Alright, about the meeting:
I was pleasantly surprised at the atmosphere of the meeting. I went in there expecting there to be hostility toward the 'High Clearance Vehicle' (don't use OHV, that refers to ATV and Motorcycle use) crowd, however, what I experienced was the complete opposite. There was no hostility between any of the user groups (hiking, mtn. biking, horseback riders, Motorized users). From my experience at the meeting, everyone respected each other's desires to use trails in the forest. The format was an introduction and overview given by the forest service representatives, then the group (over 100 people) was broken into several small groups where several questions were addressed: 1. What is your current impression of the present trail system? and 2. What can the forest service do to help collaboration between the Forest Service and the user groups? (those are the questions the best that I can remember them). Then the final part was a group discussion about the forestry service's mission statement and guiding principles which can be found
Here.
Some interesting facts that I learned:
- Takes $1000 to $5000 per mile to maintatin trails
- They recieve $602 per mile from budget
- You must be certified to volunteer with trail maintenance, including chainsaw certified to use a chainsaw
- The amount of volunteer hours received last year equated to 22 full time employees (if I'm remembering correctly)
Most prominent issues discussed at the meeting:
- Trail maintenance is lacking in some areas
- several groups would like easier/more acces to more trails
- People would like a web portal to find info about trails (closures, work days, etc.) (check www.fs.usda.gov/conf for meeting updates)
- There is a recognized lack of trail opportunities for High Clearance Vehicles
- There should be more opportunities for training so people can volunteer / streamline the process
It should be noted that this is just the beginning of this public discussion process. They hope within a year, having monthly meetings, to be able to work to a goal of solidifying the guiding principles mentioned earlier with how the trail system in the Chattahoochee-Oconee NFs should be maintained into the future. There will be more opportunities for people to get involved at future meetings and I hope to see some more folks turn out in the future.
There was one group and several individuals there from the High Clearance Vehicle user group, however 10 people is a small number when compared to the 120 other people from other user groups. Probably the two largest user groups represented at that meeting were the hikers and equestrian from what I saw. One comment that was made by the forest service was that it would be hard to justify drastically increasing e.g. the High Clearance Vehicle trail system when according to them those users only constitute 1% of all trail users in the forest system. People may think that the Forest Service is downplaying this statistic, however, when the whole trail network (800 miles of trails) gets 2 million users per year 1% of that would be 20,000 users which may be close to the traffic that Beasley Knob sees annually. I think that the argument should also be made that if the trail system were to increase, that the usage would probably also increase due to more opportunity. Ten or so miles is pretty small when compared to the 800 plus total miles of trails that the forest service has in these forests.
If others did show up and I didn't see ya, or know who you were, just add to this your thoughts and comments. I think I covered as much as I can remember here.
--Justin
