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Monitoring | Fall 2008
Corridor Monitoring
The Trail “corridor” refers specifically the lands and easements acquired by the National Park Service for the protection of the Trail outside existing national and state parks and forests. The external boundary of that corridor needs to be monitored on a regular basis and the boundary lines maintained to protect against encroachments and prevent resource damage. Some of the volunteer Trail clubs that monitor the corridor boundary also take on the maintenance side of the job, marking the surveyed line and posting boundary signs. More information on corridor boundary monitoring and maintenance can be found here at http://www.appalachiantrail.org/boundarymonitors.
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Corridor Boundary Monitoring + Maintenance = Magic in Massachusetts
Steve Smith, Appalachian Mountain Club-Berkshire Chapter
With a little serendipity, and lots of good staff/volunteer interaction, we have stumbled upon a magic formula for making corridor monitoring and boundary maintenance fun and attractive to our club and volunteers. With leaders actively engaging volunteers, keeping them interested by creating project outings, and providing contact with ATC staff who are equally enthusiastic about their work, the Massachusetts corridor monitoring program has leapt forward in just five years.
 Of course, good volunteer management practices—including a clear job definition, active recruiting, regular communication, opportunities for fun, leadership support, and rewards and recognition—are still the basic fundamentals of a successful volunteer program. But we’ve also found that by merging corridor monitoring and exterior corridor boundary maintenance (ECBM) tasks, our monitors report as much job satisfaction as do the trail maintainers along our 90-odd miles of the A.T.
Sally Naser, ATC’s boundary program manager, has been an essential to this newfound magic. She brings surveyor-level competence and all the necessary tools and techniques to the ECBM job. The training she and her staff assistants provide have been an excellent way not only to get the work done, but to train and refresh our volunteers. Sally always shows up with all the materials needed to do the job correctly—maps, compass, tapes, paint, brushes, signs and posts, and she stocks enough supplies to equip two crews, so when she travels with an assistant, it provides the possibility of having two volunteer crews per day—each with an expert leader/trainer. She sometimes brings pretty good “swag” for the volunteers, too—patches, neckerchiefs, paint bottles, and holsters.
Over the past five years, Sally has responded to the ECBM needs in Massachusetts whenever we saw the need for a special effort. First, Sally and I determine a project period of four to seven days, send out an e-mail/phone blast for help to the volunteers, and then set up one or two crews per day. Wow, what results! Many of our regular monitors and maintainers, in addition to one-day volunteers, want to help. We always try to involve the assigned monitor in ECBM work on his or her own section and have been successful about 90 percent of the time—this is an important piece of the “magic.”
After seeing this serendipitous formula work well for a couple years, we want to share our experience. Here are the key elements:
- Treating the boundary work of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail corridor with respect and expecting competence. Volunteers respond to the need for a degree of expertise and having responsibility of protecting a national treasure.
- ECBM adds hands-on tool work to the monitoring function. This is fun for many volunteers, plus it creates a feeling of accomplishment that can be seen and felt.
- Organizing projects with the ATC boundary staff provides excellent training and motivation. Volunteers work side by side with committed and expert staff who communicate well and emphasize the value of volunteer efforts, which leads to building the volunteer program in both numbers and quality.
- ECBM requires the exact identification of the actual boundaries, not just a monitor walking the easy route. If the monitor has any doubt about the location of the boundary, the group approach of ECBM helps to work out the problems and properly identify the line and corners/monuments.
- Clear, well-marked boundaries make visits and discussions with Trail neighbors productive and positive.
Now, we’re ready to move on, with volunteers trained to a level to properly lead ECBM projects ourselves. This level of skill did not happen in one season. It is the result of consistent, incremental efforts over a number of years by a strong volunteer/staff partnership. We will always need Sally’s help with tough corridor problems, but we will not continue to need the time commitment she has made the past five years.
Through these efforts, the external corridor boundary in Massachusetts has been painted at least once since the original survey. Beginning in 2008, we are embarking on the second round of refreshing the blazes along our 150 or so miles of NPS boundary. Five years ago, we could not see the path to being almost self sufficient in the ECBM part of our work. Now, we are proud of our accomplishment as a club and as volunteers.
Environmental Monitoring: Partners in Protection
Julie Judkins, resource program manager at ATC’s Southern regional office
The Appalachian Trail Conservancy, Western North Carolina Alliance and Southern Appalachian Man and the Biosphere (SAMAB) are partnering with land-managing agencies to identify and control exotic invasive plants through volunteer workshops and hikes. Volunteers are hiking the A.T. on a more meaningful kind of hike—one that will protect its special resources.
Exotic invasive plants displace and out-compete native flora for space, sunlight, water, and nutrients, causing a decline in biodiversity. Volunteers learn how to identify 12–15 plant species of concern, information they can take home to practice in their own yards. After the identification session, the volunteers, equipped with GPS units, take a tracking hike to monitor those plants along the A.T. The findings from these monitoring and inventory hikes will provide land managers data needed to begin efforts to control these plants and then prioritize management efforts.
Hikers also learn about an important online resource called EDDMaps—which stands for early detection and distribution mapping system— that allows citizen-scientists to input plant data from any location onto the Web resource. This data allows range distribution to be accounted for and facilitates a quick response to any new exotic invasive plants that may come into the region.
The partners in this program are moving forward with making focused “cooperative management areas” around the A.T. to integrate management resources across jurisdictional boundaries as well as to leverage additional resources. The more partners work together to combat these plants, the more success will be seen.
The presence of exotic invasive plants is a health indicator for the Trail. The A.T.’s north-south alignment across 14 eastern states represents a cross-section of those states and offers a perfect setting for collecting relevant and scientifically valid data on the health of the landscape and the species it fosters. We call this ATC’s MEGA-Transect program.
If you are interested in participating in a training workshop and hike in the southern region of the Trail, or in helping to control the spread of these plants in significant natural areas, please contact Julie Judkins at jjudkins@appalachiantrail.org. Workshops, monitoring hikes and control efforts are planned throughout the year and can be found on the Appalachian Trail Web site http://www.appalachiantrail.org/workshops.
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