Vital Trail Infrastructure
Island Trail
When we think of charitable causes for third world countries or for the environment, we often think of food, clothing, shelter & medicine. And these are fine charitable contributions. But these contributions are futile unless there is a way of getting them to where they are needed. Typically these contributions come from developed countries where transportation is as simple as getting in a car, truck or bus and going from point a to point b. But what if neither roads nor vehicles are available? In many ways, no roads is positive rather than negative. But some form of transportation is vital for people and supplies. It just doesn’t always have to involve roads and internal combustion vehicles. The transportation infrastructure can be trails and the mode of transportation can include foot travel, bicycles, and other personal transportation vehicles (PTVs). In many cases, the current trail structure is wonderful for basic pedestrian travel. However, just like developed countries have come to rely upon roads for their transportation/freight needs, smaller countries & island communities rely on a trail system for these same needs. However, they could use help in upgrading these trails. Over the next couple years, Trailsnet intends to focus our efforts on two specific geographic regions to help the local people improve their trail systems. It will be up to the locals as to whether they want the trails to be used for: foot traffic only, recreation, transportation, hauling supplies or tourism. (or, of course, a combination of the above)
Data Gathering Including Aerial Photography & Video
One of the first steps in this process is to gather input from the locals and geographic data from various sources. To get “the big picture” we will need aerial photography of the intended trail routes so that we can post that information on our website and make it available to locals, government entities, potential grant providers and volunteers. We have three potential sources for our visual data collection:
- current online mapping tools such as Google Maps
- aerial photography using our own drones to capture images/video
- 3rd party aerial photography professionals
The deciding factor for which method we use will depend upon funding. We are hoping to receive funding from a combination of corporate grants and crowd-sourced funding. Unfortunately, we’ve got a bit of a Catch-22 situation. It would be extremely helpful if we had some visual images to provide for our grant proposals and crowd-sourced funding applications. But without the funding it will be difficult to launch or aerial photography/videography program.
Domestic and International Trails
Trailsnet will focus on three potential trail projects over the next three years. One of them is a potential canal trail in Nicaragua, another one is a series of trails in Fiji and the third is the Great Plains Trail right here in the United States. All three have some similarities but, as you can imagine, each one is unique with unique needs. I have already described the Nicaragua Canal Trail project in an earlier blog post and the Great Plains Trail Alliance has a good website for you to peruse. I will post more information about the Fiji Trails Project in a future blog post.
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