Re: Riding on public land---Advice needed

["Linda B. Merims" <lbm@ici.net>]

Patti Pankiewicz-Fuchs" <scubagirl817@hotmail.com>  said:

>My neigborhood borders a Buffer Preserve with miles and miles of trails.
>Horses are already VERY welcome at either of the two main entrances.
>However, that requires people in my neigborhood to trailer 5 to 10 miles.
>Until a couple of days ago there was a break (not made by the
>neighborhood residents) in the fence that we all utilized to ride onto
>the property. Being new to the neigborhood, I slyly asked a ranger the
>legality of entering the property through a 'hole' in the fence'. Of
>course, they said that if you entered the property in any place other
>then the main  entrances you were 'technically' trespassing.

Oh, boy...

Tread *very* carefully here...there are few things that make land
managers angrier than renegade trails into their jurisdiction from
abutters.  It creates what they call "threading" of the habitat.


Several questions:

You say "Buffer Preserve."  What does this mean?  If this is some
kind of threatened, rare, or endangered species preserve?  If so,
then you have major league trouble.  Get the environmentalists
mad at you and they can do everything from taking legal action
against the person on whose property the ingress exists to
banning horses from the land altogether because the horseback
riders are demonstrating that they will not stick to the designated
trails.

You don't say whether this is town, county, state, or federal land.
Different land has different laws governing its use.  If it is
local or state, then work through your state senator/representatives
to do what you want to do:  get a local, official, legal access
point onto the land for the neighborhood horses.  Land management
officials are subject to influence from legislators, particularly
if those legislators can kick some money into the project.  It helps
that you can point out that working with the horseowners is going
to do more for their problem than giving them no alternative.

The fact that the gate has gone up proves that this illegal access
has been "noted."  The first mis-step in the relationship between
the horseowning abutters and the land managers has occurred.
The trick now is to prevent this from turning into a war where
the gate becomes a new hole in the fence and then the land
managers retaliate by competely destroying the trail (like what
happened in Virginia near the Old Dominion trails recently).
Get a responsible group together and then sit down and talk with
the land managers and figure out how to solve this.  I find it
often helps if you let the land managers suggest a solution themselves
rather than presenting them with something they can say no to.  Keep
the hot heads out of the discussion--do *not* yell at them and be
angry--they hold almost all the cards.

And, again, depending on what kind of land this is, what the
staff is legally able to do may be limited.  Understand where
they are coming from.  Hire an environmental attorney if you
have to explain to you what the situation is.

Lastly, attend the 2002 Southeast Equestrian Trails conference and
join the new US-Equestrian Trails Coalition when they get themselves
set up!

Linda B. Merims
lbm@ici.net
Massachusetts, USA