New Forest sportive cancelled after Forestry England threatens legal action

No idea either as not from down there but had seen the routes on the websites. 

If it's a permitted cycling route within the environs of the New Forest National Park then they're all owned and managed by Forestry England. These are high quality, wide, maintained paths designed to keep cyclists off non-permitted paths and also provide access for walkers and disabled forest visitors. There's no such thing as a public path for cycling in the Forest although a blind eye is usually turned to incidental use - I ride where I'm not permitted because at stupid o'clock AM the paths are mostly empty of walkers. These are narrow paths generally made by ponies and walkers and certainly not suitable for an organised event.

Even the permitted paths have gates that will only take one bike at a time so I don't see how you'd manage 500-odd riders going through them.

I remember a similar stink being caused by an organiser that was running night running events. Pretty sure they got binned on the same grounds - disturbance to wildlife. 

Interested to know if other NPs have similar policies on private companies profiting from access to NP land, anyone know?

Map is here - https://www.google.co.uk/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1wcJFpmoIxu1vYT6eqaceiR3x...

Mostly on public roads - the same roads used by UKCE/Wiggle over the years. Might be 100% roads, it certainly is in the sections I'm familiar with. Definitely not a gravel dash - and there's no mention of any bike requirements on the sign up page...

Bit more digging on this - there are definitely some forestry track sections out to the east of the route. But what I don't get is that they're not rideable even in the dry on a road bike, and there's a perfectly good road available to re-route them on. Maybe trying to offer some sort of Strade Bianche experience - after all, the Giro has a couple of gravel sections this year...

It was all on the Highway, no track, no gravel and no private shared paths.

Hope that helps, with thanks

So the news reporter was lying, disingenuous or confused?

Or just under-paid, under-trained, under-resourced, and a bit slapdash as a result?

Queer things with New Forest cycle sportives seem to keep on happening, to the extent that some "New Forest" branded events barely enter the national park area. 
"Next race : dd/mm/yy" probably isn't the cleverest way to list your sportives on your website. 
Have you written to the newspaper? If you're right and it's wrong, Forestry England will surely be seeking a correction. 
It still doesn't add up - there are things in the newspaper article that you couldn't make up; I know journalists often conflate two different threads not always successfully.  Neither Forestry England nor New Forest District Council have jurisdiction over the public roads - were you planning to include the off-road paths at any point?