The trials of trails

SINCE MOUNTAIN BIKING and hiking season is nigh, and many have already been out-and-about in Squamish or Pemberton when not enjoying the current primo mid-winter conditions on our mountains, it’s time to re-up some thoughts I’ve touched on before about trails—who uses them and why, and what we should keep in mind when building them.

Most outdoor adventures involve “trails” of some kind. Whether mountain biking, hiking, climbing, or even canoe-tripping, our

BY LESLIE

endeavours usually follow previously tracked lines on the map. Humans have been creating trails forever, and in some places still employ them not for play, but the age-old search for water, food, and seasonal relocation. If this sounds much like what other animals do, you’re correct. In fact, animal (and, once upon a time, human) movement is the primary behavioural adaptation to the variability of critical resources in time and space.

For animals, biologists categorize movements into functional groupings such as foraging, dispersal, or migration, and study them with a range of modern technologies like radio telemetry, satellite tracking, remote-triggered cameras, and drones. The data accruing from these tell us one thing about animal movements: trails are superhighways for a range of terrestrial species from insects to megafauna.

As human societies evolved, trails connected us to other groups of humans. Pre-existing animal trails often comprised the most direct routes, but animals were also more than happy to use the passages we created to expand their own movements. This reciprocation continues.

In most cases, human use of longstanding forest trails doesn’t negatively affect the likelihood that other animals will use them (though some ungulates will associate certain trails with hunting danger), however, human activity can lead to changes in animal behaviour and distribution patterns wouldn’t, they also become dispersal corridors for plants, which co-opt animal travellers as vectors to move their seeds—whether stuck to fur, or seeds consumed at one sunny spot and defecated out at another.

A concentration of plant food sources along trails can attract herbivores (e.g., deer), in turn providing reason for sit-and-wait predators (e.g., mountain lions) to hang around. We need to remember how much biological industry and behaviour our trails actually subsidize when we “suddenly” find it interfering with our own use—like startling a bear munching on berries that wouldn’t otherwise have grown there save for the trail’s interruption, or a should be built so as not to cut between adjacent denning, reproductive, thermoregulatory and foraging habitat, all of which may be in a tiny area. Currently, Veronica Woodruff of Stewardship Pemberton is working with PORCA to reroute parts of some longstanding trails from the critical habitat they once cut through; the resulting detours are short, but effective for ecological restoration. if the level of activity is high enough to cause disturbance. Traditionally trained trailbuilders keep this in mind, but it’s something many enthusiastic builders of today’s (mostly illegal) mountain bike trails don’t consider—or are even aware of. That needs to change given the ever-increasing impacts on ecosystems and wildlife everywhere, but particularly in the Sea to Sky.

Trails also facilitate the movement of destructive invasive plants—both by wild animals and humans. We might not have fur, but easily carry plant seeds on our clothing, shoes and even tires (there’s even a name for this—anthropochory). Next time you start a hike or bike at a popular trailhead, take note of how far dandelions and other invasive plants follow the trail.

To start, we’re most familiar with the trails of larger animals (ourselves included) yet pay little attention to their finer ecological points. For instance, well-used forest trails create space for flying insects, birds and bats to navigate the understory, supporting a food chain based on “edge” plants and the dung of the animals using those trails. Because trails allow light to penetrate where it often snake using a nice warm mountain-bike trail to stretch out in the sun.

The problem compounds because human trailbuilders tend to enjoy the same types of places as sensitive ecosystems—south-facing slopes and meadows, open-canopy forest, and wetland, river and lake margins. Here, biologists can help meliorate environmental impact by showing where a trail might be routed so as not to come close to areas that might contain ground-nesting birds or reptile dens, or not to cut off such habitats from other areas utilized by these same creatures.

A good example in Pemberton is the highly endangered sharp-tailed snake, a burrowing, pencil-thin slug-eater that might be only a foot long in adulthood with a home-range radius of only 50 metres; where these animals occur, trails

And it isn’t only riding that leads to this unholy seeding, but trailbuilding itself— particularly unsanctioned construction by non-professionals—given how easily noxious invasives like thistle, knapweed, burdock and orange hawkweed are spread by clothing, footwear, transported soil and uncleaned tools. Looked at this way, trailbuilding without undo concern for biological impacts can be like sending an IV drip of eco-destruction from über-disturbed frontcountry into pristine backcountry.

In the end, we tend to see trails we either modify or create as our own, but they never remain exclusive. Whether in use before we found them, or new routes now subsidizing the movement of other wildlife, it behooves us to treat trails as shared natural spaces with potential real impacts, and respect that while for us they may be a means to adventure, other organisms still count on them for their livelihood.

A ROOF OVER OUR HEADS:

Exploring Mountain Resort Housing Possibilities

Thursday, April 27, 2:00PM Whistler Conference Centre

Housing a local workforce is among the most pressing matters facing mountain resorts today.

Moderator industry expert panel discussions on mountain resort housing throughout North America which will then be followed by an engaging audience Q&A session.

By Candace Johnson / The Conversation

The bold move makes good on a campaign promise of the NDP government.

It’s the focus of sustained activism of groups like AccessBC and Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, and was ignited by the ongoing abortion politics south of the border, where a judge in Texas just issued a preliminary ruling invalidating the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. That ruling was almost immediately followed by a contradictory decision by a judge in Washington state.

The B.C. policy could serve as a model for other provinces—Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government, for example, has already said it’s “looking closely at what British Columbia has proposed.”

Nonetheless, universal coverage of contraception beyond British Columbia is unlikely at the moment. It does not seem to be a serious proposal of any current provincial government.

While some provincial opposition parties have promised universal contraception, policy progress depends on whether they actually get elected. It will also depend on a number of factors that will shape their political agenda once in office.

List not fully complete

The new coverage in B.C. is extended to anyone with a provincial health card and requires a physician’s prescription until later this spring, when pharmacists will be able to prescribe contraceptives.

The list of contraceptives included in this plan is comprehensive but not exhaustive. Other forms of birth control and menstrual regulation, according to the B.C. government, might be considered in the future.

There seems to be no significant discussion of extending the coverage to B.C. residents who don’t have a provincial health card, such as undocumented residents and migrant workers for whom reproductive rights are already sometimes inaccessible.

And accessibility will be dependent upon pharmacists’ willingness to dispense medication, something that might be particularly contentious, not to mention time-sensitive with emergency contraception.

Pharmacists are allowed to refuse to stock or dispense medication as a matter of conscience, something that has been a barrier for medication abortion access in Canada, especially in rural areas. Yet despite these criticisms, the B.C. plan serves as an example of equitable primary sexual and reproductive health care delivered at the provincial level.

Opposition promises in other provinces

Opposition parties in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan have all promised to implement the same policy if elected. But at this point, such a commitment really just amounts to a progressive idea in the context of conservative provincial politics, with centre-right parties in power in eight of 10 provinces.

This means that the B.C. policy might reflect the uniqueness of the province’s political dynamics and also demonstrates what is possible, given the right political conditions, in the realm of reproductive rights.

It’s also reflective of the broader North American politics of abortion, as the timing of the policy—a campaign promise of the NDP government, elected in 2020—seems to respond to the reversal of reproductive rights in the United States with the overturn of Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

The end of constitutional protection of the right to abortion in the U.S. created momentum for strengthening abortion policy and reproductive rights in Canada.

In response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the federal Liberal government has increased and sustained commitments to ensuring access to abortion and other areas of sexual and reproductive health and rights.

The same organizations that benefit from increased federal funding—and use it to support women and other pregnant people—indicate that Canadian women who used to travel to the U.S. for certain kinds of abortions are finding it more difficult to do so due to increased restrictions and bans on the American side of the border.

The recent duelling U.S. court decisions concerning restrictions on mifepristone will only increase this difficulty and limit reproductive rights. Policies like B.C.’s universal coverage of contraception will help to expand reproductive rights. That’s why it’s such an important decision.

Defending reproductive rights

On a practical level, funding for contraception has the effect of making birth control available for everyone, with no privilege for those who have private insurance or can afford to pay and no disadvantage for those who have trouble affording it.

But beyond this, public support and payment for contraception serves to normalize birth control, Plan B and sexual health and reproductive rights as a public good and as a matter of public responsibility.

In an age of increased privatization in health-care in general, and the increased stigmatization and criminalization surrounding abortion, the B.C. move is a positive step that fully embraces sexual and reproductive health and rights for everyone in post-Roe North America.

Candace Johnson is a professor of political science at the University of Guelph. This story originally appeared at The Conversation on April 1, 2023. Find it at theconversation.com/british-columbiascoverage-of-contraceptives-should-inspire-the-rest-of-north-america-203131. ■