COUNTY PARKS OFFICIALS contend critics of a new trails plan don’t know what they’re talking about, but Devin Wilson of Woodacre begs to differ.
The 21-year-old College of Marin student grew up on the hiking trails of the San Geronimo Valley, and is on a crusade to make sure others can do the same.
Wilson, a landscape photographer, was shaken after reading the trails plan and its regulatory proposals. He created a website at www.sgvtrails.org called HOOT, for Hands Off Our Trails, posted trail plan documents and critiques, distributed dozens of leaflets and launched online and hard-copy petition drives, collecting more than 1,000 signatures.
If parks commissioners decline to overhaul the plan when it comes up for review next year, he promises a showdown when the Board of Supervisors weighs in.
The plan seeks to manage 16,000 acres of county park preserves by making protection of the environment a top priority and posing restrictions that include shutting down wayward trails and old roads. It envisions a network of official paths, bars off-trail jaunts and disruptive practices such as mountain bike racing, and limits activities including off-leash dogs.
“It’s not a bad plan overall, but it does have major problems,” said Wilson, pointing to what he called an incomplete inventory of existing paths that does not include social trails or “trails that exist because people or animals have walked the same route many times” for decades.
He contends San Geronimo Valley residents were left out of a process that threatens to shut beloved trails deemed “redundant” and crush the serendipity of hiking as officials promote the notion “there is one correct way for hikers to enjoy the open space.”
His biggest concern: Outlawing hiking outside an official network of roads and trails in the San Geronimo Valley, home of the magnificent, environmentally sensitive Gary Giacomini preserve. “People who live here have been wandering around in the woods and in the open spaces since before the formation of the Open Space District,” said Wilson, complaining the plan “will eliminate most of the opportunities to enjoy the solitude and beauty in the woods.”
“The visitor use management zone that most land in the valley is placed in claims to be for areas where people can immerse themselves in nature and solitude, but, ironically, will destroy most opportunities to do this,” he added.
Other users bristle at changing the recreational landscape as well, with cyclists especially upset.
Construction estimator Mark Clements of San Rafael, a veteran mountain biker, said more trails are needed, not fewer. But after attending a recent Civic Center hearing on the matter, he holds out little hope that the people running the show will listen to their best customers.
“Seemed like a joke,” he said of the hearing. “We are here to listen to what you are saying, but we are not changing anything, is the feeling I got.”
Clements said new pathways would minimize conflict among user groups by allowing people to spread out.
“If you don’t build legal trails, the kids are going to build illegal trails,” he added.
Attorney Richard Cerick of Fairfax also chafes at bike restrictions, saying the plan at best is “astonishingly careless and cavalier” about mountain bikers and, at worst, “blatantly” discriminatory, inviting litigation. Biking is an integral part of Marin’s heritage, culture and economy, but county officials “appear to be utterly clueless,” he said. “Talk about out of touch politicians.”
Ken Adams of Forest Knolls, for whom biking the trails is “like meditation,” protested “what looks like a power grab,” saying the county plan will simply “create more confusion and make criminals out of otherwise good, nature-loving citizens who will use our trails regardless of short-sighted bureaucratic decisions.”
And a distraught Tim Halikas of Fairfax said that in effect, the leaders who rallied parkland users last year to vote approval of sales taxes raising $10 million a year largely for parkland spending now want to penalize parkland users for using the parkland they are paying for.
But conservationist Jean Berensmeier, head of the San Geronimo Valley Planning Group, has a contrary view, saying overwhelming voter support for sales tax Measure A confirmed the electorate “sees protection of natural resources” as a priority. “That vote trumps recreational desires of any user group,” she said. “To this end, reducing and avoiding environmental impacts is a major goal and that is what staff is doing” despite the “fear mongering and disseminating misinformation” of biking “extremists,” she asserted.
Christina Oldenburg of Mill Valley joins in the view that the plan is on target.
“Protection of natural resources, the flora and the fauna, is the charge of stewards of public lands. … How can bicycle racing be justified in any way as being an activity conducive to protection of natural resources on public land?” The issue, Oldenburg observed, is “managing the pressure … to develop more trails for mountain bicycles.”
That pressure is headed for the county board, where Supervisor Steve Kinsey faces alarmed San Geronimo constituents, while Supervisor Katie Rice seeks to calm those in Fairfax.
“In many ways, access to natural lands is what sets us apart from many other places on earth,” Kinsey observed. “It isn’t at all surprising that emotions are running high over potential changes,” he said. “I appreciate these public expressions and believe they will result in a better understanding of what is permissible and what needs to be done by all of us to keep our open spaces healthy for future generations.”
Rice indicated intense use of Marin’s open space must be corralled. “There are more people, more dogs, more bikes out there than ever before,” prompting user conflict and environmental degradation, she said. The trails plan is the first “objective, science-based attempt” to assess the land and its use in order to inform “how we manage that network with a primary objective of resource protection,” she added. “This is a good thing.”
“We need to figure out how to accommodate the growing demand and recreational desires of all user groups in ways that help ensure a safe and enjoyable experience for all,” and the
plan provides a “starting point for discussion and debate,” Rice said. “Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater.”
Back in Woodacre, hiker Devin Wilson says county parks officials tossed concerned users, bathwater and bathtub out the other day when they asserted that critics centered in the San Geronimo Valley were using social media to spread misinformation, didn’t understand the trails plan and didn’t know what they were talking about.
“We know what we’re talking about,” the Hands Off Our Trails advocate said.
Contact Nels Johnson via email at njohnson@marinij.com. Follow him at twitter.com/nelsjohnsonnews
