Please investigate how mountain biking does damage habitat.
Illegal and legal trails are created by digging up what they call gold dirt around tree routes, which eventually kills the tree.
Important and valuable wetlands are built over, damaging habitat for amphibians.
The organic top duff layer of soil is an essential component to a healthy forest.
It contains everything from the rooting network of surrounding trees to important fungal networks and hundreds of invertebrates, so important to the food chain of birds and other wildlife.
Once removed, it can be detrimental to the health of the forest. It is being removed in cubic meters.
This is where salamanders and reptiles live and lay their eggs.
Also, rotting nurse logs contain thousands of micro-organisms that we don;t see that are essential to a health forest.
Trail builders chainsaw right through them.
Mineral soil is now exposed and is being leached out.
Minerals are an essential component for trees and any plant for food.
Roots need to go into the organic layer, the rotting compost and the system of fungus, to gain nutrients such as calcium, phosphates and carbon, and then they get minerals from soil deeper down - so trees need both layers to continue to grow.
Please represent all sides of this topic!
Elise Roberts
North Vancouver