FERNDALE, WA (BRAIN)—The Kona Bike Park Program is growing fast as the company in 2009 is establishing an additional five new bike parks throughout Europe and North America, adding to its current 21 parks.
As always, Kona’s stance on providing increased benefits to all of these resorts and their users is at the forefront of establishing these new parks.
Early this year, Kona partnered with WWF, the world conservation organization to create an important initiative: Environmental Bike Park Guidelines.
With most of Kona’s Bike Parks situated in the mountains, during the summer months they become alive with nature, from animals to rare flowers to the water flowing down trails from melting snow.
These guidelines have been created with the full backing and support of the WWF and are provided free of charge by Kona to any bike park (Kona approved or not) in order to sustain a healthy natural environment and have as minimal an impact on the environment as possible.
“Bike parks are being built all around the world to respond to a growing demand from the public,” said Gael Leopold of WWF International. “These bike parks have the potential to strongly impact the natural environment as ski resorts have done in the past. WWF has worked jointly with Kona to define these environmental guidelines to reduce bike parks’ ecological footprint and ensure that the natural playground that bike parks are built on will remain available for future generations.”
According to Veronica Mazzola of Mottolino Bike Park in Livigno, Italy, the bike park appreciates the involvement of Kona in the drawing up of environmental guidelines for bike parks.
“It’s really important to be a Kona Groove Approved Bike Park and we share this involvement in environmental problems. We think protection of the environment is a very important point, especially on the mountains and for all towns, like Livigno, who live on tourism,” Mazzola said. “As soon as we had the Kona environmental guidelines we translated them into Italian to share this project with the other tourism companies in Livigno. Environmental guidelines like this will help us to collaborate better with local government to obtain the required authorizations for the bike park. We hope that by following these guidelines we will improve our bike park by making it harmonious with the environment, our most important resource.”
For the latest Bike Park Guidelines click on link or a printed version can be requested from North American Kona bike park coordinator Kelly Steelman at (805) 705-5411 or ks@konaworld.com.
