Patricia Gill, Denmark Bulletin
Friends of Kooryanderup (Mt Hallowell) are calling for a ban on mountain biking on the 532ha A-Class reserve.
The Friends have raised concerns as the Shire of Denmark is set to overhaul the Mt Hallowell Management Plan (2008).
The Friends report having seen youngsters with shovels and rakes emerging from the Sheila Heritage Trail Park Reserve.
More ‘unsanctioned’ trails (informal trails constructed without Shire approval) and the upgrading of the existing illegal trails have also been reported.
In October 2022, the Denmark Shire Council endorsed the building of a trail network in the reserve, excluding the reserve’s ‘core’.
At the time the-then deputy shire president Kingsley Gibson called for ‘at least‘ a green trail network (easy level) on Mt Hallowell.
The move was at loggerheads with the Denmark Environment Centre which in the lead up to the decision lobbied to block it.
Speaking on behalf of DEC, Murdoch University sustainability lecturer Nicole Hodgson had cited the experiences of other places, like John Forrest National Park, where illegal trail building had become a ‘nightmare’ for land managers.
‘Too precious to sacrifice’
She had said Mt Hallowell was ‘too precious to be sacrificed’.
The Denmark Shire Council made the decision to go ahead with the trail network on the south-east slopes of Mt Hallowell on the proviso that the management plan was overhauled.
Also environmental and Aboriginal heritage studies should be undertaken.
This was despite a community consultation response of 68 per cent objecting to the MBT network.
The council also decided to go ahead with a plan for alternative MBT networks at Turner Road and Berridge Park.
Next Tuesday, October 29, the Denmark Shire Council will be asked to endorse the preferred environmental consultant, Aurora Environmental, to undertake the management review.
This review is overdue with the recommended period being every 10 years.
Aurora Environmental will map the existing trails and tracks in the reserve, including hiking, mountain biking, dual use, 4-wheel drive and management access.
It will be the background and preliminary consultation for the management plan revision.
The council is also due to make a decision on MTB concept on a Shire-owned C-Class reserve – a former gravel quarry – on Turner Road at the November meeting.
The Denmark MTB Club considers this location to be too far and inaccessible from town for regular cycling.
The Club gave an undertaking in 2022 in the Denmark Bulletin to suppress the spread of the illegal trails on Mt Hallowell with the building of ‘sanctioned’ trails.
A Friends representative said Department of Climate Change, the Environment and Water advice in November last year for honey myrtle shrub land in the City of Cockburn’s Manning Park noted the desire to formalise MTB trails to control their damage.
But even professionally-built versions of the trails reduced biodiversity.
Mt Hallowell is listed on the municipal inventory and is regarded with reverence by the Noongar people as culturally signifi cant for men’s business.
Professor of Biodiversity at Albany’s Centre of Excellence in natural resource management, Stephen Hopper, in 2022 described Mt Hallowell’s uplands as an ‘evolutionary laboratory’.
He said the granite uplands hosted unusual concentrations of plants and animals, especially mosses on rocks dating back 400 million years.
He urged caution on the development of all mountain bike trails in the Great Southern.
A Shire spokesperson said the reviewed Mt Hallowell management plan would guide the management of the reserve for the next 10 years.
It would look ‘holistically’ at the whole reserve and include a comprehensive consultation process before making conservation and recreational recommendations.
There were no plans before the Shire to build trails on Mt Hallowell.
This article appeared in the Denmark Bulletin, 24 October 2024.
See further: Mt Hallowell
