Letter from Mission
The FVMBA recently received a letter from the City of Mission regarding unauthorized trail construction on Bear and Red mountains in Mission. We support authorized trail construction and is more than willing to assist trail builders when there is a desire to create new, legitimate trails.
The author of the letter has given permission to present the letter in it’s entirety.
Dear Mountain Bike riders
Re: Unauthorized Trail Construction in Mission Municipal Forest
Over the past few decades, we have had the opportunity to meet with several of you and talk about improvements to recreation infrastructure in the Municipal Forest. We also acknowledge the efforts you all make in keeping trails open for use.
And while you enjoy using the Crown and Private land that make up the Municipal Forest area, we asked for only one thing in return – that no new trails be constructed without first speaking to us. There are several benefits to discussing your recreation ideas with us:
- We have long term forest management plans and objectives that we can communicate with you. Some areas have been set aside as long term reserves – which may be able accommodate permanent recreation infrastructure. Other areas have had several silviculture treatments and management activities and are scheduled for harvesting in the short term. Should you build a recreation trail without approval, you may find that several months of your efforts will be wasted as harvesting has been planned to take place soon after you are completed.
- We have ideas on logical trail and road linkages and would appreciate any volunteer services that you would like to contribute to making these connections possible. If trails are located where we are in agreement, we can incorporate them into having some kind of semi-permanent protection either for the short or long term.
- It is against the law to construct a recreation trail without authority from the Crown - http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/tasb/legsregs/frpa/frpa/part5.htm#section57 and fines up to $100,000 can be levied by the Crown to the builders.
- As some of you might know, we are currently working on a large integrated recreation plan for the west side of Stave Lake. This will be an exciting opportunity to plan and construct a variety of recreation trails including Mtn bike trails. However, we need to demonstrate to the approving agencies (MOF and MOTCA) that we have a “handle bar” on our current recreation development on the east side (ie. Bear Mtn and Red Mtn).
Note: Here are some examples of the issues that we have on Bear and Red Mtn:
-There have been some conflicts with our forestry planning and unauthorized trails. Someone has removed our operational flagging boundaries thereby wasting thousands of dollars that could have gone towards recreation development.
-Several trails and structures that were built in the past have not been maintained by those builders – resulting in unsafe situations for recreation users.
-Trails built through planned management areas cannot be accommodated. We will not change harvesting plans, nor will we put trails back in place after harvesting in unauthorized areas.
-Some trails have been built on private property, causing severe disruption to those property owners. Imagine someone coming to your residence and building something in your backyard without permission?
-The current network of trails is not well organized, marked or mapped properly. We have had people getting lost and we have had inexperienced riders getting on trails that were beyond their riding capabilities
Here is an example of a recent unauthorized trail construction, that we now have to take some action on:
-We are aware of a trail that has been built on Bear Mountain from the microwave tower road, without our permission or permission granted from the Crown, through the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Arts.
-We had the intention of ignoring this construction, until an extremely long superstructure leaving the gravel road surface was built. This draws complete attention to this unauthorized trail. This become apparent during an agency audit and unfortunately, we cannot have attention drawn to a feature which we did not authorize and have no intention of maintaining for the safe use by the public.
-If the builder had consulted with us prior to the construction of the trail, they would have found out that we had hand fertilized the Douglas-fir in this area in 2005, for a scheduled harvest by 2010-2011. This is information that we could have easily given before someone dedicated an enormous amount of work into the building in this location.
-We want to let the builder know that this structure has to be removed before the end of February, otherwise the District of Mission will be obligated to remove it.
-This is just one example of what happens when the proper consultation and planning does not take place.
Therefore we request that you respect the Municipal Forest and we ask for your full cooperation in not developing trails without consultation and approval from our department and the agencies. From this point forward, failure to do so will result in such trails and structures in the Municipal Forest being dismantled. We are very fortunate here in Mission to have an amazing recreation area in our backyard. We want to work with you guys to establish a first class recreation area for all users.
We welcome your comments, ideas and cooperation.
Bob O’Neal, RPF
Forestry Manager
District of Mission
(604) 820-3763 (direct office number)
(604) 826-8633 (fax)
(604) 302-4083 (cel)
boneal@mission.ca
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