Mountain biking advocacy: Chattahoochee River NRA
Last week mudhunny and I attended a public meeting to represent mountain bikers in the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area management planning process. IMBA was on top of things and sent out an email letting us know about the meeting and after a quick ride at the Big Creek trails in Roswell we went to see what was up.
If you’ve never been to one of these types of meetings (it was our first) here’s what went down: Park Service employees were on hand in uniform signing everyone in and asking if people would like to register to speak at the podium. There were huge maps and various pamphlets on display explaining the different land use scenarios under consideration in the plan and what it would mean to various recreation groups (including mountain bikers).
After giving everyone a chance to mingle and look over the maps to understand the proposals, a National Park Service employee gave a brief intro and went over the history of the general management planning process. It turns out the whole thing was kicked off in 2000 (8 years ago!) and at this point the NPS is still gathering input before creating the final general management plan. Once the plan is complete and approved, it will be up to the NPS and various local groups to implement any new trails or facilities (no funding is attached to the plan itself). Based on the speed of the process so far I’d say there might be new singletrack in the Chattahoochee River NRA by about 2020 
At the meeting we were really excited to see so many mountain bikers voicing their opinions. Of the 8 residents who chose to make official statements at the podium, 6 were mountain bikers, and those who were not mountain bikers were basically neutral on the idea of off-road biking. One of the mountain bikers who spoke asked all the mountain bikers in the audience to stand up and represent and it turned out more than half of us (probably 25 out of 45) were riders! It’s going to be hard for the NPS to ignore us with that kind of vocal community support.
We also heard the NPS is beginning work at Sope Creek to redo many of the trails and it sounds like mountain bikers may see new singletrack there in the near future. Thanks to the hard work of IMBA and SORBA and vocal mountain bikers we’re beginning to see a change in attitudes toward mountain bikers here in north Georgia. I suspect the same thing is happening in other places thanks to the efforts of volunteers and professional advocates alike. Get involved in your community and see what a difference it can make!
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