The snowmobile industry has its challenges annually due to Mother Nature.
However, Shawn Flindall, who is the director of marketing and public relations for the North Bay Snowmobile Club, believes there is a bigger concern aside from climate change that could severely impact the Ontario Snowmobile industry.
Flindall says that's trespassing.
"Every year local clubs are forced to reroute trails or close down trails and nine times out of 10 that is because there has been trespassing on a piece of property and the property owner has revoked permission," said Flindall.
"So when sledders see those changes, I know sometimes it is upsetting but the reason these changes are happening on the trails is because of trespassing so we all need to do our part to tell those trespassers to stop doing it."
Flindall believes that young male sledders are the ones mainly responsible for the problem.
"Typically it is young males, not older guys and not females doing it," he stated very bluntly. "It is typically younger males and they know they are doing it. They know they are trespassing, they know they should not be doing it but they don't care.
"It is going to cause at some point the end of organized snowmobiling in Ontario. If it fails that will be the reason why."
The OPP are trying to keep an eye on the problem, even though trails are still closed in the area.
"We are concerned about trespassing, when trails are closed it is considered trespassing being on the trails and the OPP will be out enforcing that on a daily basis," said Flindall.
He feels it is a sign of disrespect to landowners.
"We have hundreds of generous landowners across our area who donate their land for purposes of the trail and we really do not want to jeopardize those relationships and trespassing is becoming a real serious concern for organized snowmobiling in Ontario to the point we are losing trails every single year and mark my words, if organized snowmobiling fails in Ontario it will be because of trespassing," he said.
"It is really frustrating from the perspective of organized snowmobiling that this trespassing continues and we really look to the OPP and to the general public to really help us to curb that trespassing because it is our land owners who suffer and when our land owners suffer our trails suffer when they pull their grant to use their property."
