horse trails at Clinton

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Today's Journal World has a story about the horse trails on the south side of Clinton Lake. Apparently, some of the trails are being closed to horses because of the damage to the environment and the horses are scaring wildlife (the complaints came from hunters).

I've always been impressed with how much erosion the horse trails cause. I think it is mainly because they ride in wet and muddy conditions. If you compare the horse trails to the mountain bike trails, you'll see that the mountain bike trails (at Clinton State Park) cause much less damage and remain in decent shape year round.

I wonder if this will affect our maps (Rockhaven or Rockcrusher)?

http://www.ljworld.com/section/frontpage/story/54234

-- Michael (meglin@juno.com), May 30, 2001

Answers

This sounds like a promising start and could be pretty good news for us. The horses really mess things up a lot on the south side of Clinton Lake and the problems seem to get worse over the years (I remember running meets at Rockhaven many years ago and the trails seemed rather nice, but nowdays many have been horsed over pretty badly).

From the tone of the Lawrence Daily Journal-World article, the decisions on banning horses is being played out as one between the Corps of Engineers and K.D.W.P.* on one side and the horsepeople on the other. That seems pretty bad, but maybe the thing to do is to at least make a little noise to make sure these people don't seriously think those are the only interested parties. I will try to write up a letter stating that I'm interested in that area of the lake, not in league with the horsepeople, don't approve of hunting, and want the horses "outta there".

* The Kansas Dept. of Wildlife and Parks... is not what its name pretends, if you take a look at their webpage they make no bones of the fact that it is really just a government-sanctioned euphemism for hunting/fishing interests.

I think the people that may cooperate best are the US Army Corps of Engineers which has "recreation" component in their official mission. Their website, http://www.usace.army.mil/, discusses this just a bit. I suspect the place to contact is their Clinton Lake Office.

-- Mook (everett@psi.edu), May 30, 2001.


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