POST FALLS — Conversations on social media turned to Post Falls park signage asking people not to create unplanned “social trails” and to instead stick to planned and maintained routes. 

Social trails are user-created paths that form over time, as visitors take detours from officially designated trails.  

Signs posted by the Post Falls Urban Forestry Division to deter people from leaving the trails to create their own were met with a mix of opinions online, running the gamut form from irritation to understanding when to comes to following good trial etiquette and staying on the path. 

Director of Parks and Recreation Kris Ammerman said such trails happen all over, wherever there’s an outdoor space and people want to explore. 

“It causes degradation of the landscape,” Ammerman said. “As land managers, we want to be good stewards and if people just run all over the place it tends to have an impact on the environment, plant life is degraded, which degrades wildlife habitats and can cause erosion, which can degrade our water quality.” 

City staff have also come up with ways to passively discourage going off the public trails.   

"As trees come down or if they need to take them down, they can place them strategically to block them and take the forest duff to take and cover the trails and try to regenerate growth in that area,” Ammerman said. “People can still navigate, but in a way that we still have some control over.”  

Preventing the erosion of the land on public properties is just one element in environmental stewardship, Ammerman said. 

Social trails have especially been prevalent at Black Bay Park. 

Although the recommendations are largely unenforceable, Post Falls Parks and Recreation are trying to encourage all park users to be responsible trail users to preserve the park system for the future. 

“We want you to get out and enjoy them, but we hope that people can get out and enjoy them responsibly,” Ammerman said. “In this climate, in this very arid and rocky soil sometimes, things just don’t bounce back.” 

    Ammerman
  

    Black Bay Park