New Forest Cycling Friendly ?

[IanKi]

I am lucky enough to live close by the New Forest. I was disappointed by the article regarding cycle access to the New Forest. I walk, cycle (off road), and watch the bird life on a very regular basis. If the author had chosen to identify and understand the devastating data showing the decline in forest bird life they would have understood why this unique and precious place needs greater protection. It is disingenuous to many naturalists who work tirelessly to support and monitor rare and threatened species that more “evidence” needs to be produced. The plain facts are that cyclists cover 5 to 10 times as much ground or track than pedestrians. Cyclists have evidently cycled across rare heathland, and peat bogs. And all they regularly using all types of routes. Electric bikes allow for an even greater distance and penetration across sensitive easily damaged ground. There is no easy answer, but for cyclists to enjoy the space it is not necessary to destroy heath habitats or peat covered tracks. It is clear that access to all gravel tracks is reasonable and unlikely to cause greater relative harm, these tracks are indeed more numerous than “official” cycle routes with no real justification for the discrepancy which is a worthy challenge for cycling UK. However it is very likely that to protect nature restrictions on access will be needed to more than just cyclists. The number of paths and car parks in the Forest has been reduced over time including those used by horse owners and walkers. This trend is likely to continue in order to offset the disturbance of sensitive flora and fauna. Or do we wish to degrade nature even further?

[slowster]

I presume you are referring to this article - https://www.cyclinguk.org/blog/new-fore ... ional-park. You have made a number of assertions without providing any evidence, and much of what you say seems unfounded prejudice.

If the author had chosen to identify and understand the devastating data showing the decline in forest bird life they would have understood why this unique and precious place needs greater protection. It is disingenuous to many naturalists who work tirelessly to support and monitor rare and threatened species that more “evidence” needs to be produced. The plain facts are that cyclists cover 5 to 10 times as much ground or track than pedestrians.

You have provided no evidence that people riding bikes have a greater adverse environmental impact than other groups in the New Forest, such as walkers. Such impact is not necessarily proportional to the distance covered. The 'plain fact' is that the vast majority of human disturbance of ground nesting birds is almost certainly due to walkers, and especially walkers with dogs not on a lead. Indeed the 'plain fact' that during the breeding season the New Forest Park Authority closes car parks close to significant bird populations is indicative that the biggest human caused threats to those birds are walkers and dogs.

Cyclists have evidently cycled across rare heathland, and peat bogs. And all they regularly using all types of routes. Electric bikes allow for an even greater distance and penetration across sensitive easily damaged ground. There is no easy answer, but for cyclists to enjoy the space it is not necessary to destroy heath habitats or peat covered tracks.

The number of people who attempt to ride across heathland and peat bogs will be very, very small, because people quickly realise that it is too hard going. The overwhelming majority of people on bikes stay on the gravel tracks, and if they venture off them they stick to the existing wide tracks and paths created by walkers and horses. Those paths are so well worn that people who ride a bike on them have no significant extra impact over their use by walkers and horses/horse riders.

You would do better to support the CUK's campaign, because the often irrational and arbitrary restrictions on cycling in the New Forest only encourage people to ignore the rules. A more sensible access policy for cyclists is likely to result in greater willingness to comply with rules about where not to cycle.

[yakdiver]

The people that live in the New Forest, if the truth was known, they all think it is theirs and no one else should be there

[IanKi]

Disturbance does impact birds. This is evident through the loss of bird populations. Disturnace can cause stress at distances over 100 metres by the birds taking flight this stops feeding, disturbs nesting sites. Hampshire Ornithological society have decades of data showing the steady decline in breeding populations. How can you deny this fact (https://www.hos.org.uk/welcome-to-the-h ... g-surveys/) Bikes are being regularly ridden in sensitive areas in increasing numbers. Also E bikes do reduce the stamina needed to penetrate such track routes increasing the harm. What more evidence do you and UK cycling need? Or is the campaign also founded on prejudice against protecting nature? I will never support a campaign founded on ignorance and denial.

[jgurney]

Those paths are so well worn that people who ride a bike on them have no significant extra impact over their use by walkers and horses/horse riders.

Based purely upon observations from walking and cycling in the area, there are places where there is significant path and land erosion which does seen to be due to cycling. I am not clear about the physics of it, but it does look as if a given number of people on MTBs riding over soft or damp ground do cause more impact than the same number of walkers. (Someone with more knowledge of the process may be able to explain why that occurs, is it because the wheels are constantly on the ground and exerting force against it roughly parallel to the surface, while pedestrians mainly push upwards?). One annoying kind of damage seen in various places is where MTBs have evidently been ridden repeatedly around the same small circular path, often to repeatedly ride up or down a particular slope or ford a stream.

The number of people who attempt to ride across heathland and peat bogs will be very, very small, because people quickly realise that it is too hard going.

The trouble with that argument is that a number of MTB riders seem to deliberately seek out hard going (or more exactly soft going), not avoid it.

Personally I have not found many of the gravel tracks open to cycling to be much use, as many do not connect anywhere to anywhere else and some are practically circular. When I want to wander in the woods and come back where I started, it makes more sense to park the bike and do that on foot, which gives me a much greater choice of routes. For getting around the Forest I usually find the general-purpose roads are often the only reasonably direct options.

I suspect the lack of gravel tracks, etc, which make useful links between settlements, however small, leads to local utility and commuting cyclists seeing no point in them and not being willing to get involved in campaigning for them.

[slowster]

Disturbance does impact birds. This is evident through the loss of bird populations. Disturnace can cause stress at distances over 100 metres by the birds taking flight this stops feeding, disturbs nesting sites. Hampshire Ornithological society have decades of data showing the steady decline in breeding populations. How can you deny this fact (https://www.hos.org.uk/welcome-to-the-h ... g-surveys/) Bikes are being regularly ridden in sensitive areas in increasing numbers. Also E bikes do reduce the stamina needed to penetrate such track routes increasing the harm. What more evidence do you and UK cycling need? Or is the campaign also founded on prejudice against protecting nature? I will never support a campaign founded on ignorance and denial.

You have provided absolutely no evidence of the impact of cycling on bird populations. None. Stating that bird numbers have declined, that disturbance impacts birds, that cycling is disturbance, and then implicitly blaming cycling for the decline in bird numbers is not science, it is prejudice.

The impact of cyclists on the ground nesting bird population is probably trivial and I doubt very much that it has been a significant factor in the decline in the population. Focusing on cyclists and demonising them, when they are not the problem, is intellectually dishonest and counterproductive, because it undermines work to identify the significant causes of the decline and determine the best strategies to reverse it. From what I have read of the scientific studies being conducted, it seems the decline in the ground nesting bird population may be due mainly to ground predators such as foxes, followed by avian predators. The main human cause will almost certainly be walkers and dogs not on leads.

[Zulu Eleven]

Disturbance does impact birds. This is evident through the loss of bird populations. Disturnace can cause stress at distances over 100 metres by the birds taking flight this stops feeding, disturbs nesting sites. Hampshire Ornithological society have decades of data showing the steady decline in breeding populations. How can you deny this fact (https://www.hos.org.uk/welcome-to-the-h ... g-surveys/) Bikes are being regularly ridden in sensitive areas in increasing numbers. Also E bikes do reduce the stamina needed to penetrate such track routes increasing the harm. What more evidence do you and UK cycling need? Or is the campaign also founded on prejudice against protecting nature? I will never support a campaign founded on ignorance and denial.

I’m the person who wrote the article in question - and as it happens, I studied, trained in, and qualified in, forestry and wildlife management.

The straw man here is in the initial assertion, that “disturbance impacts birds”. The reality is that nobody questions this, all recreational use has an impact. The question is whether the impact of cycling can be differentiated from the impact of other recreational activities that *are* permitted. At the moment, walking and horseriding are permitted across the entirety of the common land and Crown lands of the New Forest (as a result of S193 of the Law of Property Act 1925).

As I commented in the article:

So I do have sympathy to some of the concerns that have been elucidated by the Verderers over the potential impact of increased levels of recreation on wildlife and conservation, or on how more visitors might lead to increasing urbanisation of the countryside.

But I think the way these concerns are being targeted to blame and victimise a tiny proportion of the New Forest’s users (about 5% of visitors) is shameful.

The greatest impacts on the wildlife and habitat of the New Forest are from issues such as dogs off leads (around 30% of New Forest visitors, over five million visits a year, are for dog-walking) and from the ever-present automobile.

93% of visitors to the National Park arrive by car and in order to accommodate this, there are over 130 public car parks on Forestry England land within the New Forest.

The published studies on impact (for example NECR013) conclude that the available evidence identifies no significant differential impact between user groups, for example:

2.29. In their study of wintering waterfowl in two estuaries in Suffolk, Ravenscroft et al. (2008) recorded a behavioural response from birds for just over 20% of the instances that cycling was observed. This was broadly similar to the percentage of times walkers, walkers with dogs and joggers caused disturbance

And that

Mountain biking and horse riding may pose additional pressure on montane or moorland habitats susceptible to trampling and erosion. Horse riding is more likely to have a greater impact than mountain biking, due to the greater pressure imposed by the former and the greater likelihood of cyclists to stay on trails.

Further, it’s widely accepted that the impact of dog walking (as many are off leads) is much higher than any other recreational use - however there are currently no legal restrictions on dogs in the New Forest.

So here we have a situation where cycling in the New Forest is not only restricted to Forest roads and permitted routes (as on most of the rest of the Forestry England estate) but restricted over and above that to only a small selection of the existing forest road network - all of which are designed and specified for 44 ton timber lorries - yet all of us know that the NF is cross-crossed with Forest roads, Land Rover tracks and other surfaced routes, many of which are unrecorded historic rights of way.

So where does this leave us? Are you calling for restrictions on walkers and horse riders to permitted routes only? Or is it only cyclists that need restriction? Because in reality this is the essential problem with access in the New Forest, and why the article is relevant - because we have one recreational activity being treated differently from others without any form of evidence base justifying differential treatment.

ts also of significant importance that one of the key rules within a National Park is that of the statutory dual purposes - that within an NP, policies need to be set taking into regard the dual purposes

i) to conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of the national park
ii) to promote opportunities for the understanding and enjoyment of the special qualities of the national park by the public

It should be noted that these priorities are of dual and equal status. The National Park is expected to do both of these things, subject to the Sandford principle: that where irreconcilable conflicts exist between conservation and public enjoyment, then conservation interest should take priority.

So I’ll throw you an open challenge on your complaint/argument - can you demonstrate a valid justification for treating cycling differently from walking or horseriding, both of which are permitted?

[IanKi]

I agree in general with your deeper analysis. Was this within your article I did I miss that piece? I do think that there is a clear bias against cyclists. But actually it might be that nature conservation is the root cause of the bias? Cycling on any “gravel track” I believe strikes an accord between cycle recreation and nature. Deeper more intense penetration into the whole forest area will cause more strain on our desperate and dying nature. Nature is a balance. The real truth is man is unfriendly to nature currently. However there is unlikely to be better understanding of the consequences of more access, No enforcement by the authorities, and more angst between users of the Forest. The lead article was biased and totally disrespectful of nature, and local businesses that fully support enjoyable responsible cycling. Good discussion mind you and good luck with your quest. I will read your progress reports and judge for myself if my subscription is being spent wisely. Fancy a ride when you’re next down our way? Permitted routes only I know some good ones!

[Vorpal]

Surely allowing people to drive there causes far more disturbance than cycling?

[IanKi]

These are tracks not accessible to cars. There are quite a few road routes through the Forest where cyclists are free to ride.

[slowster]

Taking ground nesting birds and the curlew in particular:

Prior to the mid 19th Century there were no curlews in the New Forest (1). As a breeding ground it appears that the New Forest has always been at best only marginally favourable to supporting even a just a small population of the birds. As the maps in this article show, the New Forest population is an outlier in southern England - https://www.whatthesciencesays.org/brie ... servation/.

The main reasons for declining population appear to be the same factors which presumably have always made the New Forest no better than marginally favourable, namely predation of the eggs and chicks by nocturnal mammals in particular, e.g. foxes, and by avian predators (2). From what I have read the New Forest already has a lower than average fox population density. Reducing it even further to the level that might make a difference to curlew breeding success seems unrealistic (and a questionable human intervention). According to the article linked above, higher levels of tree woodland in proximity to the open ground where curlews breed result in increased fox and corvid activity, and the New Forest has a lot of woodland.

It seems therefore that current levels of predation which keep the curlew population hovering around the margin of sustainability are inherent to the New Forest.

If the curlews in the New Forest were the last surving breeding population in Europe, I could understand making extra special efforts to conserve and protect them, but there are much larger populations in the north of England where the conditions are far more favourable for them. The birds are rare in southern England because most of it does not favour them. The New Forest is an exception in having some areas that do favour them, but even so it is still only marginally favourable.

A balance needs to be struck, and in this case not only does the evidence indicate that human disturbance is not the biggest problem, but also to the extent that it is a problem it is walkers, especially those with dogs off leads, that are the big issue, not people on bikes, e.g.

New Forest Curlew Survey 2016: Pressures
• Observers were also asked to record pressures, preferably during one-hour effort-
corrected counts
• A wide range of pressures were recorded, with those disturbing incubating
Curlews including avian predators (Buzzards, Peregrines, Carrion Crows) and
recreational disturbance (mostly dog-walkers and runners/walkers off the path)

From https://www.curlewcall.org/wp-content/u ... l-Wynn.pdf

https://twitter.com/curlewrecovery/stat ... 49/photo/1

https://group.rspb.org.uk/southwiltshir ... ew-forest/

1. http://www.newforestexplorersguide.co.u ... urlew.html

2. https://www.curlewrecovery.org/post/wel ... he-manager

[Vorpal]

These are tracks not accessible to cars. There are quite a few road routes through the Forest where cyclists are free to ride.

I meant just driving to it. Car parks, noise & air pollution, etc.

[IanKi]

Curlews are actually present. They are overall a species in decline. Are you suggesting it is Ok to ride over nesting sites because your view allows this? So you are not biased? The birds are clearly in need of protection. Dismissing plain facts in the name of science is disingenuous as I said earlier. No data from Wild NewForest, RSPB, or Hampshire Ornithological Society is quoted or referenced. It appears is your bias that is stopping you from protecting nature. Think before you pedal anywhere at any cost. You will get cyclists a bad reputation. Or perhaps you already have?

[Vorpal]

Curlews are actually present. They are overall a species in decline. Are you suggesting it is Ok to ride over nesting sites because your view allows this? So you are not biased? The birds are clearly in need of protection. Dismissing plain facts in the name of science is disingenuous as I said earlier. No data from Wild NewForest, RSPB, or Hampshire Ornithological Society is quoted or referenced. It appears is your bias that is stopping you from protecting nature. Think before you pedal anywhere at any cost. You will get cyclists a bad reputation. Or perhaps you already have?

No one is saying we should go riding over nesting sites. Frankly, nesting sites favoured by curlews (tussocks & tall, concealing vegetation) are not very good cycling terrain, even for mountain bikers. Rather than dismissing science, slowster provided evidence.

RSPB was the publisher of one of the links slowster provided & a contributor to another, along with the Curlew Recovery Partnership. Are they biased?

[slowster]

For the record, the manager of the Curlew Recovery Partnership is Professor Russell Wynn, who is one of the two directors and founders of Wild New Forest. Steering group members of the CRP include the RSPB and BTO. Professor Wynn was the author of the slide presentation on the 2016 New Forest Curlew Survey to which I linked. As the second slide noted, coordinators and stakeholders in the survey included Wild New Forest, Hampshire Ornithological Society, BTO and the RSPB.