2. TRAILS: Federal-private partnership aims to boost management, funding of hiking routes (Land Letter, 10/30/2008)

Scott Streater, special to Land Letter

Since Congress created the National Trails System four decades ago, more than 47,000 miles of scenic and historic hiking trails have been established and praised for celebrating the history and natural beauty of the country.

But as the federal trails program marks its 40th anniversary this month, it stands at a crossroads.

The trails system has grown far bigger than anyone foresaw, and today it winds through 47 states and across millions of acres managed by multiple federal agencies, each responsible only for the portion of the trails that crosses its boundaries. The various agencies have different agendas, and no single agency considers the trails system a top priority. What's more, Congress has been slow to provide funding to maintain the trails.

"I think that the system as it exists today is way more ambitious, way more comprehensive and way more complex than anyone imagined," said Steve Elkinton, the National Park Service's program leader for the National Trails System.

Congress has been slow to provide funding for the trails: As it stands today, two of the 26 national scenic and historic trails have been completed and are fully open to the public. Meanwhile, many of the designated sites have sat empty on private parcels for decades, waiting for the federal government to purchase the land and begin managing the area.

While they wait, some of the unfinished trails are being threatened by drilling activity, the construction of wind turbines or even initiatives from other branches of the federal government. For example, a portion of the Santa Fe National Historic Trail in southeast Colorado could be damaged if the Defense Department follows through on plans to expand a military training site.

A hiker enjoying one of the nation's trails. Courtesy of BLM.

Given these challenges, federal officials and trail advocates are using the 40th anniversary as a catalyst to call attention to the trails system and to explore ways to improve its management.

Earlier this month, the Partnership for the National Trails System -- an umbrella group that represents trails associations and volunteers -- along with the National Park Service launched the "Decade of the Trails" initiative. The ambitious 10-year plan aims to better fund the federal agencies and volunteer organizations responsible for the management and upkeep of the trails; compile an inventory of endangered species and cultural sites along the entire length of the trail system; aggressively promote the trails to the public; and establish consistent policies to better protect the pristine natural resources along the trails.

"Everyone thought it's nice to have a celebration, but we really wanted to do more than that," said Gary Werner, executive director of the Partnership for the National Trails System. "This is a wonderful and wondrous system, but it is a big work in progress, and it would certainly be nice to set some goals and to make a concerted effort so that when the 50th anniversary rolls around we could have all or most of the existing scenic and historic parks finished."

The National Trails System, meanwhile, continues to grow. Congress is considering establishing a 6,000-mile-long American Discovery Trail that would extend from Cape Henlopen State Park in Delaware to Point Reyes National Seashore in California. And Congress is expected to consider next month a massive omnibus bill that includes proposals to add five new trails covering at least 2,800 miles. The five trails, if approved, would represent the biggest addition to the national trails system since 1978.

But as has been the case with most of the new trails, Congress is not allocating much money to plan and establish the trails, placing the burden of "an unfunded mandate" on the federal agencies that must manage them, said Gregory Miller, president of the 7,000-member American Hiking Society.

"They're creating paper trails, literally and figuratively," Werner said. "We have made a concerted effort over the last two decades to remind Congress that if these are to be real, they need to do their part of the equation."

A bureaucratic nightmare

When former President Lyndon Johnson signed the National Trails System Act on Oct. 2, 1968, the goal was to create a system of trails that would allow proximity to some of the country's natural treasures and history, such as with the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, which follows the route of the famous explorers who mapped the western United States.

Initially, the program consisted of two trails: the Appalachian National Scenic Trail and the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail, which were massive and stretched 4,825 miles through more than a dozen states.

The two trails remained the only ones in the system until Congress approved 14 new historic trails in 1978. The program has continued to grow, and since 2000, Congress has added more than 9,000 miles to the system.

Besides funding problems, management of the trails has proven problematic. The responsibility is shared by the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, but those agencies are only responsible for the portions of the trails that lie on their land.

The Federal Interagency Council on Trails was established in 1969 to coordinate management between the agencies and address any overlap or gaps in management. That effort, however, has not always worked, as became evident in 1986, when NPS conducted a thorough review of the trails system program and found the program troubled by "awkward interagency coordination," dependence on volunteers and inadequate funding.

Those same obstacles, Elkinton said, continue to plague the National Trails System today.

"The national trails program been a tremendous success, but it has not completely accomplished its goals," Miller said.

Trails continually under threat

Other challenges loom over efforts to protect the trail system.

In Wyoming, a natural gas drilling boom is affecting the four major national trails that cut through the state. Trail advocates there have had to review more than 1,000 drilling permits they say would affect the trails. To help, BLM established a rule forbidding surface drilling within a quarter mile of a national trail, and some energy companies have agreed to place rigs behind hills and paint tanks and other equipment to blend in with the surrounding environment. But those efforts cannot drown out the sound of the rigs, said David Welch, an assistant to the national preservation officer at the Partnership for the National Trails System.

Increasingly, another form of energy infrastructure -- wind turbines -- is marring the experience of hiking on a national trail, Welch said.

"Even if they're situated far enough away to where you can't hear them, they're on the skyline, they're in motion, and you can see them," Welch said.

That, in turn, ruins the ambiance, said Werner. "You can't contemplate the past if you're being hit in the face with the 21st century," he said.

In southeast Colorado, the threat to the 1,100-mile-long Santa Fe National Historic Trail comes from the U.S. Army, which wants to expand a tank-training site through one of the most pristine sections of the trail (see related story).

The sound of rumbling tanks and gunfire is not what Congress had in mind when it authorized the establishment of the trail, said Pat Palmer, president of the Bent Fort chapter of the Santa Fe Trail Association.

"What will happen is the trail as we know it today will disappear forever," Palmer said. "We don't have much to brag about here in southeast Colorado but our history and our wildlife, and to take a part of that away from us is wrong."

Dependence on volunteers

The federal government has always depended on volunteers like Palmer and various trails associations to help protect the trails system, but that reliance has increasingly become more acute.

Consider this: The total federal operating budget for the 26 current national trails is $11.5 million a year, according to information provided by Elkinton. That amounts to half the $22 million that NPS estimates volunteers put in each year in time and money.

The program could not exist without the time and money of volunteers, explained Jeff Jarvis, division chief for BLM's National Landscape Conservation System, which is responsible for managing 5,100 miles of scenic and historic trails.

"I'm confident that the volunteer program is always going to be a part of the success of the national trails," Jarvis said.

But the number of volunteers -- and the amount of cash contributions to the trail system -- is dwindling and could decline even more if the economy continues to skid, Elkinton warned.

Miller, whose organization -- the American Hiking Society -- provides many volunteers, counters that it is not the volunteers that are disappearing but rather government participation.

"What's dwindling is the ability to field the volunteers and have them properly managed by the agencies themselves," Miller said.

The volunteers need federal oversight, in part because they need park rangers to enforce the law. A lack of park rangers on the ground puts natural resources in jeopardy, Miller noted.

About 10 years ago, on a portion of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail managed by BLM, someone used a jackhammer to tear down a beautiful stone archway that is part of a unique white cliffs formation the explorers named the Eye of the Needle.

"BLM is the least well-funded of the three agencies, and their ability to have rangers out on the ground to protect resources like that is minuscule," Werner said. "That's one of the issues we've been trying to point out to Congress. The destruction of that natural archway is a classic example of that."

Trails, trails and more trails

Proposals for numerous new trails are included in an omnibus bill that Congress is expected to consider next month.

These include:

• The Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Historic Trail: This trail would stretch 600 miles and cross eight states from Rhode Island to Virginia, along the route that George Washington and French troops followed in winning the Revolutionary War.

• The Arizona National Scenic Trail: This trail designation, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), would create a trail completely within Arizona that would stretch 807 miles from the Mexico border north to Utah.

• The New England National Scenic Trail: The trail, pushed by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), would extend 220 miles through Connecticut and Massachusetts.

• The Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail: This 1,200-mile trail would extend from the Continental Divide in Glacier National Park in Montana to the Pacific Ocean coast in Olympic National Park in Washington state.

• The Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail: This trail would extend through parts of Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington and commemorate a series of cataclysmic floods 17,000 years ago.

In addition, a provision in the bill would authorize NPS to study extending the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail to 11 states and the District of Columbia.

A call to slow down

Miller and others say Congress should slow down or put up the money, because the new trails are "not just going to be maintained by the sweat equity of volunteers. There has to be core appropriations."

Werner said he wants the federal government to look at the national trails in a new light. "We need to start thinking of the national scenic and historic trails like national parks, in the sense that they are places with very special resources," he said. "They're national treasures."

Scott Streater is a freelance journalist based in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Back to Public index page