Blazing new trails doesn’t help preserve the Ranch

Each week hundreds of visitors, including hikers, runners, bicyclists, equestrians, people with disabilities and people walking their dogs use the trails on the Fiscalini Ranch Preserve. Many people tell me they walk the Ranch every day; some people only ocasionally walk the Ranch but all of these people have the ability to change the face of our preserve by how they use it.

According to Michael Mideke, writer and photographer, “Every passage along a trail is an act of maintenance, every footfall lends definition … (trails) are communal projects repeatedly defined by the feet of each passerby.”

So they are, and this can be good or it can be bad! Together, our combined footsteps can either be grooming our designated trails or creating a multitude of new ad hoc trails, footstep by footstep.

You’ve heard of places being “loved to death.” We have a little bit of that going on at the Ranch. Locals and visitors alike are in the process of communally loving and walking the Ranch to death. Shortcuts and more shortcuts between here and there create a multitude of strands in the web of trails. Each new strand creates a line of bare earth, a scar, that encroaches on plant and animal habitat and contributes to erosion on the preserve.

Check out aerial photographs of the Ranch on google Earth, from 2000 to present, and you can see the changes from the use of a few designated trails to the proliferation of mini trails we have today. In order to reduce our footprint (literally) we need to begin to mark designated trails and give up the cross-cut trails that have become so prominent.

There are presently no markers on the Ranch to let people know which trails are authorized. Authorized trails are shown on the maps at the entrances of the Bluff Trail and on the trail maps provided by CCSD, but there are no “on the ground” indications of what is actually a trail.

Friends of the Fiscalini Ranch Preserve Trails Committee and the CCSD Ranch manager are beginning to close a few of the bootleg trails between the Bluff and Marine Terrace trails in the most used section of the property. This will be followed in the future by unobtrusive markers along the trails that are designated in the Ranch Management Plan.

In the meantime, Trails Committee members will be attending the California Trails and Greenways Conference in Riverside to learn more and bring home new information to guide us in a trails plan for the Ranch.

By caring for special places such as the Ranch, we all learn to care for the land, ourselves and our fellow species on this earth. You can help care for the Ranch by honoring our trail closures and restoration efforts there. Remember, when you walk, your every footstep counts!

This story was originally published March 2, 2016 at 11:13 AM with the headline "Blazing new trails doesn’t help preserve the Ranch."