Advice for Land Managers

1. Prolific Volunteers
IMBA members conduct more than 700,000 hours of volunteer trail building each year and advocate for public lands. With more that 700 bike clubs and chapters, chances are an IMBA group near you stands ready to volunteer at your park.

2. Relevancy
Kids love to mountain bike and opening appropriate trails to kids is a great way to help make your park more relevant to today’s recreating public. According to the Outdoor Industry Foundation, bicycling is one of the most popular outdoor activities for kids.

3. Partnerships, Partnerships, Partnerships
IMBA members know the value of formal agreements and working with other trail user groups to help protect the resource and bring appropriate recreation to parks.

4. Professional Trail Design
IMBA’s team of professional trail designers can help design trails for multiple uses. Parks Canada turned to IMBA years ago for trails education, design, and construction, and across North America IMBA has designed hundreds of trail projects for city, county, provincial/state and federal agencies.

5. Bicycling is Tremendously Popular
Mountain biking is allowed on a total of 120 trails or 1,485km in Canada’s National Parks. In the States, mountain biking is successfully managed in 44 national parks and more superintendents are considering places appropriate for mountain biking. IMBA partnered with a half dozen parks in the last two years to build and repair trails.

6. Savvy Fundraisers
Mountain bikers rise to a challenge and our community is known for writing grants, holding fundraisers and working to make sure public lands, facilities and trails have proper funding.

7. Get Out of Your Car and Into the Park!
Bicycling slows visitors down, helps them smell, feel and fall in love with the park from the seat of a bicycle. Parks are meant to be experienced and bicycling is one of the best ways to get people out of their cars and into the natural environment.

8. Building the Recreation Economy
Bicyclists spend money on food, lodging and often don’t take up a parking space. Adding mountain biking as a park amenity builds on the activities offered by the park and lengthens visitors stays, building gateway community economies.

9. Where Can I Ride My Bike?
Think about your parking lot or campground. How many cars or RVs already have bikes on top? Where can they ride those bicycles in your park? Chances are the demand for cycling is already growing in your park.

10. We Wrote the Book
IMBA literally wrote one of the best books in the world on the art of sustainable trailbuilding and managing mountain biking.

11. We Play Nice in the Sandbox
IMBA clubs and chapters know the importance of reaching out to other trail user groups, getting unlikely constituents involved in parks and realize the delicate constituency that is the national parks.