After a decade of planning, advocacy and public comment, the U.S. Forest Service announced Friday morning the final plans for major changes to public trails in the Santa Catalina area of the Coronado National Forest.
According to Forest Service officials, the plan will create an “ecologically, economically and socially sustainable” network of trails that will increase the total mileage available to the public by 10 percent over the next 15 years. It says. There are also plans to add five more parking lots along the Santa Catalina Highway and to reroute some sections of the forested Arizona National Scenic Trail off the road.
Thirty miles of rarely used trails will be closed, while construction of just under 35 miles of new trails will begin, and another 20 miles of popular, currently unofficial routes will be integrated into forest maps and maintenance rotations.
The plan was developed in part in response to increased human traffic to and from Santa Catalina after the pandemic. Traffic on the Catalina Highway, the primary access road to the district, has increased by a quarter, and popular trails to Push Ridge Nature Preserve, such as Pima Canyon and Finger Rock, have seen a busy month. is attracting up to six times more visitors than before. New coronavirus, according to Forest Service data.
Forest Service officials say the increase in trail length won’t, in and of itself, lead to more pedestrians, but the change is “strategic” enough to address it.
“We are removing more remote and difficult-to-maintain trails from the system and replacing them with more widely available and accessible trails,” said Recreation Staff Adam Milner. “Projects such as the Tucson Vista Trail, the Molino Canyon Trail, and the trails around Mount He Bigelow can accommodate a significant amount of utilization.”
Staff hope the new network will keep visitors away from unofficial trails for their own safety and the sanctity of the forest. Visitors taking unmapped routes are at risk of encountering habitats of desert bighorn sheep and the endangered Mexican barn owl, according to Friday’s report. Since the pandemic, search and rescue operations by rangers to unofficial trials have also increased, especially in the summer.
Some of the biggest changes are centered around popular off-map trails that will be “adopted” into the official network. The Golder Ranch-50 Years area, just north of Catalina State Park, already sees more than 60 vehicles on busy days, so the plan is to map the already-busted 24-mile route. We aim to incorporate.
That could only happen if the Forest Service secures legal access to where the trail meets state land before the easement to that area ends in the late 2030s. Otherwise, according to the plan, this road will be abandoned again.
After an outreach and public comment period, with over 1,000 responses, the plan was revised to also include the Milagrosa Trail.
Responses received more than 150 complaints about “user collisions,” including between hikers and dogs, horses, and mountain bikers. Planners hope two new biking trails (Bug Junior and Fireline Flow), as well as a number of trails connected in a loop, will help reduce congestion in the forest.
Finally, the new plan is expected to improve access to natural areas where the typical visitor is white, affluent and able-bodied. Two-thirds of the visiting groups exceed the county’s median household income, spending an average of just under $1,000 on each trip, according to Forest Service visitor data.
Plans call for more accessible beginner trails to allow more visitors than ever to experience the district’s star attractions, from Mount Lemmon and Sabino Canyon to Push Ridge. .
