What makes a trail sustainable?
In this paper, USGS researchers describe four, interconnected elements affecting the sustainability of a recreational trail: managerial sustainability, resource sustainability, social sustainability, and economic sustainability.
Trail sustainability can mean different things to different people. Trail users might think of how they can recreate while minimizing damage to the plants and wildlife surrounding a recreational trail. Trail managers might consider how they are going to support the trail in the future through hiring and management of staff that clean drains and remove fallen trees from the trail. While trail sustainability has often been narrowly defined as accommodating visitation while minimizing environmental degradation, USGS researchers emphasize a broader definition that encompasses four, interconnected domains: managerial, resource, social, and economic.
Managerial sustainability includes developing and managing cost-efficient trail networks able to support recreational visitation while ensuring adequate environmental protection. Resource sustainability involves minimizing visitor impacts to preserve natural and historic/cultural conditions in perpetuity, including biodiversity, water quality, ecological processes, and irreplaceable historic, cultural, and archaeological resources. Social sustainability entails providing tourism and recreation experiences that yield valuable physical, mental, and spiritual health benefits to visitors and support environmental education and appreciation. Sustainable trails accommodate visitor demands for access to popular and iconic destinations, but also support a variety of recreational trail activities and experiences to meet the needs of different users. Finally, Economic sustainability recognizes the need for tourism and recreation that yields economic benefits to regional and local communities and provides a critical impetus to set aside, protect, and manage trail networks sustainably.
The researchers encourage consideration of a more comprehensive and holistic perspective of trail sustainability that considers the interconnected nature of the managerial, resource, social, and economic aspects of trail planning and management. For example, although land managers could consult the existing scientific literature to construct an environmentally sustainable trail from a resource perspective, such a trail could go largely unused or fall into neglect if it fails to meet the desires of visitors or provide positive social and economic benefits. For more information on this perspective of trail sustainability, see the newly published research linked above.