A conservation group is questioning a decision by the Andrews-Pickens district of the Sumter National Forest to allow a commercial horse camp to build a network of horse trails on adjacent national forest land.

The Chattooga Conservancy says the plan enables a commercial operation to market public lands as if those lands were private assets. In addition, the increased horse use would damage the sensitive Chattooga River corridor, which is protected under National Wild and Scenic River status.

But the forest service says the new trail network will have the opposite effect. Horses are allowed to ride anywhere within the national forest district and are not restricted to designated trails. It’s better to have a system of designated trails instead of dozens of horseback riders blazing their own trails, said Mike Crane, the chief district ranger in the Chattooga.

“The (horse camp) could legitimately rent campground spaces to people and tell people they can ride where ever they want to,” Crane said. Repeated off-trail horse use eventually creates permanent trails, Crane said.

“A horse doesn’t have to ride over the same place too many times to see where they’ve been riding. They tend to follow the path of least resistance,” Crane said.

Off-trail horse use associated with another private horse camp in the same vicinity resulted in a de facto network of semi-permanent trails. Crane said it was admirable of the new horse venture to offer to design and build a trail system at its own expense, when they could legitimately point toward the national forest and say to their guests: “Ride anywhere.”

“This idea is palatable to us because it provides additional areas for riders to ride while hopefully minimizing resource damage in other areas,” Crane said.

But Buzz Williams, director of the Chattooga Conservancy, said an official trail network tying directly into the private horse camp will only aid and abet off-trail horse use, allowing riders to penetrate deeper into the forest before branching out.

“People are going to be creating trails right and left of these new trails,” he said.

Follow the trail

The Chattooga Conservancy is not opposed to a new horse trail system. Williams agreed that new horse trails are needed. But in exchange for new trails, the eroding and poorly designed portions of existing horse trails should be closed and the off-trail riding should be banned in the Chattooga area, he said.

And, the public should be invited to participate and kept thoroughly apprised of the process rather than a quiet collaboration between the forest service and a private enterprise.

The Conservancy became aware of the horse trail plan by accident. The first tip came from a hiker who noticed flagging in the woods.

“We had a friend call us up and say ‘I’ve seen flagging on all these old logging trails. What’s going on?’ We went out and looked at the flagging and thought ‘This is curious. Is it a hunter flagging their trail?’ Then we noticed it was more than flagging, that there were some tree limbs being trimmed,” said Nicole Hayler, development coordinator with the Chattooga Conservancy.

It remained a mystery until acquaintances who knew of the horse venture told Conservancy staff about it.

“All the pieces started falling together,” Hayler said. Williams requested a meeting with the forest service to discuss the rumor. In the meantime, Williams came by a preliminary map showing 15 miles of proposed horse trail and went into the woods to investigate.

“I couldn’t believe my own eyes. The trails were going to these destination sights, big waterfalls and to some of the scenic spots along the ridges. They went through wetlands, paralleled streams in riparian areas,” Williams said. The grade was far too steep in some sections, nearly double the generally accepted maximum grade for sustainable horse trails, which is 10 percent.

“We would have concerns about putting a new foot trail in there,” Williams said.

Williams was also concerned at the level of brush clearing and horse evidence along the proposed trails. Horse evidence was apparent in a quarter-mile corridor on either side of the Chattooga River — the one area where off-trail horse use is prohibited due to the Wild and Scenic River designation. Williams said it was illegal, even for trail planners exploring potential routes in the protected corridor, to be doing so by horseback.

When Williams arrived at the meeting with the forest service to learn more about the proposal, a couple of members of the Chattooga Conservancy who came with him were not permitted to attend. Those present included forest service rangers, the owner of the private horse venture and a trail expert with Clemson University who had been solicited by the owner of the horse camp to design the trail network.

Williams said he was disappointed in the meeting. The forest service would not discuss the trail blazing activity Williams witnessed nor the proposed trail map Williams had obtained. Instead, the forest service wanted to develop a list of mutually agreeable guidelines for horse trail construction.

“We’re still in the process of determining standards rather than worrying about a map that shows some particular trail. We want to define what the yardstick is first,” Crane said.

Track record

The forest service has made no formal decisions regarding the horse trail proposal, but is merely exploring the idea at this time, Crane said. The forest service is still evaluating the pros and cons of an additional horse trail network and the viability of such a partnership with the private horse venture. Once the forest service decides whether to pursue the trail system, the public will be apprised of the plan and be allowed to comment, Crane said. Involving the Chattooga Conservancy at this stage of the game was done as a favor.

“We involved the Chattooga Conservancy earlier on than we have ever involved an outside entity,” Crane said.

Williams said the public should participate throughout the process, not as a formality tacked on at the end. When the public comment period comes after a plan is formulated, the best opportunity to shape the process is lost, Williams said.

Crane disagreed. He said the forest service will alter proposals based on public input.

“A decision isn’t made until after the public process,” Crane said.

The Chattooga Conservancy does not have confidence in the Clemson University trail expert the private horse venture has enlisted to design a trail network given the proposed routes they saw on the ground, Williams said. So they have solicited the assistance of their own trail design specialist and hope to come up with a sustainable horse trail network that will allow off-trail use to be eliminated.

Williams said the area is already plagued by inappropriate horse use, both off trail and on.

“Right now, they have 13 miles of horse trails that are some of the worst designed and poorly maintained trails in the forest service system,” Williams said. The existing horse network was developed more than a decade ago, largely in places where horses were already being ridden. So the forest service came along and made them official trails.

“Unfortunately a lot of it isn’t where we would decide to put a horse trail today,” said Crane, adding that the decision was made before his tenure as chief district ranger. The existing trails cross the Chattooga four times, causing bad erosion. Other portions require regular loads of gravel, which eventually wind up in the river, too.