BCTEB trail stewardship advocates met with EBPRD trails program staff to discuss expansion of volunteer trail opportunities. BTCEB has been working in partnership with EBPRD since 2015 at Crockett Hills on volunteer trail work ranging from large trail work days, smaller group work sessions, to individual work sessions.
BTCEB trail maintenance efforts at Crockett Hills and JMP requires having local members actively involved in identifying and coordinating work with district staff. The working relationship at Crockett has taken time to develop and is somewhat unique. Volunteers are limited on what they can do by district labor agreements. The district is in the process of filling positions on the Small Trails Crew after several years of development. Volunteer labor is one piece in addition to adding park staff to address a 5 year plus backlog of deferred trail maintenance. This model or variations therein have potential in other East Bay Regional parks as well.
As other members of BTCEB have interests in several other parks, we’ll be working with trails program staff to initiate work days and start building programs there. Initial discussions were focused on Black Diamond & Round Valley in East County, Lake Chabot, and Tilden/Wildcat. Partners from Wildcat Composite and Berkeley High School MTB were part of the discussion. During COVID the park district added staff to help manage the logistics of volunteer work and that will help as well. Additionally we are supporting efforts by the Stewards of Briones to expand opportunities beyond the monthly district work days. We’re optimistic we’ll be able to see some progress in the coming months. Stay tuned!
