ATC's Banner Year for Volunteers

Harpers Ferry, W.V.—For the first time in its 82-year history, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy documented 6,028 volunteers in a single year. Working an average of about 32.5 hours each, these hardy souls contributed a total of 196,025 hours to maintain and protect the Appalachian National Scenic Trail.

“Volunteers are the heart and soul of the Appalachian Trail,” said ATC executive director David Startzell. “The commitment of our trail-maintaining clubs and volunteers is truly the magic that makes this 2,175-mile trail a national treasure.”

A.T. volunteers not only provide the muscle behind the physical trail—building, repairing, and maintaining the treadway, controlling vegetation, constructing shelters and privies and bridges—they provide many other skills the trail can’t do without. They monitor corridor lands, work with Trail neighbors to prevent or mitigate encroachments, reach out to schools and groups in their communities, and they help monitor threatened and endangered species.

“Our volunteers come from all walks of life and from all parts of the world,” Startzell said. “We’ve continued to expand our volunteer opportunities with programs like the A.T. MEGA-Transect, which gives people a chance to monitor environmental changes along the trail, and that is helping to attract a new generation of volunteers.

“The ATC has also received a lot of assistance from corporate partners like REI and L.L. Bean, who continue to support our efforts to recruit and train volunteers.”

These volunteers understand that the Appalachian Trail is not just a hiking path: It’s an environmental corridor. They additionally manage exotic plants, attend local planning and zoning meetings, edit guide books, work on club newsletters and Web sites, answer hiker inquiries, write letters to newspapers and government officials, organize and participate in conferences, and serve as officers and committee chairs of their local trail clubs.

In addition to the thousands of volunteers working under the auspices of the 30 A.T.-maintaining clubs, others join ATC-sponsored trail crews or volunteer at ATC offices to answer phones and correspondence, assist with mailings, fill book and map orders, or serve on ATC’s board and committees.

Appalachian Trail Conservancy staff captures the time spent on those projects into a single annual report submitted to ATC’s federal agency partners, the National Park Service and the USDA Forest Service.

From our first report in 1983, when 1,605 volunteers reported 20,058 hours, to this year’s impressive tally, ATC has broadened our reporting to include not only field work, but everything volunteers do to manage the trail. Information is collected separately for Volunteers in Forests, those working on National Forest lands, and for Volunteers in Parks, who work on National Park and NPS-ATPO corridor lands. Those numbers are then combined into Trail-wide totals.

The previous highest number of volunteers reported was 5,760 in 1992. The most hours: 201,466 in 2000. Why such variations? A number of things may play a role: Hurricanes, ice storms and other weather events mean an outpouring of effort to clear the trail; clubs running ATC’s biennial conferences have spikes in their hours; and better tracking and reporting by the Trail clubs of the volunteers and all of their hours, including meetings and travel time, have increased overall numbers.

ATC works to count volunteers only once each year—no matter how many separate work trips or meetings they participate in. This complicates record-keeping, but gives an accurate picture of people’s dedication to the work of the Appalachian Trail.

Based on the most recent average value for volunteer time of $18.77 per hour (as computed by Independent Sector, a nonpartisan coalition of charities and foundations), ATC’s volunteer efforts could be valued at almost $3.7 million.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy visitor’s center has also seen a spike in visitors, increasing more than 40 percent in the last two years. More than 12,000 people have stopped by ATC’s headquarters in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia (where the visitor’s center is located), to view the first exhibit of the A.T. Museum, purchase A.T. guidebooks, and get information on hiking and volunteering on the A.T.

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy is a volunteer-based nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation of the 2,175-mile Appalachian National Scenic Trail, a 270,000-acre greenway extending from Maine to Georgia. ATC works to ensure that future generations enjoy the clean air and water, scenic vistas, wildlife, and opportunities for recreation and renewal along the entire Trail corridor. For more information on the work of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, visit www.appalachiantrail.org.