BUND demand: Mountain sports must not become motor sports

"Mountain sports must not become motor sports". The title of BUND Naturschutz Bayern's press invitation is provocative and immediately makes it clear what the organisation is all about. The "madness" of e-mountain biking, which those responsible spoke about in front of the assembled press, is to be severely restricted in the Bavarian Alps. To this end, the nature conservation organisation has 24-page demands paper (Link) which should prompt politicians to take action.

What is BUND Naturschutz demanding?

In the Alpine region of Bavaria, e-bikes are to be deprived of their status as bicycles. This would mean that e-bikes would no longer be permitted on alpine forest, woodland and hiking trails away from public roads. However, the district authorities are to be authorised to make exceptions to the ban. In concrete terms, this means that e-mountain biking would be prohibited everywhere where it is not explicitly permitted. However, the requirement relates exclusively to alpine terrain (in the sense of the "Alpine recreational landscape"); the valleys and non-alpine areas of Bavaria are explicitly excluded.

What reactions are there?

The German Mountain Bike Initiative (DIMB) has published a detailed statementin which it clearly backs e-mountain bikers. The BUND's claims are scrutinised in a very factual and well-founded manner and largely refuted.

For reasons of nature conservation, the DIMB considers a closure for e-MTBs to be incomprehensible. The exclusion of just one user group would not bring any significant advantages for the habitat of wild animals as long as the trails continue to be used by people. Nor would it benefit the trails themselves, as e-bikes leave no more tracks than other bikes or pedestrians.

"If you want to calm sensitive high altitudes, you have to think about the general routing, existing lift facilities or the mountain hut system. Cyclists with pedelecs rarely come to these regions, as this requires a very good level of fitness and appropriate riding skills and the battery capacity is limited. In high alpine regions, there are often stretches that are almost impossible to manage with heavy pedelecs."

An increase in possible social conflicts, as feared by BUND, is also not to be expected from the DIMB's point of view. "Tourism associations, the DAV and DIMB only see a low potential for conflict and are in favour of working together, as numerous campaigns show. The German Hiking Association also does not consider blanket bans to be expedient. Various studies show that the potential for conflict is generally limited to a few times of the week at popular hotspots. Pedelecs can even help to equalise the situation, as they make it easier to cycle around the hotspots. The overwhelming majority of pedelec riders are experienced riders switching from normal MTBs, so there is hardly any overall increase in the number of users."

The German Alpine Association (DAV), which has recently increasingly positioned itself as a representative of mountain bikers' interests, has not yet commented on BUND's statements. However, at last year's annual general meeting, the association adopted a "critical attitude" towards e-mountain bikes. Excitingly, concrete decisions on how to deal with e-mountainbikes are to be made at the annual general meeting next Saturday (26 October 2019).