Why Becton Trails
Purpose
Our purpose: facilitate intentional trail management and stewardship.
I started Becton Trails to work with land managers, stewardship organizations, and other trailbuilders to understand issues our trail systems are experiencing, what are the root causes and what actions can be most effective at addressing them. Volunteer hours are precious and federal, state and local funding and manpower is finite, resources invested in trail system development, management, maintenance and stewardship need to be intentional to be effective.
Trailbuilding and trail stewardship is evolving. Trailbuilders, stewards and land managers need specialized skills to work effectively and safely in diverse environments — each new project presents unique challenges. Becton Trails teaches safe work practices across a project so work can be more effective and more inclusive.
From teaching trail skills to helping land managers understand where resources should be invested, we clarify what actions can take our new and existing trail systems into the future — sustainably.
Focus
Becton Trails resolves
What trail issues require priority attention and why
What are the root causes
What mitigation is appropriate and has the most impact
How safety culture can improve every aspect of trailbuilding, stewardship and management
When folks understand which are the biggest issues at hand, they can work towards solving them.
When folks know why they are doing something, they have the opportunity to do it better.
When folks understand what elements of a process have what effect on the outcome, they can make informed decisions as they work their way through the process.
When folks understand the hazards around them and how to mitigate them — and are part of a team that values planning ahead, communication and improvement — safety culture permeates and empowers each person to contribute, problem solve and feel valued.
How It Started
Trailbuilding, managing and stewardship on public lands has evolved over the decades. While the International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA) forged the way twenty years ago with their refreshing Trail Solutions, teaching sustainable trail design and layout is the way forward, and working with the U.S. Forest Service developing the then updated Trail Construction and Maintenance Notebook, sustainable trail principles have been slow to make their way to some of our east coast and Appalachian trails. Many of which are celebrating the century mark together with the public lands on which they were built.
While organizations such as American Trails strive to improve access to and development of resources supporting trails, limited managerial resources for any particular trail system can make education and implementation slow.
Through budget cuts and changing policy, many of our trails, are managed by local, state or federal agencies while maintained by volunteers. Robert Fina, of Fina Trails LLC, and I have worked together for the last six years assessing and addressing common stewardship challenges.
We see waterbars with drains heading uphill, trail carefully lined with logs that that inhibit tread drainage, newly built stone steps that won’t last through the next winter, and relentless effort spent on maintenance tasks that aren’t effective. All of this work took time and effort, but it’s not addressing the issues as intended. Some of what we see exacerbates the issue it was intended to solve. While it was well intentioned, those executing the work did not understand what elements were key to making the work worthwhile.
But what does it mean to be effective? What is the point of trail management, maintenance and stewardship?
How It’s Going
Researchers such as Dr. Jeff Marion bring our trail issues into focus and test trail building practices for their efficacy. Researching and publishing academic papers for over twenty years, Dr. Marion and his collaborators have distilled threats to trail tread and adjacent natural resources down to soil loss, muddiness, and trail widening.
Details that go into design, layout and construction in relation to the landform’s topography have the greatest impact on a trail’s maintenance needs, and sometimes reconciling a trail’s failing features means realigning it to a more sustainable layout. However, some of our legacy trails requiring the most maintenance and stewardship resources lie tightly confined in narrow public lands or pass through sensitive ecological areas making realignment impractical, at least for the foreseeable future.
Working to mitigate soil loss, muddiness, and trail widening goes hand in hand with visitor use challenges and protecting natural resources. The name recognition of some of our legacy trails makes them a place of discovery for folks exploring trails for the first time. Managing a trail system for visitor experience goes hand in hand with mitigating soil loss, muddiness and trail widening for when the tread is failing, visitor experience and the surrounding natural resources both suffer.
What’s Next
Becton Trails identifies the issues, what needs to be done and how to do it effectively.
Sustainability applied to the trail system management, trailbuilding and stewardship community includes creating informed management plans, building trail skills and cultivating a culture of safety and inclusion.
Trail system managers need information to understand the state of their trails so they can focus their resources for the most sustainable impact.
Folks on the ground doing the work need dynamic trail skills based in best practices to carry out the work effectively. They need a safety culture that values planning ahead, thinking things through and listening to each other. Safety culture works when diversity, inclusion and equality are forefront.
To take trails into the decades ahead, trail systems need to attract and retain the best minds and most energetic people. To do that, people need to see value in what they do, feel they belong and see the impact of their work. Understanding the trail issues they face, why they are happening and what action to take does this.
Reach out to us to discuss what services we can bring to your trail system. Assessment, skills and safety training, field leadership, navigating trail improvements through environmental priorities and more, Becton Trails clears the way forward.