Page 4932 - Week 13 - Thursday, 2 November 2017
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Not only do thousands of people use these trails, they host high profile biking events such as the Mont 24 and the Kowalski Classic. The Mont 24 is the largest mountain bike race in the country. The latest Kowalski Classic event occurred in September this year and was sold out, with over 1,200 participants and a waiting list. These are big, popular events in a well-used and highly valued recreational area.
These are some of the reasons it is particularly problematic that all of these trails are flagged for destruction due to planned logging in the pine forest. Some logging has already occurred in the past couple of months and has destroyed 32 recreational trails in Kowen Forest. One of the particularly unfortunate outcomes was that, as I understand it, the mountain biking community was promised that the logging would be done “sensitively” and that trails could—at least to some extent—be retained. This does not seem to have occurred. The first parcel of forest hosting these trails is completely destroyed, the trails are completely destroyed and there appears to have been no sensitivity shown at all. It looks like a wasteland where the large logging machinery has just rolled in, in the same way as always, trails or no trails. It is actually a very sad outcome.
The community that built and uses these trails is aware that the forest is used for commercial logging. They were under the impression, however, that there could be a more nuanced approach, and that the trails and logging could coexist in a happier way.
One of the key asks in my motion is for the government to investigate options for retaining the existing trails in Kowen Forest. This needs to occur immediately, before they are permanently destroyed. Once that happens, as has happened with 32 trails already, a valuable community resource is gone forever.
One of the ways this can happen is for the government to properly establish the true value to the community of the trail network in Kowen Forest, both as a stand-alone trail network and in combination with the other recreational venues around Canberra, such as Stromlo Forest Park and Majura Pines. Of course, this value is not just an economic value. There is an economic value from tourism and other commerce related to recreational activities, but there are also the broader benefits such as the social and health benefits to the community.
As yet the government have not properly assessed the real value of the recreational trails. They know how much money they will get from logging, but they have not valued the broader recreational value of the trails. I do not think a decision to destroy the trails should be taken without first properly looking at their value.
Numerous other jurisdictions have done work to determine the broader value of their planted forests. As just one example, a study of the recreational value of a planted forest on the fringe of Rotorua in New Zealand estimated its value at about $5.2 million annually from walking and $10.2 million annually from mountain biking. The value of the mountain biking alone is actually five times the annual timber revenue from that forest. We have to do the same work here in the territory. The authors of the Rotorua study summed it up well. They said:
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