Protecting our Trails
Michael Dawson
Our trails are being damaged by people who just choose not to take care of the environment by littering and destroying the trails. I believe this is a major problem that needs to be stopped. I don’t go hiking very often, but I do care about what happens to the environment.
Our nation has over 190,000 trails on Federal lands that you can go on and 42,500 trails on State lands. The number of Americans that went and enjoyed our nation’s trails in 2013 was 34 million hikers, nine million backpackers, and eight million mountain bikers. The total amount of hours people put into volunteering to clean our trails was a total of one million. Just throwing your trash onto a trail because you don’t want to hold it is being inconsiderate of the wildlife and plants in the area. If people are that naïve that littering doesn’t do damage to the environment, then they need to be educated. Leaving your trash on the has the possibility of poisoning a nearby water source, or if food is disposed of incorrectly can contaminate the water. (Hiking Trails of America pg. 2)
The most concerning item that people just toss away like its nothing is cigarette butts. Although they are small they are filled with chemicals that could kill plants and wildlife. One chemical inside cigarette butts is arsenic, which can contaminate water and soil. Animals that live near the trails we go and hike on can be injured or die from the trash we leave behind. For example, leaving a glass bottle on a trail could cut the feet of the larger animals and cause other issues for the smaller animals. Leaving your plastic bottle will cause the buildup and transport of persistent, bio-accumulative and toxic (PBTs) contaminants, such as PCBs and pesticides.
We have our nation’s trails so that people can admire the beauty of nature itself. If I do say so myself I think that people that go onto trails want to admire everything nature has for us. We should be taking better care of the environment so that way the next generation can gaze upon the beauty of nature. If you really thought about it if there were no more trails that you could go on because people couldn’t just take better care of them then plants and animals would die.
Organizations like the AHS try to get volunteers to clean up the trails. The AHS calls the volunteered times to clean up the trails volunteer vacations. They get thousands of hours that people volunteer for a year. They go out on certain dates during the year and clean up national parks, hiking trails, and much more to make the environment a much cleaner place. Clean Trails is one of the many organizations that want to clean up hiking trails and reduce the amount of litter in the environment. Their message is “what if everybody picked up just one piece of litter?” There are plenty of ways that you could help out as well with this non-profit organization.
We as individuals can go to out to trails and help with clean up to keep the environment looking as beautiful as it can be along with keeping animals safe. We as students here at PSU could start a cleanup group where we go out and just clean the trails making them safer for animals and the rest of the environment. We could really help others enjoy the same thing we do if we could get as many people to help as possible. Think about how clean we could make the hiking trails.
I don’t know about you, but the environment and its beauty are very important to me. I would hate to see it destroyed by something that can be stopped. If every time you went hiking you and your friends picked up at least one piece of trash then our hiking trails would be cleaner and safer.
Sources:https://americanhiking.org/policy-positions/hiking-trails-policy/
www.trails.com / americanhiking.org / www.treadlightly.org /