Equestrians unite to advocate for horse trails

Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2005

Click here to enlarge this photo Laurie DeWitt⁄The Gazette George Sengstack (left), manager of Callithea Farm in Potomac, joins Sheila O’Donnell, David Tobin and Devereaux Raskauskas in leading horses in a farm paddock. They belong to the newly formed Equestrian Partners in Conservation (EPIC), a volunteer group advocating for horse trails and the equestrian traditions of the county.

‘‘I see houses where I used to gallop horses, before the developers came in,” said Woods, director of the equestrian program at the Butler School in Darnestown.

The development of two farms — Tipton and Great Elm — she once leased for riding schools she operated through the 1990s signify the challenge faced by the equestrian community countywide, she said.

‘‘I feel [equestrians] are being squeezed out,” Woods said. ‘‘We need that [open] land for the trails it provides. For the health of our horses, we cannot be limited to [using] horse rings. If that happens, we’ll lose the ability to have horses in this county.”

That sentiment is the rallying cry of about 20 members of the advocacy group called Equestrian Partners in Conservation, or EPIC, formed just a month ago.

Montgomery County is home to an estimated 13,000 horses and 4,000 residents involved in equestrian activities ranging from trail riding to jumping to fox-hunting, said David Tobin, EPIC president.

‘‘Trail riding, by far, is the most favored activity among [equestrians] in this county,” Tobin said.

But with just 25 percent of the county acreage still dedicated to farming and the county closely scrutinizing equestrian access to park trails, EPIC hopes to speak for county equestrians.

‘‘We depend on a natural resource to enjoy our sport and lifestyle, but we’ve never been unified before,” said Tobin of Gaithersburg.

The group plans to speak out more about the role equestrians play in the county, from bringing in $2 million in revenues to serving as good stewards of the environment.

‘‘The biggest misconception is that we’re a bunch of trust fund babies,” said riding teacher Devereaux Raskauskas of Darnestown. ‘‘In the Potomac Hunt Club, we have everyone from a retired gas station attendant to people working three jobs. And whenever we see a problem on the trails, we get down and fix it.”

The problem is the disappearance of those trails.

‘‘My guess is that a majority of the trails we ride are on private land, but that is mostly based on handshake agreements with property owners,” Tobin said. ‘‘We’re coming together now over the same issues just about every resident is concerned about — sprawl and development.”

To back up its concerns through hard data, EPIC plans to develop the first ever master plan of equestrian trails in the county.

‘‘It will allow us to finally map out the connectivity between the trails, so that we can approach landowners to help fill any gaps,” he said.

It also plans to lobby for continued access to their traditional trails and for new ones at parks now being developed, starting at Thursday’s Montgomery County Planning Board meeting to discuss the use and maintenance of park trails.

‘‘Our interest is in protecting the land, but also in having access once it is protected,” Tobin said.

Of the 94 miles of trails in county parks, an estimated 66 miles are open to equestrians, said Lyn Coleman, trail planning supervisor at Park and Planning.

‘‘We struggle to keep trails sustainable and environmentally stable, so deciding its use is a priority,” she said. ‘‘When you have big animal like a horse using a trail, you have specific concerns — is there enough height clearance, is the soil environmentally stable?”

Those environmental concerns include invasive plants moving in due to disturbed soil and water erosion due to ruts left by horse hooves.

‘‘When you have the weight of a horse in a fragile area, it can definitely impact a trail, especially when the soil is wet,” Coleman said.

But environmental groups like the Potomac Conservancy, a Potomac River advocacy group that provides EPIC technical support, believes good trail maintenance and a little common sense on the part of equestrians can go a long way toward preventing trail damage.

‘‘Horseback riding is a pretty benign use of the land,” said Matt Logan, conservancy president. ‘‘Every trail requires maintenance and restoration from time to time, and as [equestrians] do their fair share in maintaining trails, we have no qualms about their use of trails.”