Join the conversation on trails in your watershed!

A committee has been formed to facilitate an update of the 2008 Oakridge/Westfir Community Trails Plan. The Plan is now ten years old and the time has come to create a plan for the next decade. The Trails Plan is an important document that helps the Middle Fork Ranger District make trail planning decisions and recommendations for project funding with public input. The plan also helps the Forest Service understand the needs and desires of the trail-user community in regard to the Middle Fork Ranger District trail system. The scope of the new Trails Plan will include the entire Middle Fork Ranger District and possibly connections to other Ranger Districts and Forests along the boundary. A link to download the 2008 Oakridge/Westfir Community Trails Plan can be found here.

The Middle Fork Willamette Trails Plan Steering Committee would like to invite you to attend a public meeting on either Wednesday, October 17^th upstairs at the Grower’s Market at 454 Willamette St, Eugene, OR 97401, 6:30pm-8pm (parking is available on the street or in a parking garage on 7^th and Willamette) or Thursday, October 25^th at the Middle Fork Ranger District office at 46375 Highway 58, Westfir, OR 97492, 6:30pm-8pm.

At the meetings, you will be asked to provide input on what changes (if any) you think could be made to the Middle Fork Ranger District trail system, trail heads and other trail-related facilities. You will be able to hear other people’s ideas and submit your own on a map/chart format or in writing. Points to consider before the meeting:

• The Middle Fork Ranger District manages 580 miles of trail on 750,000 acres of National Forest land.
• Local trails are popular with mountain bikers, equestrians, hikers, and other users.
• The Ranger District does not have the capacity, even with volunteer assistance, to maintain all of the trails that people want to access in a given year. Thinking about what can be let go will be helpful along with the understanding that we cannot justify building new trails and facilities without a plan to sustain those public assets into the future.
• The Middle Fork Ranger District has been implementing small trail connection projects as needs arise, but they need public input to guide those efforts going forward.

VERY IMPORTANT: Please put middleforkwillamettetrailsplan@gmail.com in your email contacts. All future emails about this effort will come from that Gmail address. Putting this address in your contacts will allow you to receive email announcements and progress updates without those messages being sent to your spam folder. If you are not able to attend a public meeting, feel free to send your thoughts by email. If you don’t want to receive email from this planning process, please use the link above to notify us by email with “unsubscribe” in the subject line.

Please consider attending the meeting closest to you and come prepared with ideas to help with the new Trails Plan. It is your trail system; this may be your best chance to make your voice heard! Even if you are not planning to attend, please share this message with people and organizations that might have a stake in the work we are doing.