Trail maintenance changes hands

Rotorua's Trail Trust chairman Gregg Brown. Photo/File

Rotorua's Trail Trust is all set to take over trail maintenance and building from the Rotorua Mountain Biking Club.

Gregg Brown, who presided over the mountain bike club for four years, has assumed the trust's chairman role.

Mr Brown said the trust would continue to work out ways of maximising what the city already had, when it officially took over on Monday.

"One of the Rotorua Lakes Council 2030 visions is outstanding places to play, and we are very much in line with that. We already have outstanding places to play, and we just want to maximise those as the landowners allow."

Mr Brown said establishing the trust was a means to formalise the work that went into creating and maintaining trails.

"There's no real change. All of the volunteers will still be involved, it's just creating a more formal structure to making the trails.

"We have been at it for three or four months, and this has been going on for a couple of years."

He said the trust had been consulting with interest groups, in the hope of creating more opportunities in the forest and in the district.

"Some of the groups see the success we have generated with mountain bike trails and would like to emulate that with other user groups. The Mountain Bike Club has been operating mainly out at Whakarewarewa forest. We are looking to widen this."

He said the trust was open to public suggestions and concepts.

"Next year we are announcing an opportunity for people to be friends with trails and for the larger organisations to be trail partners."

Mr Brown said the trail-adoptee programme had been so successful, it had a waiting list. Thousands of volunteer hours go into trail building and upkeep each year.