Project Background:
• Improving management of recreational activities will protect Alberta’s natural landscapes by minimizing environmental impacts and improving the health of headwaters and watershed capacity.
• Well designed and placed trails improve user experience, reduce environmental impacts from recreational activities by providing sustainable trails and have the potential to improve Alberta’s economy by creating places that residents and visitors want to visit and recreate in.
• A guidance document is required for all who participate in the building and maintaining the recreational trail system on public land. Thus a public facing guidelines document is required.
• The goal of the guideline is to standardize the construction and maintenance of recreational trails in a way that increases trail longevity, is operationally viable, improves public safety, reduces environmental impact and allows for trail development activities to be carried out by a wide range of internal and external stakeholders.
Project Objectives – the Guidelines will:
• Provide the Government of Alberta, municipalities, and non-governmental outdoor recreation groups with standards and best practices to assist in trail design, construction, and maintenance of recreational trail systems on Alberta’s public lands.
• Include an overview of the general principles of trail design and construction, a review of provincial and federal legislative and regulatory requirements, and specific plans and designs to ensure standardized construction of trail features.
• Build on existing works and best practices, both within Alberta and other jurisdictions to assist in the consistent delivery of high quality, sustainable trails on Alberta’s public lands.
• Provide instructions and identify best practices for how to locate, construct and maintain a variety of trails for recreational uses.
• Include the development of a Trails Classification System for public land to enable consistency and ease of use.
• Help locate and design trails to manage the impacts of recreation on public land and ensure that the current distribution of fish and wildlife, the sustainability of their populations and the integrity of habitats, including water quality, are not compromised.
• Utilize existing Alberta Environment water crossing code of practice, apply the code of practice for recreational purposes and address gaps including standards for water crossings and the development of design aspects or best practices to reduce risk and improve public safety on trails.
• Assist in working with volunteer stewardship and trail groups, contractors and other partners including municipalities, federal Parks and tourism operators as the guidelines may also be used by municipalities (particularly rural municipalities) and other non-governmental and non-profit outdoor recreation groups to support work across the province.
• Integrate and align with Alberta Parks. As public land trails often connect with Alberta Parks trails, Alberta Parks involvement with be integral to the development of the guidelines and best efforts will be made to integrate with existing Alberta Parks standards and direction.
Project Elements:
• Background research and jurisdictional scan – collect, examine and analyze best practices both within Alberta and within other jurisdictions.
o Interviews with Government of Alberta staff and stakeholder technical experts.
• Recommendations report - provide recommendations for the development of high quality, sustainable trails (classification, design, construction, engineering, standards and best practices).
• Development of product – develop the guidelines manual for the development of high quality, sustainable trails.
