Management strategies should emphasize positive, rather than negative measures whenever possible. Thus, for example, public education in the positive results of a "leave no trace" visitation ethic should be preferred over the imposition of a restrictive set of system wide regulations.

Strategies that we adopt must be acceptable to most of our visitors to be successful. We've far too many visitors to be able to force compliance. We must enlist and rely upon the cooperation of our visitors.

Management strategies must recognize that one size does not fit all. Our properties and visitor activities are much too diverse to respond to simplistic solutions. Management actions must be site and use specific and must allow for a diversity of situations.

We should strive to develop a hierarchy of management tools that give us a range of alternative responses to shape visitor behaviors. In applying these tools we should have options to take a series of progressively more intrusive actions if the situation requires them, but we should use such actions discretely and reluctantly.

Finally, we should always beware of the potential unintended consequences of our management actions. For example, limiting an access or restricting an activity may just displace the impact we are trying to alleviate to a more sensitive location.

Provide trail loops rather than dead ends. Create or designate the missing connections in the system. Provide reasonable access to the places our visitors want to go (including short branches to scenic overlooks and other points of interest).

Remove alignments from the immediate proximity of roads. If the trail itself is an old road, allow a parallel natural surface running and biking track (many of our old farm roads at areas like Boulder Valley Ranch and Marshall Mesa already have such visitor created tracks). Even better, provide alternate hiking paths and designate the old roads for multi-use recreation (the designated roads and undesignated, maintained trails in the Shannahan Ridge area would be an ideal place to start).

The sense of freedom that open space provides is an important component of the visitor experience. Try not to fence visitors in. When constraints are required make them as inconspicuous as possible. Make use of natural barriers when feasible (e.g. ditches, ravines, steep hillsides). When fences are required separate them from the trail and fence only one side whenever possible.

Minimize interior gates and lock gates open when livestock is not in the area. Provide gate latches that allow one-handed operation (this is especially valuable to equestrians and bicyclists).

Make better use of the existing infrastructure by removing some present blanket user restrictions. In particular, allow bike access on some of the roads west of Highway 93.

Provide or designate connections to alternate access points and to external regional trail systems (e.g. the existing Coal Creek, Rock Creek, Walker Ranch, Heil Valley Ranch, and Niwot trail systems and the future Feeder Canal and UPRR trail systems).

Use today's undesignated trails to identify deficiencies in the existing trail system and either designate appropriate presently undesignated trails or provide alternatives. Create new trails in some of the recently acquired areas where trail densities are low (particularly in the eastern portions of open space properties).

First impressions are lasting, so give special emphasis to the initial few hundred feet of trail. Entryways are bottlenecks that suffer high usage and the maximum dog impacts. Specific techniques to improve them include: hardening the tread with crusher fines, clearly delineating the trail edges, operating dog poop pickups and providing appropriate trash receptacles, and providing wider treads or alternate accesses to minimize user conflicts. Requesting dog guardians to leash the dogs along particularly congested initial sections may reduce user conflicts and facilitate cleanup. By keeping these areas clean and attractive we can keep visitors on the trail and induce more responsible dog guardian behavior (in particular, poop pick up).

The staff has identified the issues to be addressed. The itemization of missing internal and external trail connections (OSMP Conditional Analysis, Reference 3, pages 5 and 6), the recognition of trail conditions and settings with low aesthetic appeal, and the concerns with the safety of road crossing are particularly helpful. The Trail Assessment (Reference 5, pages 2 to 32) provides specific details and estimated costs.

Within Mountain Parks properties emphasis should be on the maintenance of and rebuilding of the existing trail infrastructure. Although there are minor adjustments that would be appropriate, the overall Mountain Parks trail system is suffering primarily from insufficient maintenance. Let's not fix anything that isn't broken.

The Open Space properties offer many opportunities for improvement. It is on these properties that we find most of the missing trail connections and safety issues. Emphasis here should be on completing the missing connections (especially the external connections to regional trail systems). The low trail density and mostly undeveloped trail system also allow for the design and construction of additional or alternate trails that could provide enhanced quality visitor experiences while dispersing congestion on other trails and trailheads. The Trail Assessment (Reference 5, pages 41 and 42) provides specific details and estimated costs.

A number of undesignated trails have been created as users have voted with their feet about the designated trails. The public has defined these trails as significant by creating them. Some of them are indistinguishable from the designated trails and may be considered by visitors to be part of the official trail system. We need to understand the reasons these trail exist and then take appropriate actions to incorporate them into the designated system (perhaps rerouting them to minimize negative impacts) or to close them (where the impacts are unacceptable and the closure is likely to be successful). Many of these trails correct deficiencies in the designated trail system. We would be wise to use them as guidelines to system enhancements. They are often indicators of the alignments we should adopt. When we elect to close an undesignated trail we need to be especially careful to consider the potential consequences. It does more harm than good if we eliminate one undesignated trail only to see another appear in its place.

Here we should begin by defining the areas we want to manage(as has been suggested in Reference 7). We need to identify sensitive area, insensitive areas, and those that are in between. We should then adopt guidelines for visitor access for each area type. It's important that we do this in a realistic fashion, recognizing that most of our properties have seen and will continue to see significant human presence. This is not a simple process, there are no clear metrics or easy answers. Most discussions involve more emotion than science. Any assessment we make should be within our local context and we should recognize that our judgments are relative, not absolute. However, we should still be able to define areas of greater and lesser sensitivity to human presence and adopt corresponding management approaches.

As long as our definition of management areas doesn't result in most of the property being placed into one extreme category or another, we should be able to enlist visitor support for constraints upon the access and activities we allow. Access options should range from allowing no public access at all to allowing visitors to roam as they please. Boulder County Parks and Open Space visitor studies indicate that the vast majority of the visitors stay on the trail all the time. Only a small percentage of County visitors leave the trail (and they are primarily fishermen). Rock climbers in Mountain Parks may be exceptions to this rule.

Given the willingness of most visitors to stay within designated boundaries, we should apply access limitations as gently as possible. We should begin by encouraging all visitors to stay on the trails to protect the quality of their own experiences and the values of our resources. As resource sensitivities increase we should first request, then require that visitors stay on the trail, and then physically constrain visitor access. Physical constraints should progress from fencing one side of the trail, to fencing both sides, to complete area closures. Complete closures should be limited to temporary or seasonal closures or to highly sensitive conservation areas.

We should define and apply similar rules for various activities with the area types. For example, varying dog regulations from voice-and-sight, to on-leash, to no access.

Educational tools include trailhead kiosks and signs, newspaper articles, interpretative programs, forums and seminars, visits with user groups, website materials, and, above all, peer pressure. Particularly effective approaches can be made through park hosts and the enlistment of user groups as advocates. The CMC, Access Fund, BCNA, PLAN Boulder, BOA, BCHA, FIDOS, and, of course, BATCO are all candidates to aid in the process.

Developing public trust is harder. There's some past negative history to overcome, but the present Visitor Plan process offers a window of opportunity we shouldn't pass up. Additional approaches to engage the public include: continued open public processes, outreach to user groups, discussions of the rationale for decisions, positive enhancements to balance negative restrictions, and recreational advocacy within the Open Space and Mountain Parks Department. If we develop a reasonable set of recommendations in this Visitor Plan process and follow up with a balanced approach to management we can be successful.