Are You a Hunter?

As a long time volunteer along the Rachel Carson Trail it was always a dream, often times it seemed a fantasy, to protect and preserve the trail. As an urban trail in a county of 1.25 million people, it's an amazing achievement to maintain a 45.7 mile trail, cobbled together with primarily private land. It's created issues through the years as property owners change and the trail must move to accommodate the new owners. However, our organization has grown and thanks to our members, donors and event participants we are now able to start purchasing key parcels of land to secure the trail. At present we have been able to acquire over 185 acres.

Being landowners now brings up something new for us, land management. While we acquired the land to protect the trail, we want to be good stewards of the land under our care. We want to protect and preserve the land, while making it available to other outdoor enthusiasts for various interests. One outdoor activity that folks enjoy, that actually helps protect and preserve the land is hunting. In our urbanized county we don't have large predators like wolves or mountain lions, so hunters can help fill that void and aid in controlling the animal populations.

We envision establishing a policy to regulate hunting on our various properties. We are first and foremost a hiking trail group, so any policy must assure the safety of our trail users. There is room however for responsible hunting, that addresses the safety concerns, if it is implemented in partnership with the hunting community.

As a volunteer organization however, no matter how important or beneficial a project is, everything we do is dependent on having people willing to work on that project. Our group currently has a lack people with experience and first hand knowledge of hunting, so this is an area of great need for us. If you'd like to help us develop a hunting policy for our property, or to help us with land management issues in general, please email info@rachelcarsontrails.org.