2023-11-25 22:59:49
Girona The craze for bicycles in Girona’s regions continues to grow. Every weekend, thousands of cyclists, both local and foreign, set out on a route through Girona and its surroundings eager to cycle in a privileged natural environment. The lovers of mountain bike i la BTT find the paths of the Gavarres massif or the Garrotxa park an ideal terrain for sports, with steep climbs, car-free dirt tracks and vertiginous descents through narrow and steep paths.
The routes pass through many paths that are public and properly signposted, but also cross private estates, where, although it is often not forbidden to enter them, they are owned by farmers or ranchers who have farms there. Forest owners complain that hundreds of cyclists frequent their lands and a minority, but with significant effects, damage the land, open trails without permission and damage the fences that control the herds.
“Some cyclists like the risk and the adrenaline rush of going full throttle down trails in the middle of the forest, so they open up trails on their own and that disturbs the tranquility of the animals and causes very significant erosion problems, since, if you don’t cut them in time, they turn into artificial irrigation channels where the water comes down when it rains,” reports Joan Botey, member of a family company that manages a thousand hectares of biomass forestry in Gavarres. And he continues: “The number of cyclists keeps increasing exponentially, we have become an amusement park, some control or restriction must be put in place, because when the routes leave the public and signposted paths it is a disaster “.
An accident on a private estate, on trial
Private paths and forests on private estates are not designed for cycling and can be dangerous. Near Banyoles, Miquel Puigdevall has a corn plantation with a fence with electrified cables to protect the harvest from wild boar and roe deer attacks. A few months ago, a group opened a path with chainsaws and brush cutters to his farm and a cyclist had an accident with the electrical wiring: “He fell on the wires, broke a muscle and now he’s asking me for insurance for damages because the fence was not marked,” explains Puigdevall. The case is in court pending resolution. “It seems to me that the responsibility is exclusively theirs, because they have no name that they dare to jump over some very dangerous cliffs and, on top of that, if they get hurt, the owner of the property is to blame,” he argues.
They leave the cattle fences open
In Sant Aniol de Finestres, in La Garrotxa, Puigdevall also has some land where he grazes his herd of cows, which have to live with the weekend outings of cyclists. “They put on a charity race against cancer, which I think is fantastic, and they set up an ambush road to get the course through. On the day of the race, everything went really well because they left everything clean and tidy, but then, since the participants had the route on their mobile phones, cyclists continued to come in the following weeks and sometimes the fences that control the cattle were left open,” explains the rancher. “Because of this, we had to go and find 6 or 7 cows that had escaped towards Mieres”, laments Puigdevall, who has already given up taking the cows to this area. In outdoor trail mobile apps, you can find hundreds of itineraries for all tastes and levels, laid out by the same cyclists who share their routes publicly, without specifying whether the paths are public or private.
He has also had problems with the Nil Port herd, which also raises cows in La Garrotxa: “The cyclists come in groups, the first one opens the road fence and the last one often does not pass the barrier again; it is a weekend that you’re not in the farm, you don’t realize it and then you go running,” he corroborates. And he certifies: “Our cattle escape, one day they will go on the road and if something happens, it will be our fault.”
The Catalan Cycling Federation, aware of the problem
The owners ask the administration to take care of regulating the social use of the forest so that monitoring and control does not fall to the owners of each farm: “Apart from our work, we must dedicate ourselves to closing the fields and going across bundles of firewood on the paths, but someone has to put order so that everyone can enjoy nature without running over it”, defends Joan Botey. The Consorci de les Gavarres, which brings together owners, town councils and regional councils, is aware of these complaints and is working to find a solution. “Apart from the fact that some cyclists do not ask permission from the owner, in many parts of Gavarres we have a problem with the density of footpaths that damage the slope of the mountain, since when a footpath deteriorates, a new one is opened next to it” , assures the manager of the consortium, Quim Gubau Torrent.
The consortium has transferred the problem to the Catalan Cycling Federation, which assures that those responsible for clandestine corridors are not the federated clubs, which maintain a good understanding with the owners, but individual users who do not represent the sector and they cannot control them either.
#alert #erosion #mountain