The official site of the North Carolina Horse Council

The following was received from "SHCAC · State Horse Council Advisory Committee" group. It pertains to Horse Trail Notes of Interest and was submitted by Ken Carpenter. At the end of this message are links for a listening session and information from Back Country Horsemen of America.

Hello fellow trail rider:

I would like to draw your attention to several things here in mid August just as our weather starts to change and we all start thinking of fall trail riding.

A new AGO Listening Session has been set in our area in Chicago. National discussions are being held so that we can share our trail experiences in the region and help develop ideas for future protection and restoration. President Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum on April 16, 2010 establishing the America's Great Outdoors Initiative (AGO). The AGO Initiative aims to reconnect Americans to the outdoors and promote community-level efforts to conserve and restore outdoor spaces. As part of the AGO Initiative, the administration will host "listening sessions" over the summer to collect public input as to how our federal partners can better serve the conservation and recreation interests of communities across the country.

Why is this important? Trail riders need to be concerned that they too should be considered as a vaild recreational trail user group and that we seek to preserve our green spaces and horse backriding promotes a healthy lifestyle. Horseback riding also provides access to many that have chosen riding as their form of outdoor recreation as a way to overcome physical and age related challenges.

The Back County Horsemen Wilderness Committee, in its initial meeting in 1999, proposed that members work with their legislators to have wording inserted in new wilderness bills that would preserve our historical access. The wording approved by the Board of Directors was: "Traditional recreational saddle and pack stock use is recognized as an appropriate and historical use of wilderness." The committee approached the Wilderness Society "Wild Riders" to jointly sponsor wording of that nature, and after extensive deliberation they have responded with language that they would not oppose. The following language is a huge improvement over what BCHA originally proposed.

Why is this important? Federal legislation is currently in the works that may focus on recreation on public land that would high light hiking and biking. The wording in the attached helps bring focus back to the historical use of horses and that the should be part of any wilderness legislation (wilderness legislation is coming, will it exclude horses or not from the new designated areas??).
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Ken Carpenter
witrails@gmail.com facebook.com/witrails
a director of the WI State Horse Council www.wisconsinstatehorsecouncil.org
chairman of the WSHC Legislative Committee http://groups.google.com/group/wshc-legis
president of the Glacial Drumlin Horse Trail Assoc http://sites.google.com/gdhta1
equine rep on the Governor's State Trails Council www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/parks/trails/council/
WI rep to the American Horse Council & member of their Recreation Committee www.horsecouncil.org
member of the Back Country Horsemen of America www.backcountryhorse.com

The link to the Chicago Listening Session is below:

Chicago Listening Session

The link to the Back Country Horsemen information is below:

Wilderness Bill Language