A Fredericton City Councillor is hoping to put a stop to trails being created illegally at one of the city’s beloved parks.
Odell park is managed by the city and while it boasts 400 acres and several kilometres of trails, Councillor Stephen Chase has reason to believe some people are changing the landscape without authorization.
“Constituents that live on the edge of the park raised this as an issue,” Chase explained. “We knew that this was happening.”
Chase believes in the warmer months trees have been cut down and rearranged to create custom mountain biking trails.
“My understanding is that a lot of the work on the trails is done after dark hours,” he said. “That’s what people are telling me”
“It’s very difficult for us as a city to have people throughout the park policing this kind of thing,” he said.
Odell park is closed to the public after 10 p.m.
Although no one has been caught in the act Chase points to trail guides he’s seen online which list trails that aren’t part of Odell’s official layout.
“We know this is going on, now the issue is to try to bring it under control,” Chase said. “I think in a park like Odell park it’s really not a use that we can condone.”
Fergus Breen is an avid mountain biker who enjoys riding through Odell’s trails.
He’s skeptical of claims that damage is being done to the park to fashion new paths for cyclists.
“There’s zero evidence of any damage whatsoever,” he said during an afternoon ride. “There’s no cutting, you can’t find one downed tree, certainly no chainsaws were used.”
Chase says he’s spoken with members of the mountain biking community and doesn’t believe all are at fault but doesn’t want to sit idly by if the problem persists.
“I think the people who are actually doing this work, they know what they’re doing,” he said. “So it’s a matter of us bringing it under some kind of control or eliminating it.”
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