 Good evening all. My name is Zach Freeman. I'm the owner of Apex Trailworks based here in Randolph, Vermont and I'd like to welcome you to the Gear House and the Recreation Trails and Ecological Integrity presentation by Carl Russell. This evening is meant to be a discussion and inspirational talk to inspire you to take a little bit of what you hear and and take it back out with you on the trail either to Trailhead a trail build, a volunteer work day, and just as you move throughout the forest there's going to be good tips and thoughts and concepts that Carl will go over here this evening. And I've known Carl for over 20 years, have great respect for his approach and connection to the land. He has great respect for the ecosystem and a wonderful perspective on on how to move throughout the forest. Before we do get going a couple housekeeping agenda items, we do have a bathroom in the back for folks to use if they'd like. If you don't or if you haven't been in the Ridgeline Outdoor Collective Trail Hub room that's through that room right there or through that door right there. That's our club's trail room that has all of our trail maps in it and there's hats and swag in there to buy as well. Please help yourself to refreshments and cookies and also you have to buy something tonight. Got a little off point here, but you know the most important point of tonight at the core of the message is how we're going to try and enhance and broaden our outdoor recreation's community's perspective on how we build, use and curate our trails. As we all know the last couple of years the uptick of users has pushed more and more folks out onto trails both close to town and further into the back country and with that we just really would like to kind of focus on the message because I think that's really the at the core of where the missing link is we feel. The trail organizations, the people connected to a lot of the trail organizations, the builders have a pretty strong relationship and respect for the trails from a trail builder and an organizer standpoint and the users sometimes don't quite have that same perspective so I think it's on us to really you know continue to push that message and help change that perspective of even if you are on vacation we still need to really really really respect the lands that you're at even if it's you know just for a day or a weekend. I myself am a lifetime lover of all things recreation. I built trails since I was a little kid and love the forest with all of my heart and I want to make sure and I want to make sure that we balance trail building and the users so they don't you know take precedent over ecological integrity. This is a balance between trail usage and letting the ecosystem thrive and grow and so Carl will touch on that and go into depth about his perspectives there. It is a balance between the builders and the users and we should constantly reevaluate our perspectives to ensure we are being mindful of our practices, how we operate, what we do, where we go to make sure that we are that we're that we're going in the right direction for long-term use. I don't know who here knows Aldo creditable anybody so there's there's a great he's kind of the grandfather of a lot of this thinking and there's a a small snippet from his land ethics essay that kind of rang loudly to me yesterday when I was working online for stuff and it's a snippet that was published in 1949 from the evolution of a thinking community. Aldo Leopold recognized that his dream of a widely accepted and implemented set of values based on caring for people for the land and for all of the connections between them would have to evolve in the minds of a thinking community. We are all a part of a thinking community that needs to shape the land ethic for the 21st century and beyond. To do that we must engage in thoughtful dialogue with each other inviting a diversity of perspectives experiences and backgrounds together we can form a land ethic that can be passed down to future generations generations and that just really spoke loud to me and I think it does to everybody here too. As we embrace Leopold's ethical principle is we shouldn't preserve the integrity stability and beauty of the biotic community. So what does ecological integrity mean? Where do building trails and trail users fit into the picture in a sustainable way? Standing beside me is Carl Russell from Russell Forestry Services and he will take a deeper dive into what we can do to collectively ensure we're preserving ecological integrity while enjoying the massive health and well-being benefits of trails and outdoor recreation. So, Carl Russell, thank you for being here. Thank you. It goes both ways. I have a lot of respect for Zach and the work that he's been doing and his development as a young man. It's been fun to watch take over the town of Randolph. I also started as a kid with trail building working with the YCCC when I was 15 and it was a great exercise and it and it's carried me through my forestry work too because in forestry we have a lot of trails for all the work that we do. So basically I'm a forestry consultant and log with draft animals and I've been focusing on ecological and environmental forestry for almost 40 years now and it's interesting. I didn't get a Leopold quote but I'm bringing Leopold to the table tonight because it's all sort of where I started out. So my primary objective tonight is really just to start a discussion. I want to come away from here tonight having planted some seeds so that people can continue to talk about what ecological integrity can be or might be and how that fits into our mindset when we're in the forest. I'm going to cover some basic concepts related to the challenges we face developing recreational opportunities in the forest lands of Vermont. What I'll share with you is not meant to be an expert view. There are a lot of people in this room right here that have a lot of insight that can share. There are people in our communities and people to come who will have good ideas but if we like like that or like Mr. Leopold said if we have a thinking community and we're we're expanding our thought about these issues about how we interface the land it's an ongoing conversation and I want to make sure that everybody understands that this is you know because it's a discussion it's an inclusive discussion and if you've got something to say tonight please raise your hand anytime that I say something that gets triggers you that you want to say something absolutely raise your hand and speak and and if it's something you want to say but you didn't feel like saying it tonight track down Zach and myself and talk to us at another time. So Zach I'll move to the next slide. So this topic came up in our conversations because of the back country bicycle trail development increases so does the business sector and with the attractiveness of the outdoor recreation drawing more people into these environments that they may not be familiar with and as the economic sector increases there's an opportunity for increased numbers of recreational consumers and the aesthetics and physical challenges of the natural setting that bring people to ride in these woodlands can distract users from the ecological values that are are there and and and those are the values that can be degraded by that use and that's just a picture I stole off of the off of the statewide but it's I feel like it's important because there's a big financial push now in the state to to to see this see growth in this economic sector and I think it's timely to be talking about this. So another person that I did quote is Lauren Isley he was a an anthropologist and naturalist author and and this he wrote in 19 oops next slide I pushed it here but it didn't happen there so there that's the quote woodland biking has a unique unique opportunity users of well-built thoughtful design trails can become stewards of the Vermont landscape by supporting and adopting an ecological ethic the attributes of the outdoor recreation are attractive to significant portion of the population who can ride an e-bike but they may not actually be able to see the environment that they're riding in they may not have an understanding of it and we have a long history of using natural resources with a focus on a particular attribute and that focus oftentimes is upsetting and eventually destructive to the to the economic or the ecological relationships around it so I thought that this was interesting quote from Lauren Isley just because it sets up the mindset that we we bring with us as as evolutionary humans there's a lot of activity and a lot of ambition to sort of our environment next one so ecological integrity is an interesting topic and I use the word freely because integrity is a concept really but there are a couple of different ways to look at it and one is that it would be descriptive of a wholeness of an undivided complete structure of an ecosystem where all the parts perform necessary functions in a normalized continuing process another would be that integrity can also be more generally like a like structural integrity the unseen force interaction between integral parts to secure the whole and in that really in that those relationships are sensitive and can be affected by outside forces however really the scientific community actually doesn't recognize ecological integrity as a as a concept because there's in nature in a natural setting there's so much fluctuation so much variability so many ecosystems are actually reactive so they there are there are ranges of ways that enter that biological organisms interact with each other and so it's too complex to measure so ecological integrity is not a a measurable concept so it can't a lot of scientists don't want to use it so I'm really just bringing it tonight as a more as a concept and the and we'll go to the next slide I think it'll that's just a picture so but the when the human choices create an impact on the given biological community our actions make us integral members of that community whether we're aware of it or not and this is where I like to put the emphasis on integrity because do we usurp and take control over the the environment that we've just invited ourselves into or do we have access to our own sense of integrity and honesty and authenticity to interact with the biological organisms in our environment and that's I think is at the basis of Leopold's ethic it's it's really about the human integrity not necessarily about the ecological integrity when you um so if you um if you can get the concept of of the fact that you've entered into a series of relationships with your environment and you now think that you want to protect that in a way there's a there's another human problem or a human issue that comes in in the next slide and this is no that one there yeah shifting baselines and this is a long long-term human reality pure water is essential but a little bit of impurity it's hardly noticeable right even a lot of impurity at times may not seem to destroy the water it isn't just soiling the water that's the problem it's that our indifference to the change that eventually leads us to accept that our water is impure and that's the sort of how over time that baseline of pure water changes and we just let it change and that happens in relationships it happens to our ecosystem it happens in our communities so um in this case it leads to in the case of my example pure water it leads to the development of technology to clean the dirty water instead of stop making dirty water so we even still we keep that that paradigm functioning there so the next slide back in the 80s i visited mount st helens and we we drove up through the pacific northwest forest in the in the blast shadow of the hill and all the trees were were lush and dark and green and moss everywhere and ferns and you come up over the hill and you come into the road that heads to the to the mountain and it was absolute desolation just black and gray and just vacant and just um total desolation and as we drove a few miles in a few I don't know this was like a half an hour to get to the mountain and we spent some time there and we came back a few hours later and there were plants everywhere there were green plants flowering plants everywhere in that landscape but I hadn't seen them because my eyes had been used to the lush green of the forest that we drove out of and when I saw the desolation it was such a distinctive difference that I didn't see those little spots of green out through there but on the way back I did and so I just offering that as an example for someone who's grown up in an urban environment who's um you know conceptually they understand that there's a forest but they haven't spent time in the forest they haven't um they don't have the context so when they come into the into a forested uh ecosystem it's a it's a lot easier to just put in the earbuds and grab the handlebars and just ride because they're that's it's a great it's great vision it's a great aesthetic but they're not um engaging in knowing this the surrounding so this is really probably the shifting baselines is probably even more important than than the ecological integrity because without getting a grip on how your perspective aligns with the reality that you're in you're going to be able to understand the ecological integrity yeah some years ago I think it was probably I don't know 15 years ago or so and I believe it was a PBS report about the black forest in Germany and at that time people were realizing that the health of the forest was suffering they couldn't quite figure out what it was until finally the realization was that the people that lived there the general population that loved the forest so much uh were we're cleaning it up too much yeah you know making it pristine and tidy and so they had to change their their thought process to leave that stuff there to decompose you know and feed the forest yeah and then we we experienced that here a lot you know with our forest industry doing whole tree harvesting this people doesn't want don't want to see wasted wood in a forest any longer but it's it's not necessarily ecologically sound you know because the of that nutrient cycling and so and people oftentimes would like to see the sides of the trails cleaned up you know I worked with a bunch of horse loggers in Maine at the Moffka forest over there and Moffka is the main organic farmers association and they have a strong environmental ethic and all of the wood lots we worked in around the the common ground fair area had to be cleaned up we had to bring all of the dead wood out of the woods um so it's just it's like it's that environmentalists want to see a clean forest it just doesn't there's a gap there in terms of the reality I'll just take that one step further to you go out west and they clean the understory because that's fuel for forest fires yeah and so they clean that all the dead stuff and the shrubbery and stuff but they're not quite relating out to the ecosystem and how that's needed to sustain predators and all the bugs and stuff to continue yeah it's so interesting to see because the forest forest started to completely clean around certain areas and that becomes a reality for people like the generations of people living in the black forest they that becomes their context of what the forest should look like and I'm not you know as I said these are these are human habits that we I mean that were passed down it's not and um so it's nobody's to blame but it's uh it takes time for people to understand and then point out to other people so that they can see what they're what what they're um what they're interfering with so off-road bicycle trails are particularly concerned for soil erosion and water quality protection the tires are designed for increased traction but they easily disturb soil under the path and the narrow path typically creates or can become a channel for water runoff and over time that can be a serious it can lead to a serious erosion problem and so I just was one of the things that I've noticed from some of the organizations that I looked into restrict off-road or restrict trail riding to certain times of the year when the trails are dry or even if there's a you know a weather anomaly or something like that but it's a good it's sort of a first step for an organization to really drive home to their users that this organization has an environmental ethic and our first and primary impact is water quality and so that means today we're not riding trails it could be the middle of the summer but you had a gully washer you haven't had a chance to get around to look at the trails nobody's getting on it with a bike because that's our commitment to the to water quality so that's just an example yeah and I will add from Vermont mountain bike association standpoint and the 28 chapters throughout the state through a few of the the apps that are out there trail forks being one it's at the forefront of a lot of these clubs that are trying to open and close trails yeah it's virtually impossible to have open and closed signs on the trails but with the convenience of an app in your hand that you can say hey is that is that open or closed and and boom that club closed at last or you get a notification says it is closed that's closed correct and so I think you know to the credit of vimba and and and all of the clubs are doing a really good job trying to put that message out there a lot of our clubs trails are closed during the winter and don't even open up till late spring until all of the volunteers have time to go out assess the trails and check the condition and then we all talk and then we say yep they're good to go they're dry and there's certain trails and sometimes on orderly aspects up higher that open later you know so I think we're we're doing a pretty good job but we can always well so the there's two parts of that one is a good job protecting water quality that's the organization's closing down the trail whatever it is it's protecting water quality but the organization has an opportunity to educate its users to bring them in as stakeholders and say today none of us are riding on this trail because of these this commitment that's so that's where there's like two sides to that the organizations are probably running out there to make sure that they don't have a water quality infringement you know and making sure but at the same time they also can be broadening their their environmental ethic by uh by making this a teaching point I think you could substitute tires for hiking sticks too sure I've noticed that on trails that are heavily used and well foot traffic yeah yeah they all yeah yeah it's it's a tough one yeah yeah yeah I don't think really we're in a bike shop and Zach builds bike trails and so I was focusing on that in this conversation but it absolutely is I mean you can see that the logging industry is not always on top of road building and trail building either so there's it's there's and that's a dangerous slippery slope is like well they don't do it so that's where sort of the ethic of the organization is really important for people and users to start to just band together on these things so that it's not like he said she said or they're doing it I'm not gonna do it and yeah one and to that point I think that the forestry in the logging industry here in Vermont has really began to step up with the formation of of the amp the acceptable movement management practices and really trying to get the loggers to to to adhere to these acceptable management practices with water mitigation water will run off and it's beginning to come to the forefront because of the the the environmental impact everybody's seeing it from every different user group of all different industries I think people are becoming a lot more aware and it doesn't matter if it's recreation or logging or development or something it's it's all becoming more and more on the forefront folks mind I think consumers are getting more used to it I know in my forestry business my clients are willing to pay for construction work to build trails that will last and will be will maintain water quality so in the past loggers weren't doing it because it was going to cost too much so next slide so this is another example of sort of what we were just talking about this is probably a lot of people have seen these it's just you know a sign and some lines on the top of the camel's hump or Mansfield where the alpine vegetation grows it's so fragile and it's an it's an attempt to all in that case bring every hiker that goes by that sign becomes a stakeholder they're they're part of the problem or the solution and we've all seen examples of people who think it's funny to step over the line and do it but if there's somebody I mean you told me a story and tonight I told another friend of mine told me a story in both of those cases you and the other person both went over and spoke to those people and and encouraged them and educated them encouraged them to get on the other side of the line and and so and that's sort of that's what we're talking about is just put the ethic in action you know put put little things out there that you know maybe you don't want to have the place littered with signs but some signs that say that that there's something that to look out for yep next one so this is another way for users to become familiar with all the different aspects of of the natural environment the an Vermont agency of natural resources natural resource atlas has all you know layers after layers and I just created a splotchy field so you could see it but you probably some of you do see it but for every one of these attributes you can click on it there's some kind of a circle right there which is probably a natural community if you click on that on this site then it will give you an information site information sheet about the the attribute that you're that you could be riding through or that you are riding through it you've got trails I mean and these are deer wintering areas and so there are it's primarily it's general information it's not going to tell you that this is a brown bat hibernaculum it's going to tell you that it's a some kind of a rare mammal but but it but it's general and it'll tell you why it's why it's noticed why it's why there's a mark on the map and that way users can inform themselves at a general landscape level this is just landscape level stuff but it it gives the user an opportunity to to start to delve into what it is that they're they're experiencing out there and that this is online and it's free to be used can I add that yeah so this is a really amazing tool for folks that haven't been to this this is the state website that has every recorded geological and environmental feature that the state records from from roads to wells to soils to wetlands to slope angles to waterways to everything it's all the layers on the left hand side it goes these all break open it goes far beyond my head of things that don't don't I don't need but from a from a trail builder standpoint and a trail planning standpoint I and others use this website often to refer to if we are looking at an area to potentially develop this is the first stop we go we go to the state and our map we bring up all of the layers we bring up hydro soils the wetlands the vernal pools the deer wintering grounds all of these little fires and that kind of helps us shape if this is a good spot for this trail does this interfere with the ecosystem does this interfere with the watershed how many stream crossings are there you know what's the slope angle and then from that from state and well from state funded trail projects we need to go through a permit review sheet process which gets reviewed by all of the environmental state agencies at dc and and uh an r an r thank you and what they do is then they look at all the layers on their own maps so if we from a trails trail building standpoint and planning standpoint are ahead of that and shows that we're good planners and and this maps a huge asset for for a lot of different aspects but it's it's well worth the time to jump in and jump around and explore because it's a wealth of the of the info for sure so i have i had done some research into trail building for the conservation commission in bethel and um founded a couple of studies um from some large trails that were developed in in a natural area near some urban uh near an urban area and that study was um you know a comprehensive environmental type of the study but it was actually a very informative pamphlet and and that's another tool if you're already cataloging this and you're putting together plans on on certain trail sections you you might find that that's something a resource that could be made available in the hub over there absolutely yeah so the next slide so trails are excellent this is just a trail just i was trying to find i couldn't but trails are excellent ways to get people into the woods you know that they're where they probably that wouldn't go anyway or may not have ever gone before um and they could be a conduit for unintentional destructive um impact but they also can be a very effective way to keep people keep the impact in a specific area keep people away from the from areas that you don't want them to impact and many times people focus on the trails and um because that's why they're in the woods that's where they're going they're on the trail but if if the trail is put in a and it goes to what you were just saying if the trail is put in a particular place because of a particular feature that you don't want to interfere with then the fact that people are using that trail is a benefit to that to that attribute and that's another educational opportunity to let people understand that the reason that they're riding their bike there is so they don't impact something elsewhere and and and you can be specific if you know what it is but that's another way to make the user a stakeholder that um and and so the alternative you know there are a lot of trails that that frustrate users and they go off trail maybe not so much with bikes but you hear about it with skis skiing a lot in the winter environment is much different than than the bike but has similarities um but if you have a trail so the point of that was that if people don't understand that going off trail works against their interests in you in having the trails if the trail is here to protect to give you an opportunity to be out in the environment it it's also an opportunity to protect the environment so if you leave that trail you're you're breaking down your own objective like this is just a few bullet points uh yeah just a few pointers about uh trail building location and design to find the resources to help you identify sensitive sites that could be the county forester it could be an r it could be a naturalist that you know in the in the community there are statewide biologists who specialize in this and as I was getting ready to talk uh to pull this together I was thinking there are people in the green mountain club there there are um I just dropped another well anyway there's a bunch of different or there's a wildlife biologist that I know of who has gone and testified at a certain a couple of different communities that were considering trails so there are people who can be brought in and and um asked to give a final go over on a trail to make sure that that things haven't been some really important things haven't been missed or something but basically find those resources that can identify those sites um use the amp water water quality guidelines even on a single track you've got to be able to you have to be able to back up these uses with some kind of protection to point out kind of something um for the trails here in the green mountain national forest the NEPA reviews are pretty in-depth and lanky lengthy um and now there's a they're probably lanky too lanky and now there's the SHPO reviews there's an there's an additional environmental impact review that's required that um that some of the folks that are uh that are planning the Belmont Trail are going through this new SHPO review process that is I believe a state review it's pretty new um and that uh those two reviews are are very in-depth and a lot of eyes are on these projects um and for the federal stuff it takes sometimes years to get the approval but they've got the funding it's tough it's tough for a trail like a trail builder communities yeah they're small but if you but if you're sensitive to it then that's I think one of the points that that I would like to make is that if you start now in 40 years it won't bite you in the butt because you it's part of your ethic it's your message you've been working you've showed you've been working at it and in 40 years the back country in woodland biking is going to be an exemplary organization that's that's been working to preserve it's not to pervert but to preserve it's uh it's natural surroundings um oh well one thing I talked with Zach about before as well and other landowners who I work with is that um try to in in certain wherever you can try to combine with other trails that are already there forest trails or even um natural corridors or something maybe um power lines I mean just as samples of things just try to use trails that are already in corridors that are already being used um so that you don't have to have spread out the the trail system everybody has their own trail that they want to travel on and and if you mix and match where you've got the single trail in some places and you've got forestry roads in other places and it's a a way to but if the forestry roads aren't aren't taken care of it could be much more difficult um they do tend to hold water sometimes and I found it I have private private clients that want the trail tread improved yeah within a logging road and I just need to look at it say I'm not gonna touch it yeah because it's just it's already a water quality it's a slippery slope and you you need to add so much material in there to maintain it it's easier to easier and more sustainable to build the trail kind of parallel to that you know crown the right way drain the right way slope the right way I do the so it's it's hitting I do the same thing when I go into a logging job I don't take the trail that was poorly laid out yeah so hopefully as we change our practices going forward um from both recreational user and of forestry and logging all of our trails can be more sustainable for future use so that we can go back and reuse those trails yeah and they won't have the same issues that we've our facebook in past yeah yeah it's exciting um developing dates for standard access you know in a particular region or having um like we talked about the educational opportunities for users to be introduced to to the features that are that are restricting their use oh I didn't scroll down I must have so then one of the last things is to establish maintenance teams or however you do it I don't know who can perform repairs or who can manage user access which you've already talked about but you've got environmental impacts like water quality and you also have habitat issues such as nesting birds or wildlife offspring things like that that can be easily disturbed by bicycle traffic and one person going through a trail is not a problem 10 people going through the trail probably isn't a problem either but if there's a doe or a fawn and every single time a bicycle comes through she's alerted that's that's not her normal pattern and so you're you're introducing something different to her even if she doesn't run you're creating a discomfort for her um and the same thing goes for nesting birds um some of the large wild wildlife will leave the area and come back because they can travel so much territory but once that user group starts to increase there's um this is an issue I didn't bring into the conversation but it just popped in my mind is it like a lot of people a lot of times we'll we'll use the term in forestry mimicking natural processes but if you're mimicking natural processes you're taking away the opportunity for nature to do what you just did so if you cut down trees because you don't want them to get blown over the next windstorm comes in and blows over more trees or it doesn't have trees to blow over so finding ways that the use can leave an opportunity for the natural environment to to perform its normal function so alerting a doe 10 times in the morning this is not a fact I'm just using as an example is is an example of of how that use can be discriminated so if there's somebody who rides through and they see the doe in the fawn maybe there's a way that they can let people know that that's maybe not a best trail to ride on the day or something but it's it's another opportunity for people to you don't have to necessarily see the doe and the fawn to get the experience if you know that the fawn's there and that's a good reason not to ride the trail today it it's part of your ethic it's a development of the ethic so that's one more quote the last slide that's he was my uncle but not in the park not a well the important person but really makes a lot of sense so that's that's part of the environment the ecological integrity is what how can I get what I need or want from the environment without creating a situation that I have to start to manage because once I start managing it it's no longer the natural setting that it was and we're not so so that's the end of my talk yeah yeah discussion concerns have come up for you and from your perspective as you've seen this rapid growth of trail development and trail users um I think that it hasn't I haven't seen a public presentation of of the ethic like this yeah it's just that I wonder you know I don't know how many people riding on any of these trails I haven't been on very many of them so I don't know and um and it you know I think that what I have seen is sort of more of an advertisement approach to we have bicycle trails and biking in Vermont's back country is a is a great opportunity and so the next part of that there's another paragraph that or two that can go on that in public that's so that's really in terms of being in the woods I haven't seen any I mean I've I've seen some of the trails that Thatcher's built which he does a great job and I've seen some of the trails that Zach's building and so I don't have a problem with the trails I have a problem with the managing the use so I have no doubt the trails are being built beautifully I always come back to the fact that probably a lot of people have heard this you know you know Vermont's within a day's drive of 60 million people so as the popularity of all the recreational activities the even the hiking biking yeah e-biking um and then throwing ATVs and yes keeps building building building on the pressure so what do we do about the volume what do we do about the volume of traffic yeah what do we do about that and wildlife especially wildlife I mean I think you can probably keep the trails in good shape you can probably avoid the erosion and all that but what do you do about the effect on worse yeah that's where you know the the authenticity of the organizations that are promoting the use has to come to bear I mean you have to be able to say that this is this is too many people but it's it's because it's so much there's so much variability it's very hard to measure but I I know that when I walk through the woods and see a deer oftentimes she's not alarmed but I've seen skiers go by deer and and and my horses as well they just freak out because of the speed that they're traveling so and they don't have to necessarily freak out a lot it's just this is not part of their environment sorry um somehow us developing some sensitivity more sensitivity to the fact that there's a community here so for an example you you know you go to Paris France and you go walk into a bistro and there's a whole bunch of people sitting around they're all speaking French do you don't you just start yelling English out maybe in 2020 you do but but but but you probably you don't really so but then why do you go into the forest with no sensitivity to the community that's there you know it's like I don't know what that community is well then you know even more reason to be gentle I think that's a great point and this is a good um uh transition into the US Forest Service I'm gonna go to the back yeah the US Forest Service did a the IR the Robinson IRP uh review and monitoring uh of the branding gap back-country ski zone that our club built out we got approval for in 2015 um and we're joining outdoor collective then across the um built out four different back-country ski zones on the Green Mountain National Forest on branding gap and the there I think are two or three of the Rangers and one of the biologists Jeremy Mears um was the lead on this and earlier this winter uh they presented this at the Mad River Valley I'm sorry Mad River uh all over the place um MRBBC Mad River Valley Backcountry Coalition they presented their findings and I think it it speaks to what we are trying to to figure out as trail users trail builders conservationists um and environmentalists like what are these impacts so so this little about 15 minute video shows the findings of what they found on monitoring at the branding gap and I think it's really awesome so let me get it up here and see if we can hold on let me just try and get might take me saying collecting information and about flooring fauna to help understand the potential impacts of the back-country zones in that area you'll be be presenting on that we also have Greg White from the Ridge lineup uh president from the Ridge lineup like we'll be here also and we'll speak a little bit after Jeremy's presentation about a rock's perspective and their approach community so with that I'm I'm gonna stop sharing my screen and Jeremy I would ask that you then you can go ahead and share yours all right we'll give it a try great you can see it I can see it and I'm gonna mute myself now thank you fantastic okay hi my name is Jeremy Mears I'm the district biologist for the Rochester middlebury ranger district so I'm here to talk to you today about the work we've been doing in Brandon and Chittenden um Chittenden Brook and branding gap trying to figure out what's going on with the backcountry ski zones and the proposed backcountry ski zones um my information's on the screen right now if you have any questions after um please feel free to reach out that's my actual cell phone so um limited to times that are reasonable but uh uh yes I'll just get on with it so what got us here so um there are two projects that really led to the monitoring in Brandon gap um the first was the trial backcountry ski zone project that was signed in 2015 um and really implemented after that and is fully implemented now that's the Brandon backcountry ski zones um the three areas ocean barebrook and no name it's about 200 acres of backcountry skiing um that project went through um people saw that the public had some concerns about what the effects of that backcountry use was um so when we moved to the next project which was the robinson irp integrated resource project that was signed in 2018 and had a proposed new backcountry ski area in Chittenden Brook um members of the public asked us to monitor what effects could potentially be happening as a result of the backcountry skiing before we actually implement um those projects um the Chittenden Brook projects did stay in the decision documents so they are they are still NEPA they just have been on it have not been implemented pending the outcomes of this work so this is roughly the area I apologize for the terrible map I am not a GIS map person I am a I go to documents and steal maps from other folks so what you can see here on the left is the existing um uh branding app ski zones they're in yellow like I said these are fully implemented um this is a project that is no additional work is happening here if you look on the right side of the screen you see the purple areas which are the proposed ski zones that are in Chittenden Brook um these equal something in the neighborhood of 250 acres um that could be potentially developed as we move forward um so the state of objective of the project we had to um in the decision for Robinson we added monitoring to the NEPA so we have to monitor we are statutorily required to monitor um and the objective was to monitor moose and black bear abundance and evaluate the potential impacts to these species for backcountry stereo management use um and specifically we're looking at what's happened at Brandon Gap using Chittenden Brook as a control and then thinking about what that means for Chittenden Brook moving forward um additionally with this I added another control site that it will be explained better as I move forward through the slides um so as we drill down into that a little closer the goals of the study were to compile statistics on moose um create relative abundance relative abundance indices um and do the same thing for black bear um then compare the information we have from Brandon Gap to Chittenden Brook because we're also collecting camera data there um and I also created an off trail camera transect in Brandon Gap to complement the on trail so we had more areas to look at to compare and finally you know the piece was to use the information we get to think about how we move forward with Chittenden so the areas highlighted red obviously the same um terrible map I used before but this gives you an idea of where my sample areas were from 2017 till 2020 and I should say that we're continuing to keep this monitoring going for the foreseeable future it's just a really great wealth of knowledge to think about what's going on in relation to these activities so as far as my staff time I'm pretty much considering this is a project we're going to keep going with for the foreseeable future until there's a reason to stop um so the piece on the left that is that um the sample area that's an off trail sample area in Brandon Gap um the yellow area that circled that's the no name ski zone that's where we had cameras on the trails and obviously the purple area that's circled down on the right that's the the furthest west Chittenden Brook um proposed ski zone areas um to think about the sampling that we did we did camera trap transect sampling um so we had 18 cameras total in the three areas um each sample area has six cameras um placed in an elevational gradient going from the highest point of the transect at 200 foot intervals going down the slope and at some areas we did replicates to kind of see what we are what we're missing with those cameras to get an idea of air um we also randomized the direction the cameras are facing within those areas so that we get um we're not getting effects of bias of where we're looking um sample period is the entire year these cameras are out all year round um my staff and myself go out on a somewhat of a schedule basically weather dependent and swap cards batteries bring the data back and start crunching numbers um as of right now the set 2017 to 2021 half hour to 2020 has been analyzed there's more data to add to this data set it's just a matter of time to get the put it all together so in terms of what we found we're seeing a lot of really interesting information about all the species we get up in Brandon gap in Chittenden Brook um you know moose and black bear are the two species we're interested in they are not the most abundant species we run into that's by far white till deer that use those areas heavily um but we get a lot of information on other species that are using that you know not only the areas that aren't currently ski zones but the ski zones too so other species are also using them we haven't crunched those numbers but you know other things to look at as we move forward and again you know moose we got 40 black bear we got 40 so we haven't we don't have a lot of detections but what we do have is detections at almost every camera in the sample area so um i calculated something called realized occupancy which basically means how many cameras did the species of interest shop in and for black bear it was about 80 percent of the cameras detected black bear and for moose was about 89 percent so they're really found throughout the sample area um to drill down into the numbers a little more closely we can focus on moose um and what this is is all years data 2017 to 2020 a total sample collection of 40 for moose and looking at what months of the year that species was detected and what we begin to see is that there's some seasonality to when we're finding moose um kind of an important thing to think about with the january and february samples are that these were actually detections in periods of low snow we don't tend to see moose moving on the landscape when there's a lot of snow on the ground they're just not moving around occasionally we'll see areas where they've really vetted in hard in the woods but we just don't see them moving actively throughout the deep snow areas in brandy gavage and in brook um so we have the same information for bear and you can see the same seasonality obviously bear our dormant for a large portion of the time when skiing is active um we expected this this isn't a surprise in any way shape or form um you know as climate chains move forward we might see some more that the shoulders increase some but um we see strong seasonal use that um really suggests that it's obviously the non snow periods or the deep snow periods that we're just not seeing the bear out there um what we can do now is take the skier numbers so this is the data of skier use in the no-name ski zones and it's for the three years of that we actually recorded data there so 2018, 2019, and 2020 um over those three years there were 1756 detections of skiers in that particular ski zone um some skiers can get double counted in this so that number is likely a little higher than what is actually there um but it gives you an idea of when the use is when we're seeing the heaviest use of the ski zones which is you know really beginning of end of january through february to march we see a lot of activity um and then by april we're pretty much done there's a few stragglers that come through you see people skiing the hardback but in general um you know after the powder is gone you don't see a lot of activity um same happens for november december we just see a real decrease in the number of people who are using it this is skier specific this is in all people so you'll see a smatter you have other folks using the ski lines and off-country trail areas as well which you know we we have hunters we have hikers um hunters actually have popped up a lot in the ski zones in um recent images interesting so if we take the moose, black bear and skier information and put that together in one graph we can kind of think about um when we have the highest number of skiers and when we have the highest number of detections of moose and black bear in our areas um and what we see again is that strong seasonal difference um and you know one of our concerns is um is the movement of are we seeing skiers push animals out of our areas of concern and if you look at that you could interpret it that way looking at this graph but the reason we chose the other two control areas that were not ski zones we're looking to see if you have the same seasonal patterns suggesting that we see this pattern in all areas not just the ski zones um and if we drill down into the data I know this is a lot of numbers on the next screen and I'll just explain it you don't have to look through them all okay there was there wasn't your signal got dropped so I'm going to skip ahead to where he comes back in um Brad I see the concerns about firm roads and things like that jump on the handle would that change the floor on fauna on the understory if you didn't okay I think Jeremy's back but I don't want to interrupt what you're saying well that's right yeah I the only comment I'm concerned I don't know if Jeremy's going to speak to this aspect of it was you know changing the understory and in particular concerns about firm roads and things like that and and we've seen a little bit of that in some of the areas um but up in the most part it um it's most of how probably yeah I can definitely agree with that and I'm not going to speak to the flora tonight we're going to stick with fauna but we are continuing to collect vegetation data as a continuation of a university study that was there and great spot on we don't I mean there is some conversion to fern but I think the the large concerns aren't panning out as much as the hobble bush really dominates that landscape um and you know it's amazing how quickly the that area re-vegetates if it's not actively managed so I'm going to try to jump back into my presentation real quick hopefully it works and I don't disappear again can you see it now all right well so um I pretty much gone through this which was to say that we're not seeing a lot of seasonal difference between Chittendenbrook which is a control brand agape off trail which is a control and brand agape on trail we're seeing similar patterns of usage of both both moose and black bear throughout the year um what's interesting is that the um the off trail camera site is actually the one where we're seeing the fewest number of animals so you know as we're creating these feeding lanes at the mountain we're seeing a lot of ungulates moose deer really heavily browsing these areas probably contributing to the you know maybe saving some gas in terms of the some of the triggers as they go up they'll um so you know again this is just going to break down what I said before there's strong seasonal separation between one's gears and using the mountain and one moose and black bear are active um there are no bear declines and moose or black bear in the ski zones there seems to be rendered patterns and fluctuations in the numbers but nothing suggests you know a steady decline in numbers again we've been looking at this for four years um as we look at it for more we may detect the pattern but as it stands now it looks very random in terms of the numbers we're detecting um we I think Greg was speaking to this when the snows there these areas are incredibly popular we see thousands of users using these places annually um like I said 1756 detections in that one line of the known zone alone um so you can kind of expand that to the three different areas um because I mean uh yeah there's a lot of people up there um and what goes before when people see the dogs I know they're going to get worried but what I do see a lot of them with the skiers is people with dogs off leash so I think it's worth bringing it up and it's something I'm going to you know look at more closely we have no evidence that there are there's dogs harassing wildlife on the mountain and I'm not suggesting that all I'm saying is that we see thousands of people skiers up there and hundreds of dogs so white tail deer is the most abundant wildlife species we have up there the two most abundant detections we have are humans and dogs those are really what we're getting most of on our cameras other than really snowy nights that show up on the cameras too when they trick the uh motion sensors so you know what do we do moving forward oh correct me I almost went through the whole thing we're not showing you the pictures of the star other things you've detected so this is an animal we picked up in Chittenden Ruck um very healthy um this is we haven't seen in the images we picked up in all of the areas we the animals tend to be in good condition um and this is just for the next photos are just for one site and you can see how many different species are using a warm particular zone this is one camera's trapping sample period um just about three months three or four months um one site multiple species over the course of over that sample period so we're seeing lots of careers out there um this is Chittenden Ruck we see similar results in um branding gap so nothing just suggests that things are moving away in fact we're seeing kind of the opposite we're seeing more animals using the you know this particularly in the shoulder seasons when there's a snowpack um in branding gap um animals are using that hard pack to move up and down through the forest because it's essentially an easy path to move through the area um so what we're going to do moving forward is continuing monitoring in all three sample areas um like I said I want to keep doing this for the foreseeable future because it's a wealth of knowledge do you think about what the impacts from skiing are and how we continue to develop that country skiing it's something that's not going away um and people love it so we want to continue to support that um activity and do our good diligence to make sure that we're keeping an eye out for any potential negative impacts um the next three points two through five are recommendations I put to our line officer the district ranger Chris Mattrick these are not set in stone these are things that we're discussing as part of moving forward with the proposed Chittenden Ruck um trail development and my first um recommendation was to use the staggered approach to developing the ski zone so there are I believe six areas that are proposed from Chittenden Ruck um what I've asked told Chris in my as my recommendation is to develop a couple of these that are the furthest from the road that will probably get the least amount of activity because they require the most effort to get to them and then we'll continue to monitor that for effects um there's a substantial amount of timber harvest in that area too so we're um so myself I'm a little bit shy about all of the activity that's going on in there not putting too many stressors on the ground um as we go forward with building those ski zones um trying to keep an eye on fragmentation so where we can um keep ski zones compact um keep them compact meaning you know not separate trails for up tracks um into the into the group events yet but it's it's a great idea I'm sure it would be great even yeah even just locally right around town with younger kids you know take kids on bike tours absolutely you know some of the trails that are easily accessible and teaching them to get go you know like all right here's this and that yeah what to be aware of and how to treat this and that yeah I think the more eyes the more ears that we can have on this stuff um the message will spread farther and faster um and that's kind of one of the reasons that I I was chatting Carl about this and it's a good time with you know going into summer and and things are beginning to to get going again and folks are going outside and stuff so hopefully this night has been a little bit helpful in shedding some some lights and some inspirational points to for you for you guys to take and and share and carry on and and tread lightly and leave no trace