Anika Begay
Non-native species such as Sitka spruce and locust pine were often favored for their qualities as a timber crop. Trees were planted in “coupes,” areas of several acres, at a time, “and they were planted in straight lines, so they were easier to harvest.” This resulted in a forest that was “genetically very undiverse and really bad habitat for wildlife,” Astley explains, with trees of uniform height blocking light from the forest floor, preventing other species from thriving.
If this plantation-style forest was bad for biodiversity, Astley and his cofounders quickly realized it was bad for their business, too. “The two things don’t mix very well, commercial forestry and a mountain bike park,” he says. Mountain bike trails, narrow strips of land that are rarely more than a meter wide, don’t cover much actual land. “In terms of percentage, we probably use 1.5 percent of the site,” Astley says. But the longer trails wind for 5 kilometers back and forth through the woods, so they require a lot of space.
“If you cut down one tree, you could close 10 trails for six months, and it would have a huge impact on our business,” Astley says. In the 11 years the bike park has been running, he says, NRW has managed to avoid cutting down trees in the “core zone” of Gethin Woodland, the 120-hectare area where the current trails are located. “But we got to a point where NRW said, ‘We can’t let you develop any more trails on the hill because it would make it harder and harder for us to harvest timber.’” It was clear that something had to change. And rewilding—actively helping the forest around the trails return to its pre-plantation state—seemed like an ideal solution.
Astley, who has a degree in zoology, has always had an “ecological mindset,” he says. “Morally, I think companies have a role to play in the fight we have on our hands, with climate change and biodiversity loss and so on.” At the same time, he and his partners realized that a mixed forest of native species would be more resilient to a range of threats that could jeopardize the park’s future.
“Before we started our work here to build the trails, in 2013, there was a major outbreak of a disease called Phytophthora ramorumthat has infected larches all over the UK,” he explains. “There were a lot of larches here, maybe 30 percent, and luckily NRW’s predecessor removed them all just before we opened because they knew we couldn’t take on a site with all these dangerous dead trees,” he says. But similar businesses haven’t always been so lucky. “Revolution Bike Park in mid Wales has just been closed for over a year because their hill has taken Phytophthora ramorum“, says Astley. “They had to completely tear down the entire hill.”
In addition to being more vulnerable to disease, single-species forests, with trees planted in straight rows, are also less resilient to wildfires, Astley says. “Last July, we had a huge fire on the back of our hill, and the wind was blowing it toward us,” he says. “For about a week, our driveway was covered in smoke, and firefighters were dropping water from helicopters to try to put it out. It was really scary.” The more they thought about it, Astley says, the more he and his partners realized that rewilding made sense, both from a business and environmental perspective. Compared to the current monoculture, a natural forest would be “just so much more resilient in every way,” he says. “We realized there was an opportunity to try to win on two fronts.”
