain Biking community – on what we would like to see happen with regards to trails in their areas.

Mountain Biking is already an accepted use of National Parks within NSW, but only on Firetrails and access roads, while enjoying singletrack in the parks is currently illegal. Singletrack in NPWS parks still gets a work out though, with plenty of riders ignoring the sanction and delving onto these trails; often causing some bad blood with trail managers and other users.

As part of the proposal, NPWS has released a discussion paper around Mountain Biking which you can read here, and it’s perhaps surprisingly supportive of Mountain Biking, its benefits to health and wellbeing, its role in park usage and advantages for the sustainability of these reserves.

NPWS has also been running a number of consultation workshops to gauge feedback from Mountain Bikers and other park users on the subject. They are unfortunately all complete now except for the final in Port Macquarie (Tuesday 19 October 6-8pm, Port Macquarie Golf Club) but there is still plenty of opportunity to be involved on their site.

Simply go to https://mountainbiking.discussions.nsw.gov.au/ and read the summary on each part of the proposal before adding your thoughts about each section. It doesn’t take long and just requires a little thought on each matter and a constructive comment. Remember, this is massive that NPWS is even considering our opinions, so they are looking for quality feedback about how Mountain Bikers can be included and meshed with all other park uses… Old complaints about how we have possibly been ignored in the past or arguing with other comments is just going to be ignored and make us look a bit juvenile – NPWS is also unlikely to build a ski lift in the Lane Cove National Park either, but we can see about that for next time perhaps?!

Submissions close in a week (Monday 23rd of October 2010) so get in now and have your say before it’s too late – no letters to write, no ‘dear sirs’ or hard-core formatting required – simply read and comment, and remember that our strength is in our numbers, so just by commenting you are advancing the cause!