Forest & Recreation
The forest offers many opportunities for recreation and sporting activities. The forest is a place of power to gain energy or to get rid of it. The Department of Society and International Cooperations is also dedicated to this topic.
forest and bicycle
With the trend toward e-bikes, more athletes and recreationists are flocking to forests and mountains. This can lead to conflicts, for example with hikers, hunters or landowners.
In order to create solutions for attractive official MTB trails, the Federal Environment Agency is leading a project with project partners from science and practice. In cooperation with landowners’ and cyclists’ interest groups, the needs of the various interest groups will be analyzed and recommendations for the development of sustainable, integrative and attractive MTB concepts will be drawn up by 2021.
Forest-Informations by BFW
In the project, BFW provides forest information, such as the forest road layer, designs special courses on the topic for its forestry training centers, and supports the project in public relations.
Facts & Figures
- 7 % (rund 600.000 Personen) der österreichischen Bevölkerung betreiben Mountainbiking. Aber nur wenige sind im freien Gelände unterwegs (rund 95.000 Personen). (GfK 2015)
- Rund 27.000 Kilometer sind als öffentliche Mountainbike-Strecken ausgewiesen, wobei der Großteil aus asphaltierten Straßen und Forststraßen besteht und Singletrails nur einen sehr kleinen Anteil ausmachen. (GfK 2015)
- 439.000 Fahrräder wurden im Jahr 2019 in Österreich verkauft.
- Mountainbiken boomt, der Trend zum E-Bike verstärkt dies. 62.960 E-Mountainbikes gingen 2018 über den Ladentisch.