Plan Trails to Minimize Wildlife Disturbance

A summary of best practices for trail groups who plan, design, and manage nonmotorized trails to minimize disturbance of or conflict with wildlife, specifically large carnivores. Focusing on BC’s habitats, this presentation delivers a series of recommendations that span for trail planning (macro environmental factors) to trail design (specific environmental features) to trail management (human use and maintenance).

As the world population grows and more people are participating in outdoor recreation in wild spaces, recreation groups need to address the impacts on wild animals. Much work has been done to outline best practices associated with trail planning, design and management, to minimize environmental impacts such as erosion, or use conflicts, such as mountain bike and equestrian conflicts. While extensive research over the past 30 years has considered the recreation impacts on wild animals, minimal work has been done to connect this research to trail planning, design and management principles.

Our work connects wildlife research with trail planning, design and management best practices to minimize overlap and conflict between people participating in recreation and wild animals. Our focus for this work is on landscapes typically found in British Columbia and large predators, such as bears, wolves and cougars. While other animals, including ungulates and meso-predators, will feel impacts associated with recreation, our work assumes that the impacts on large predators will also apply to these other animals.

Presenter:
Magi Scallion has been working in recreation for two decades between Alberta and British Columbia. Her specialty lies in trail planning and recreation management. She developed the first master summer trail plan for the Canmore Nordic Centre, which included recommendations for trail decommissioning to appropriately manage the ecosystem of the area. She currently works with many motorized sports organizations on similar projects to manage use and maintain environmental values.