Bike For The Trees
My Story
Turning Interest Into Action
My name is Brody Rountree, I am a mountain biker and outdoors enthusiast, an environmentalist, and a high school senior engineering student who is interested in sustainable design and outdoor equipment design. In particular, I would like to work in mountain bike engineering and design, and the project I am introducing is my senior capstone project.
But before we get into that, I just want to provide a bit of background of how I came up with the idea for this project and what I hope to accomplish. In the summer of 2018, Colorado experienced some of the worst wildfires in the State’s history. As any naturalist or forester from the Rocky Mountain region will tell you, wildfire is a natural part of Colorado’s ecosystem and plays a vital role in controlling insects and disease. Fire ecologists will point out that many species in the Rocky Mountains actually rely on the natural fire cycle for regeneration. However, 85% of wildfires in the American West are caused by humans, not by events like lightning strikes, and with climate change wildfires are becoming more frequent, hotter, and more intense – in some cases incinerating the soil microbes at a depth that sterilizes the soil. In a vicious cycle, fewer trees means less carbon sequestration, burning trees release more carbon into the atmosphere, and these things exacerbate global climate change, which in turn exacerbates the conditions that give rise to greater intensity and frequency of wildfire.
Where do I fit into all of this? In the summer of 2018, I was at my summer camp in Colorado when we had to be evacuated as uncontained wildfires approached our camp. We were able to get to safety and no one was hurt, but the devastation left by the 2018 fires was shocking. Reforestation projects by the National Forest Service are severely underfunded. Even if it had more funding, many slopes destabilized by wildfires and thus prone to erosion are hard to reach by fire road and Forestry Service vehicles.
Here’s where tree-planting mountain bikes equipped with sapling-carrying bags and with pedal-powered augers to dig holes can be used plant new trees on these otherwise-hard to reach slopes.
What about the people power to wield these bikes and plant these trees? This is where my organization “Bike for the Trees” comes in – so named for this famous little creature, the Lorax. In Dr. Seuss’s book, it is the Lorax who “speaks for the trees” and their eradication when the Truffula trees cannot advocate for themselves. In the book, after the Truffula forest has been cut down, the Lorax sadly moves on. But in “Bike for the Trees,” we get active. Marshalling and organizing the growing number of mountain bikers in the state, “Bike for the Trees” gets mountain bikers to volunteer their time replanting devastated sections of Colorado’s forest. In return, downhill parks across the state donate passes to the volunteers as a reward. This is a win-win situation. Mountain bikers get to conserve and replant the forest area they love. They get bike park discounts or passes in the process, and fire devastated areas are at less risk for erosion, mud, and rock slides while growing back faster. Plus, we get to use the power of mountain bikers’ quadriceps to dig the holes for the trees in a sustainable no-carbon-producing way.
Okay, but what about some of the mechanics of this bike? The first portable hand drill was developed in Germany in the early nineteenth century was very efficient and used a pinion to move the drill in a rolling motion. The drill was powered through the energy of the human hand, turning the handle in a circular motion, such as on the right. Augers are either electrified today or still turned by hand. But setting electricity power aside, those moving the hand drill or the auger drill by hand are using their arms and hands to move this piece of equipment, when some of the most powerful muscles in the human body are our quadriceps and glutes.
So why not design augers for planting trees that are powered by quadriceps, and not just any quadriceps but mountain bikers’ developed quadriceps. What I am developing is an auger system that is driven by pedaling a bike.
But how do we carry these trees? Tubular PVC or metal carriers will be created as a rear bike rack to carry the trees. Most species of trees do best with their root bulb or base wrapped in burlap, which is both breathable but also stays moist and keeps the roots hydrated. Luckily, burlap is fairly lightweight, so this can be easily integrated into the plan.
Going forward, I have created a working prototype of how the treebike is intended to work. As with all prototypes though, it's in need of improvement. I've taken a welding course, and plan to fabricate a second, better functioning prototype soon.