OPINION - THE FUTURE OF THIS TRAIL SYSTEM DEPENDS ON US!

 

OPINION

 May 26, 2026

By Don Amador

 

The Future of This Trail System Depends on US

 

 

As the 2026 wildfire season ramps up across California and much of the West, I recently returned to the  Mendocino National Forest to survey natural resources and recreation infrastructure impacted by the 2018 Ranch Fire. Like many who have spent decades working, volunteering, or recreating on public lands, these visits are both inspiring and sobering at the same time.

 

There is still immense beauty, resilience, and purpose found in these landscapes. Agency employees, volunteers, collaborative groups, and local partners continue to work tirelessly to restore trails, reopen campgrounds, stabilize roads, reduce fuels, and protect watersheds. But after nearly a decade of repeated megafires and now emerging “gigafire” conditions across the West, the scale of cumulative impacts is becoming impossible to ignore.

Trail 36 Post 2018 Ranch Fire Recovery

Stonyford OHV Area - Mendocino NF

While portions of the Mendocino trail system and several recreation sites have been restored through years of hard work and partnership investment, many trails are difficult to access or remain functionally closed due to fire damage, erosion, fallen timber, brush encroachment, and washed-out roads. Scenic ridgelines once covered by dense conifer forests now overlook large expanses of standing dead trees and severely altered landscapes. Trails once shaded by mature pine and Douglas fir are now lined with thick brush fields that continue to reclaim historic recreation corridors.

Post 2018 Ranch Fire Ridge Top OHV Route

Stonyford OHV Area - Mendocino NF

 

Yet the larger story extends beyond any single forest or fire. Across the West, agency staff and partners are confronting a new operational reality where wildfire impacts are no longer isolated emergency events, but long-term institutional challenges affecting workforce capacity, fiscal sustainability, recreation management, and landscape recovery.

 

Recent agency assessments and partner discussions increasingly acknowledge that the cumulative impacts of extended fire seasons, repeated large incidents, staffing shortages, and deferred maintenance are placing unprecedented strain on the ability of land managers to keep pace with restoration needs. Firefighters, line officers, recreation staff, biologists, engineers, trail crews, and collaborative partners are being asked to simultaneously respond to emergencies while also restoring landscapes at scales never before experienced in modern forest management.

 

At the same time, suppression demands continue to consume significant operational bandwidth even as Congress has increased investments in fuels reduction and restoration through recent infrastructure and resilience legislation. The result is an ongoing balancing act where agencies must prioritize community protection, critical infrastructure, watershed recovery, and strategic treatment areas while still trying to maintain recreation access and broader stewardship responsibilities across millions of acres.

 

Toward the end of my field visit, I stopped at the Wolf Creek OHV Information Center where a long-standing trail management sign reads: “THE FUTURE OF THIS TRAIL SYSTEM DEPENDS ON YOU! — STAY ON DESIGNATED ROUTES!”

 

I sat there for several minutes reflecting on my long history with the Mendocino National Forest — beginning with my first rides there in the 1970s, family OHV campouts, enduros, promoting use of sound-compliant exhaust systems and spark arrestors, volunteering on post-fire recovery projects after the 2002 Trough Fire, and later becoming involved in the FireScape Mendocino collaborative and helping co-found the Post Wildfire OHV Recovery Alliance following the 2018 Ranch Fire and 2020 August Complex Fire.

 

It was during that reflection that the message on the sign took on broader meaning. The future of our trail systems, forests, watersheds, and public lands does not depend solely on agency staff, firefighters, or land managers. Nor does it rest entirely on volunteers, user groups, counties, or conservation organizations. The future of these landscapes increasingly depends on all of us working together — agencies, partners, local communities, tribes, recreationists, industry, elected officials, and the public.

 

The reality is that no single agency or organization has the staffing, funding, or institutional capacity to fully recover every landscape impacted by the pace and scale of wildfire now occurring across the West. That is not a reflection of a lack of commitment. It is a reflection of the immense complexity and magnitude of the challenge itself.

 

But despite those challenges, there is still reason for optimism. Over the past decade, collaborative groups, stewardship organizations, volunteers, counties, and recreation partners have increasingly stepped forward to help fill critical gaps in restoration, trail maintenance, post-fire recovery, education, and sustainable recreation management. Those partnerships are no longer supplemental to the mission — they are becoming essential to it.

 

Because moving forward, meaningful recovery and long-term stewardship of our public lands will require not only continued agency leadership and congressional support, but also a shared commitment by all who value these places and understand what is at stake if we fail to act together. 

 

 

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Don Amador is a longtime public lands advocate with over 30 years of experience in recreation policy, trail stewardship, and collaborative land management and former Chair of the CA State Parks OHMVR Commission.