Hello petition supporters! Please find below some news from our meeting with MV/LSCR from the other week where I have tried to summarize key points from a nearly 2 hour meeting.

Community members Phil Jepsen, Penny Deck, Cam McRae along with myself met with Metro Vancouver Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve members Heidi Walsh, Kevin Brown and Joe Gellard on March 14th, 2025.

The meeting established some important takeaways:

1. MV recognizes that it needs to improve communications with the MTB community.
   
   
2. That MV/LSCR does see mountain biking as a valuable recreation activity within its lands.
   
   
3. One of LSCR's primary concerns is the protection of their land and water resources for potential future use as a water supply for Metro Vancouver.
   
   
4. LSCR already has a trail sanctioning application process developed a while back which is unknown to many and hard to find on the website and in their documentation and not very structured.
   
   
5. That the community can help address MV/LSCR's capacity concerns for adopting new trails into the network from not only a building and maintenance standpoint but also alleviate large costs associated with sanctioned trail building. 
   
   
6. LSCR did acknowledge that there is potential need for a few different flavors of trails and/or trails on some locations on the mountain to draw people away from rogue building and address the increased traffic and popularity growth of the sport over the last 5 years and is keen to work with NSMBA, the community and all other North Shore lands managers to come up with a North Shore trail plan and streamlined trail sanctioning application process to do so.

So what now?
When we were informed that there was already ongoing planning for a North Shore wide trails plan with NSMBA and other Lands Managers were already talking together about a uniform approach to MTB infrastructure planning on the North Shore we proposed that this should also include the development of a standardized trail sanctioning application process for the North Shore.

As such I have offered to work with NSMBA and Lands Managers in assisting with the creation of this process. We will likely seek to adopt, and if necessary adapt, the T.E.S.T. Tool that Shushwap Trail Alliance developed to address any other necessary metrics needed for lands managers here on the North Shore and then pilot a test project with NSMBA using the tool to apply for sanctioning of a trail.

Additionally I had the opportunity to sit in on the NSMBA's Trail Committee meeting last night and they seemed keen to work towards a uniform trail sanctioning process that would benefit the MTB community, NSMBA and Lands Managers across the North Shore in conjunction with the North Shore Trail Plan they are working on this year as one of their main focuses.

What can the community do?
Now we - the community - can help lend our weight to NSMBA in the coming months by being active at public meetings and trail events as well as getting involved by reaching out to the NSMBA if you have any skillsets you think might be beneficial to trail planning or policy making for a trail sanctioning process here on the North Shore.

It is clear that Lands Managers and NSMBA have heard your voices from this petition given meetings they've been having over the last two months in regards to your emails. 

I will not be closing this petition yet as I feel its a decent way to provide updates on progress until MV/LSCR publishes some new info and resources and the community can see the work being done by Lands Managers and NSMBA.

Please keep in mind that this is something that will take months of meetings, liaising, discussions, planning, revisions and collaboration between Lands Managers, NSMBA, First Nations and other stakeholders but it it something I am committed to seeing through.

Kurt