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Horse Trails Issues



Patti Carey-Stedman wrote:

[Regarding the horse camping facilities at the Tennessee Valley
Authority's
Land Between the Lakes park in Kentucky...]

>Our two cents on the facility and trails?  Trail footing was great,
>trails were well marked (there are 99 miles of marked trail there, as
>well as many more miles of "renegade" trails), nice views, and my
>first opportunity to ride on a beach!...
>We met some great folks from Tennessee and some local folks
>from KY...
>
>My only gripe about the facility is actually more of a commentary on
>the users....  Upon arriving after dark on Sunday evening, there was
>not a single clean stall to be found.  And I'm not talking stripped
>clean, I'm talking free of more than a foot of
>hay/straw/manure/wetness.  Pretty disappointing to be stripping stalls
>at that hour, particularly when you read the rule about cleaning
>stalls before you leave....  We were also really shocked to find so
>much trash, especially beer and pop bottles/cans (and mostly beer, I
>might add) alongside and on the trails.  I've never ridden on trails
>so heavily littered...

This speaks very strongly to something I learned at the Clemson
conference
on "Horse Trails in Forest Ecosystems"  last month.  About half the 200+
attendees were employees--federal, state, local--of various government
agencies that administer parks and forests that have horse trails.  The
conference leaders and keynote speakers made it very clear to everybody
that this was going to be a FRIENDLY conference where we were all going
to work TOGETHER to identify issues and trade solutions.  It was
undoubtedly wise for them to do this because otherwise we could easily
have ended up at each other's throats before the end of the first
session.  However, the warm fuzzies mandated at the podium did tend
to mask some of the very serious issues that many of these park
administrators and rangers had with horse use of the facilities
for which they were responsible.  

Some of the most interesting conversations I had were with these
government people over lunch and at breaks.  There is a very strong
feeling among many park rangers that horse people just don't pull
their weight when it comes to supporting the park.  One ranger from
a national forest said that whenever work days are held, the mountain
bike people turn out in force, but the horse people simply aren't
to be found.  She has great relations with her local mountain bike
clubs, and none at all with any local horse groups.  And these
are *not* anti-horse people!  Most of the park/forest people who
attended were the rangers on the staff of these facilities who
are themselves horse people and who want horses to succeed in their
parks.  Another park ranger, this time I believe from Daniel Boone
National Forest, said that she had been trying to make some kind of
liason with local horse groups to work on trail maintenance for years.
She was going to use the inspiration she had picked up from attending
the conference to go back and try again.

The "let somebody else do it" phenomenon of horse people is not at
all universal.  One park ranger, I think from South Carolina or
Georgia, said he had his horse trail maintenance problem solved:  his
local horse trail riders group does all of it.  He just helps them
a bit with equipment, money, and scheduling, and they do all the
rest!  But it is true in enough places to create a serious public
relations problem for horse people and trail riders in particular.

Anyway, after the conference I went to visit my sister who lives
in Norris, Tennessee.  I began to "scout out" Tennessee as a great
place to perhaps spend the following fall trailriding with my horse.
(Incidentally, Norris, Tennessee has a 3500 acre municipal forest
watershed that has 23 MILES of multi-use trails on it.  Watcha know?
Old Tennessee Valley Authority land that TVA still helps to maintain.
I was so impressed with what I learned about TVA while I was
there that I went down to their Knoxville twin towers and bought
myself a TVA T-shirt.  Big Government at its best...)

As part of this scouting I visited the Cade's Cove horse camp ground
in the Great Smokey Mountain National Park.  I was appalled.
Besides being a woefully inadequate facility for both horses, riders,
and rigs, the place was FILTHY.  You know how there is "clean barn"
smell and there is "dirty barn" smell?  Well, this place stunk.
The "stalls" for the horses were ankle deep in urine-soaked straw
that the last users had simply left there.  The manure pile was strewn
over half the campgrounds, stunk even worse, and it looked like
it hadn't been hauled out in at least a month.  I wouldn't take
a horse in there overnight, nor would I care to spend the night
in such vile surroundings.

Now, clearly the park was falling down on its own responsibilities
to keep the horseman's camp ground clean.  But the horsemen using
the camp had taken no responsibility on themselves at all for at
least cleaning up their own filth.  I looked around me and I wondered
if there was any local group affiliated with the campground who
would try to clean up after their irresponsible brethren.
Mostly I wondered why the Great Smokey Mountain National Park,
with its 12,000,000 visitors a year to worry about, was still
tolerating horse camps within its borders.

And now you tell me that Land Between the Lakes seems to have a
similar problem?

I will say that I also visited the Big South Fork horse camp
ground on the eastern side of the park near Oneida, Tennessee
and found a lovely facility that was completely clean.  (Also
completely empty.  I visited on November 6th.  Was what I saw typical?)

The moral of the story is that, if there is a state or national forest
or park anywhere near you whose facilities you use, you need to join
that facility's "friends" group.  If there is some kind of a local
saddle club that uses the facilities, then they need to join the
"friends"
group.  You need to show up for work days, and volunteer to do anything
you can to help maintain the trails.  If the place has a horse camp
with maintenance problems, try to do something to mitigate the bad
impression these horsemen are making on the park's staff.  Make
the park/forest staff into friends and not enemies!  Make the good will
now.  If you wait until the park administrators announce that they are
going to close horse trails before you become involved, it's too late!

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



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