0299-GCG-FoothillsConservancy ESG24-FINALb (1) - Flipbook - Page 24
Foothills Conservancy of North Carolina
Photo by Brent Bookwalter
Kitsuma
Many trails have been built with “handshake
closed sections. While some of these trails have since
agency and a private landowner. While these informal
restricted due to ongoing negotiations between the
agreements” between a trail group or natural resource
agreements may last for many years, access can be
lost in an instant for many reasons. For example, a
landowner may pass away or sell the land to a new
owner who doesn’t want the trail on their property.
Without guaranteed permanent access, a trail is
always at risk of closure, no matter how beloved it is
by the community that uses it.
The famous Kingdom Trail in Vermont is a cautionary
tale: the trail had portions owned by private
landowners. Growing popularity of the trail, combined
with the landowners’ concerns over the impact of
the trail’s usage on their lands, resulted in four of the
landowners requesting in 2019 that portions of the
trail on or near their properties be closed. This closure
affected 20+ miles of the trail network’s 100+ miles.
The management team at Kingdom Trails Association
has been working closely with landowners to diligently
address their concerns, 昀椀nd solutions, and reopen the
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been reopened, others remain permanently closed or
trail organization and landowners.
Kitsuma would not suffer the same fate, thanks to the
quick work of Foothills Conservancy of North Carolina
and collaboration with the former landowners, Sally
Beard Smith and Germaine Whittaker. When Sally
and Germaine chose to sell the land, they sought out
FCNC because they wanted to sell the property for
permanent conservation so that this segment of the
Kitsuma trail, and the land’s ecological values, could
forever be protected.
The property features a forested ridgeline with an
abundance of old-growth Chestnut Oak trees, high
levels of biodiversity, and streams that drain into
the Swannanoa Creek below. Kitsuma is a treasured
mountain biking trail, and now that it’s under FCNC’s
ownership, with plans to transfer the land to the U.S.
Forest Service, public access is protected in perpetuity.
