Eight thousand U.S.
community groups, businesses and conservation organizations are urging
people to get outside —all on the same day June 2, 2001. By hosting more
than a thousand outdoor events for the ninth annual National Trails Day,
they’re highlighting the emerging demand for more local trails, parks
and open spaces. All of the events are locally planned and organized.
“We’ve seen a
tremendous increase in demand for trails and open space in communities of
all sizes,” said Mary Margaret Sloan,
president of American Hiking Society, the group that organizes National
Trails Day. “In growing suburbs community pathways can be as important
to community infrastructure as roads because they provide immediate escape
into the natural world away from cars and highways.” “Well
planned suburban trails systems,” adds Sloan, “even play a role in
local transportation, making it possible to run local errands or get to
public transportation without getting into a car.”
But it’s not just in
suburbs that the demand for local trails has soared. The last decade has
seen explosive growth in demand for trails in small towns, where a
shortage of parkland makes it impractical for people to enjoy such healthy
activities as walking or bicycling. One primarily rural state, West
Virginia, has made trails part of its public health strategy.
“There is an emerging
understanding here that healthy lifestyles and access to the outdoors go
hand in hand,” said Lu Schrader,
president of the West Virginia Trails Coalition, a nonprofit organization
leading an effort to develop a statewide trails plan.
For its part, American
Hiking Society is putting its money where the trails are —and where they
should be. It has created the National Trails Endowment to raise money
from private sources for establishing and maintaining pathways both in the
wilds and close to home. The group already has distributed more than 60
grants to nonprofit groups and plans to build a fund of several million
dollars. One member of the organization has
pledged a million dollars to get the fund up and running. “Community
trails are a basic environmental protection measure because they allow
people to have access to nature,” according to Robert N. Leggett, who
with his wife Dee, has seeded the Endowment.
To find a National Trails
Day event near you, visit the American Hiking Society web site at
www.americanhiking.org.
