Elise McAllister, a Moapa Valley resident and head of Partners in Conservation, a non-profit group that works on conservation and public land issues, said work done on the yearly National Trails Day does much to improve the quality of the area.
“These public land events are typically all-volunteer efforts,” said McAllister, who joined others scouring the sandy desert area for trash. “These are great groups who participate every year to clean up and do what whatever work needs doing.” McAllister was the lone local volunteer Saturday. One was from Beatty and the others were all from Las Vegas. National Trails Day was launched in 1993 in an effort to clean up and take care of the many different trail venues enjoyed by Americans whether for hiking, biking, motorcycling riding, horse riding or vehicles such as four-wheel drive jeeps and trucks. “The work these people do is great,” said Bob Ross, BLM field manager in the Las Vegas office. “We really depend on our partnerships with them and we really get a lot done. They’re great stewards of the public lands.” Burnard said Logandale Trails is a Special Recreation Management Area (SRM). He estimated more than 50,000 people visit or use it annually including some “users groups” that operate businesses dependent on the SRM area such as ATV Action Tours, Sun Buggie Fun Rentals and BobCat Tours, all of which operate commercial tours. The entire Logandale Trails area was surprisingly clean Saturday, Burnard said, because user groups have been especially diligent cleaning up after themselves and keeping the area clean in general. As a result, much of the work done Saturday involved installing sign posts on the many different trails. “Our goal was to get as many of these carsonite signs up as possible,” Burnard said. “Once they’re in, it will be an on-going project to get them all labeled with trail numbers and user designation. For example, not all the trails can be used by ATV.” |