SUMMARY
The Clemson Experimental Forest (CEF) has its origins in the federal land conservation and resettlement programs of the 1930s. Dr. George Aull, a Clemson College professor, developed and led the “The Clemson College Community Conservation Project” that involved the purchase of 29,665 acres of worn out farmlands that were to be restored to a healthy, forested landscape. While much of this acreage was lost to inundation due to the construction of Lake Hartwell in the 1960s, 17,500 acres remain to provide exceptional opportunities for education, research and outreach programs in natural resource management.
The first trails on the CEF
were established on the Issaqueena Area under the original Conservation Project
in the 1930s. These were pedestrian trails that were largely associated with
recreation in the vicinity of Lake Issaqueena. The far more extensive trail
system that we have today began to take form in the 1960s when equestrian trail
riders began using logging roads, skid paths, and abandoned farm roads for
recreational riding. This use was expanded as Clemson faculty and staff in the
Department of Animal Husbandry began using these trails for teaching courses in
horse management. It was further supplemented by Pre-Vet Club student
competition rides.
The trail system and its use
expanded only slightly through the 1970s and early 1980s. However, by 1990, use
of the CEF Trail System was becoming both extensive and intensive as equestrian
use expanded rapidly and the newly introduced use of mountain bikes simply
exploded. Today, the CEF supports 109 miles of mapped trail and roads used as
part of the trail system. Preliminary studies indicate that it is receiving at
least 25,000 person-hours of use annually.
The dramatic increase in
trail recreation interests on the CEF has paralleled that of most public lands.
These changes were not foreseen by anyone; thus numerous trail systems have
developed by circumstance and without logic of how they would be managed in
concert with other uses and with resource protection.
This circumstance on the CEF
may be set into a perspective of opportunity. Land managers throughout the
nation are grappling with trail issues at an unprecedented level. Clemson has
the opportunity to develop a prototype model that may provide a frame of
reference for these managers. The process framework that has been chosen is collaborative adaptive management.
Adaptive management can be
practiced in several modes The mode chosen for the CEF Trail System is passive
and collaborative. In this approach, the management procedures are formulated
based on the best scientific and experiential knowledge currently available.
The implementation of system (resources and users of resources) response
monitoring is a process concomitant with the implementation of management. And
finally, a research program is activated and aimed at explaining system
responses as well as discovering alternatives to management procedures that
have unacceptable responses.
Collaboration involves
collaborative work among scientists and managers and with system users.
Scientists and managers make technical decisions on how adaptive management
procedures will be formulated and implemented, but they do so with inputs taken
from system users who inform them of their perspectives and values. Just as the
scientists and managers must learn about user values, the users must be willing
to learn from the scientists and managers. In the end, the most important
product of adaptive management may be knowledge.
The adaptive management plan
for the CEF Trail System was developed through a collaborative effort among
Clemson scientists, CEF managers, and the Clemson University Experimental
Forest Trail System Planning Team. This third element in the collaborative
process was composed of trail users whose efforts were coordinated and advised
by Clemson University personnel.
The trail system plan breaks
management into three recognizable but integrated processes: design/re-design,
regulation, and maintenance. Design and re-design are treated under one heading
for the following reasons:
1. Design is an initial process in establishing a trail; however, with use and monitoring, initial designs are usually found be imperfect in one or more aspects, thus re-design becomes the inextricably linked corrective process.
The design/re-design process
took into account the following considerations:
1. Fitting the use to the capacity of the land to accommodate and sustain that use.
2. User safety.
Regulation of use of the
trail system was considered critical to the harmonizing of trail users among
themselves as well as for resource protection. Regulations were formulated with
the consideration that they must be practicable as well as communicable and
sensible to the average trail user.
Rules and regulations were
first predicated on considerations for trail ethics and etiquette with an
emphasis on the use of commonsense and common courtesy. The second
consideration was to prevent unmanaged expansion and use of the trail system.
This consideration led to the rule that all trails and roads will be closed to
trail traffic unless posted as open. Finally, the institution of a trail user
permit system was driven by the need to keep users informed of the locations of
open trails, current regulations, and potential annual changes in regulations.
Trail maintenance is a
constantly active process that is expensive and labor intensive, yet necessary,
and may be substantially dependent on volunteer services. The CEF Trail System
Plan addresses how the University will make an initial approach to grappling
with maintenance issues including those of volunteerism.
System response monitoring
and research will be addressed by an interdisciplinary team of scientists
working in collaboration with the CEF managers. Both ecosystem and trail user
responses will be monitored and studied.
Finally, at the initiation
of the CEF Trail System Plan, collaborative committees will be formulated for
the purposes of:
1. Establishing lines of communication.
2. Organizing work efforts.