<
https://www.wired.com/story/bike-park-wales-rewilding-private-sector-finance/>
"The dark spaces beneath the conifers make it feel as if the mountain bikers
are emerging from nowhere. Racing down the hill, they slalom perilously close
to the trees, bouncing over roots, rocks, and purpose-built jumps, their
progress punctuated by the occasional, adrenaline-fueled whoop of delight.
This is Bike Park Wales, arguably the best—and certainly the
best-known—mountain bike trail center in the UK. Organized like a ski resort,
with color-graded trails of different difficulties and a shuttle bus uplift,
the park has been a runaway success since it first opened in 2013. It now
attracts upwards of 100,000 visitors every year to the former mining town of
Merthyr Tydfil, with downhill enthusiasts traveling from all over Europe to
ride trails like “Popty Ping,” a legendary, jump-filled blue run named after a
colloquial Welsh word for microwave.
With over 40 such trails, Bike Park Wales’ owners have already turned the
Gethin Woodland site, which they lease from the Welsh government, into an
unlikely mountain-biking mecca. Now, this small private company is proposing
something even more transformative. After a five-year renegotiation of its
lease, they have persuaded Natural Resources Wales (NRW), the government agency
that serves as their landlord, to embrace an ambitious nature-restoration
program.
Launched today, their jointly developed “Future Forest Vision” will not only
bring back biodiversity to the site, it will flip the conventional business
model for rewilding on its head—showcasing a completely new way to make
nature-restoration efforts economically viable. While farmers and other private
landowners often receive government subsidies for rewilding, Bike Park Wales is
the first example—in the UK at least—of a private company paying the government
to rewild public land.
This unusual arrangement grew out of a mixture of environmental and practical
concerns, according to Martin Astley, Bike Park Wales’ cofounder and director,
who set up the park along with his wife Anna and their business partners Rowan
and Liz Sorrell. Until the signing of this new, 33-year lease, Astley explains,
“Gethin Woodland was run as a commercial forest.” NRW sold timber from the
1,175-hectare site on behalf of the Welsh government, and “everything has been
planted with commercial value in mind,” Astley says. “So they would plant
conifer trees, grow them for 30 or 40 years, clear-fell them, and replant in a
cycle.”"
Via
Fix the News:
<
https://fixthenews.com/good-news-healthcare-americas-smoking-in-indonesia-hunger-in-brazil/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
