Our Stories

The Partnership: Trails Advocacy Week Blog # 2–by ED Bruce Matthews

Its my sense that the Red Plaid Nation isn’t that aware of how the NCTA and the North Country Trail relate to the larger National Trails System. Hike the Hill/Advocacy Week in Washington DC (where I’m at this week representing the NCTA) brings together representatives from the 11 National Scenic Trails and the 19 National Historic Trails, to conduct meetings, meet with the federal agencies with whom we partner respectively, and meet with our various Congressional delegations to advocate for our trails. We meet under the umbrella of something known as the Partnership for the National Trails System (PNTS). Among other things, I serve on PNTS’s board of directors.

Why do we need a “partnership?” What does NCTA/NCNST get out of participating? What does the PNTS do for the NCNST that we can’t do as well on our own? Well the most immediate and obvious benefit is the Partnership’s leveraging the collective power of our 30 national trails, and speaking with one voice, in advocating for Congressional appropriations funding our collective trails efforts. One result is that the $2 million supporting trails in 1991 has grown to the $28 million funding national trails today. This includes maintaining national trails funding at 2012 levels even after the impacts of sequestration this past year, in a year where many programs have fared not nearly as well. The North Country Trail community clearly benefits from this funding. Though we might all wish for more, the fact that we have any federal funding at all is a testament to the Partnership’s efforts to keep our appropriations requests a priority with Congress.

One of the more important initiatives coming out of the America’s Great Outdoors effort has been the focusing of federal Land and Water Conservation Fund(LWCF) efforts on funding large landscape proposals. Thinking out of the box, the Partnership successfully advocated for the entire national trails system to be considered a large landscape in our Collaborative Landscape Proposal (CLP). In the 2013 CLP submission the NCTA successfully included two projects on the NCNST in the Partnership’s LWCF proposal, which ultimately was funded. The 2014 CLP proposal also included two NCTA projects. More money for trails.

The Partnership serves an invaluable role in networking and sharing among trail colleagues. The biennial conference, regular workshops and communications efforts all help us stay abreast of what’s happening nationally, enabling us to address issues collectively and learn from each others’ experiences. For example NCTA’s board is actively examining the Pacific Crest Trail Association’s board development process in order to increase the effectiveness of our own.
To learn more about the PNTS go here: www.pnts.org