According to the Zug Office for Forests and Game, capercaillie live on the Höhrone. The Gutschwald has been a forest nature reserve since 2010. The hilltop location with its sparse forest structures and heather vegetation offers an ideal habitat for capercaillie and has been designated as a core area for the promotion of capercaillie. The trail should now no longer be accessible to mountain bikers and all other user groups (hikers, horse riders, etc.). The descent eastwards over the ridge remains open.

The Office for Forests and Wildlife wants to channel mountain bikers onto an alternative route - which rides entirely along a small road and is almost entirely asphalted. This route will then be part of the SwitzerlandMobility mountain bike trail network. Whether SwitzerlandMobility will actually include this route will be clarified in the course of 2016.

The well-intentioned user guidance will not work in this way because it neither recognizes nor acknowledges the needs of mountain bikers. Anyone who offers mountain bikers a wide, asphalted road as an alternative to an attractive single trail that has been used for many years in 2016 understands at best something about capercaillie, but certainly nothing about mountain bikers.

The map shows the new mountain bike trail (green) and the single trail (red) on which the canton of Zug no longer wants to see mountain bikers: