HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Huntsville may be an area known for its military and space attractions, but the greenspaces surrounding them have also become popular. "The Land Trust has nine nature preserves located throughout Madison County with over 80 miles of trails for people to hike, bike, they mountain bike a lot," Marie Bostic, Executive Director for Land Trust North Alabama shares. "We've got a couple of preserves that are horseback riding, disc golf course, all kinds of ways you can get out and enjoy nature."
The pandemic forced people to find different ways to stay active so naturally, many took full advantage of those opportunities. "We have seen a precipitous increase in usage over the last few years," Bostic shares. "So, in 2020 our usage doubled. We had over 400,000 people out on the trails, which was pretty crazy, quite honestly, and it did a lot of damage to the trails."
That increase in foot traffic led to many problems including increase erosion due to hikers not staying on the trail paths. "The damage was just overuse of trails because of the number of people that were on the trails, we had a lot of erosion issues with the usage," Bostic shares. "Like for example, when you have like a wet area on a trail, people don't necessarily want to walk through the wet areas, so they go around it, so they increase the width, which creates more erosion."
Land Trust is now playing catch-up in getting many of these trails fixed. One big change is a bigger staff. "Our property management and land stewards' staff have actually doubled over the last several years just to try to keep up with the maintenance issues," Bostic says. "We could not do what we do without our volunteers getting out on the trails and really jumping in and doing some amazing work, not just to repair trails, but also to build new trails."
With a bigger team, Land trust is able to focus on a few new projects. "Our biggest trail project we have right now is on Green Mountain. We're building a two-mile addition on Green Mountain. Currently, we are just about halfway through that project, we have plans to do a lot more." Bostic says more changes are coming. "Chapman Mountain, we'd like to develop several more miles of trails. We opened this preserve before COVID, and because of the repairs we've had to delay a lot of that new trail construction. So, we'd like to do some more here, but it just takes time and limited resources."
Despite the damage the traffic can cause, folks are still encouraged to make a visit. "There are definitely more people out enjoying being outside, which is good. I think it's a great exercise option and a recreation option and people have discovered us through COVID, and they've kept coming." Bostic just asks, "Just stay on the trails and respect the rules. Those are the big things. I mean, if you stay on the trails, we're rebuilding and creating good trails and so they should hold up as we get through those projects."