Thursday, January 26, 2006
Deal Seeks to Protect 3 Miles of Appalachian Trail
Hagerstown, Md. (AP) - The City of Hagerstown is poised to sell to the National Park Service an $800,000 easement that would conserve nearly 3 miles of the Appalachian Trail – one of the largest segments of the Maine-to-Georgia footpath still lacking federal protection.
The City Council is scheduled to vote on the park service offer Tuesday after more than 12 years of negotiation. Approval would leave about 10 of the trail’s 2,175 miles still to be protected through federal acquisition of land or land-use rights, said David N. Startzell, executive director of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy in Harpers Ferry, W.Va.
He said the park service and the U.S. Forest Service together have conserved at least 159,000 acres along the trail, mostly since 1978, in what he called “a pretty amazingly successful program.”
The Hagerstown deal covers 576 acres in the city’s watershed atop South Mountain, east of Smithsburg. It prohibits timber cutting within 300 feet of the trail and hunting within 500 feet. Existing forest roads inside the tract may not be improved, and no new campsites or shelters may be built without city approval.
Startzell said the price and the degree of federal control were among the last sticking points. The talks were stalled earlier by disagreements over logging rights and campsite development.
Startzell said the largest remaining section of unprotected trail is along the New River near Pearisburg, Va. The forest service has only a handshake agreement with the owners of land that includes 3 or 4 miles of footpath that is being rerouted, he said.
jaws