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Tread
Draft of
A Proposed Partnership Project of
The Appalachian Trail Conference
and
Rural System
March 23, 2004
Tread is the name of a proposal for forming a new partnership. It is also the name of a new organization with membership. It was inspired by the decisions of The Appalachian Trail Conference Board of Managers, November 22, 2003, meeting in Sheperdstown, West Virginia. "As we go forward, we have to open our minds to ways of doing things differently."
Aims and Payoffs for the Appalachian Trail Conference
Aims and Payoffs for Rural System
The Grounds
"We agreed that we should retain its primitive character and that it should be well-maintained. There should be well-designed and -maintained shelters and campsites, and the viewshed should be as good or better than it is now. The Trail should continue to offer hikers opportunities for solitude and challenge. ...Communities near the Trail should be persuaded to value and support it ...[We need programs] that protect the Trail and enhance the experience of A.T. hikers."
At the central-staff level, there are now four major program areas for doing this (March 23, 2004 http://www.appalachiantrail.org/strategic/index.html):
The Tread project is designed to address those program areas in a time of changing policies, shrinking budgets, shifting land ownership, and absence of hiking and outdoor experiences in an urbanized society. The Outdoor Industry Association has said that preserving wild lands is not only good for people who like to hike, bike and raft there but also for the businesses that sell them gear. The association represents 4,000 companies that make and sell outdoor gear and guide city folks on backcountry trips. These businesses employ 500,000 people and generate $18 billion a year in sales.
Proposed Action
With partnership agreement, The ATC would agree to a minimum 5-year exploratory partnership. With advice of ATC staff, Rural System would create the New River Tread of Wildland Walkers (http://fwie.fw.vt.edu/rhgiles/aruralbusiness/Walkers.htm). This is a new hiking-oriented organization. It is profitable and highly interrelated to other groups within Rural System (see www.Ruralsystem.com). It is started in the New River Reach of the Trail. Later, other similar organization "clubs" will be formed and promoted for other reaches of the Trail. This is the place for developing the prototype and making adjustments.
The ATC would agree to the following actions:
Membership - The New River Tread
Objective: to improve and stabilize the quality of a reach (e.g., the New River Reach) of the Appalachian Trail and its uses and to enhance the long-term benefits of the Trail to all Earth citizens.
Actions, Projects, and Programs:
Few of these ideas are new. Their organization and use together in a single system is novel. The partnership should produce new ideas as well as new arrangements and relations. Participation of readers and advisors is eagerly sought and will be appreciated. We can discuss joint financial opportunities. Please call me at 540-552-8672 or email RHGiles @ruralsystem.com
The "Deal"
We contribute 5% of our Tread-related profits to national ATC and 15% of profits to the local ATC region office. The incentives are all flowing in the right direction ... good work for the right reasons. The Trail and its lands and resources benefit; the hikers and associated land owners benefit from membership improvements (reduced conflicts, misunderstandings and behaviors); funding is increased for both national and regional office staffs, and other cooperators and advertisers benefit. A contribution to the objective of Rural System - superior modern rural resource system management - is made. The more we work, and work together, the more risks are reduced and more funds and the good work are produced.
Note:
Since 1995, the Green Map System has helped citizens of all ages identify, promote and link their communities' ecological and cultural resources while building inclusive networks that extend civic participation and accelerate progress toward sustainability. The Green Map Atlas offers some of the best examples of Green Mapmaking. The Atlas features stories of local leaders and portraits of ten community mapmaking projects, including their motivations, methodologies, key sites and outcomes. See also http://www.americanhiking.org.
What's Rural System, Inc.?
Rural System, Inc. is a proposed corporation, a conglomerate of 73 small natural resource related enterprises. Some of the enterprises, subsystems, are new, some very old. It is a system doing modern, sophisticated, computer-aided management of the lands and waters of an eastern US region in order to sustain long-term profits and quality of life for citizens. Concentrating on superior resource management, it includes outdoor recreation, specialized tourism and rural development, forest and wildlife management and works on restoration, enhancement, and production from the rural land resource.
The umbrella entity is an employee- and citizen-owned for-profit conglomerate spending a proportion of its profits on improving regional resources. It may use national and state lands and waters but, most importantly, it provides opportunities for the owners of private lands and waters (often for absentee owners and those within forestry cooperatives) to experience profits related to superior land management. While managing the assets of such lands, Rural System, Inc. provides related services and products from the unified business units. Half of these units work from the managed lands that are under contract. A central unit provides incubator-like services and allows the corporation to harvest public research investments, to achieve economies of scale and division of labor, to gain synergism, and to stabilize employment.
The enterprise leads the region in computer-aided, year-around, private land management. It shares projects and funds with citizens and investors. It links citizens as well as visitors to the land and its long-term potentials for profits. It provides an alternative town and regional identity, one of a place for modern regional rural resource development and management. It links buyers and users with producers of certified forest products and wildland resource opportunities from well-managed rural land and water resources. Successes are achieved via diligent work with personal incentives, diverse enterprises and products, and computer optimization of a total system. It overcomes the old failures of natural resource management, i.e., diseconomies of small-scale operations, mixed objectives, lack of diversity, seasonal work, lack of annual income, and failure to add value to products and efforts. It capitalizes on innovative uses of optimization, the Internet, global positioning satellites, and computer mapping throughout the region.
The system is described at www.RuralSystem.com.
The vision for the enterprise is that its success in improving the social, economic, and environmental health of the region can allow the enterprise to become effective and expand. Thus, similar influences can be transferred, years later, throughout a region near western Virginia, then internationally. The work will be recognized as the product of a special paradigm in rural resource and wildland management. As such, Rural System will become a profitable conglomerate operating well past this century, given its 150-year planning horizon sliding forward annually.
Other potentials are in a National Hiking Club - Johannesburg
See Appalachian Mountain Bike Club links
Robert H. Giles, Jr., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus
formerly of the College of Natural Resources, Virginia Tech
504 Rose Avenue, Blacksburg, Virginia 24060
Phone: 540-552-8672
Email: RHGiles@RuralSystem.com
March, 2004
| Perhaps you will share ideas with me about some of the topic(s) above at RHGiles@RuralSystem.com. |
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Maybe we can work together |