Nothing quite says thank-you like a blast of herbicide

[Chemisse]

(New Hampshire) Mountain land closed after guerrilla clearing
'Trail Bandit' had his sights on private tract

By CHELSEA CONABOY
Monitor staff
August 29, 2009 - 12:00 am

The owners of 12,000 acres in the Ossipee Mountains have closed the property to the public after users cleared unauthorized trails, in some areas applying herbicide to the land, and posted a map online identifying the new or modified trails.

Chocorua Forestlands, a forest products company, owns the property but the state maintains a conservation easement on it. The land includes Mount Shaw, a popular peak for hikers and part of the ancient volcanic ring that forms the Ossipee Mountains.

Bob Garrison of Henniker, who calls himself the Trail Bandit, published a map of the greater Ossipee area in January online and in hard copy that includes at least one unauthorized trail and private skid roads.

It's unclear whether it was Garrison or others who actually cleared trails on the Chocorua Forestlands property, but the damage is extensive, according to President Jeff Coombs.

Coombs said the property has always been open to public recreation but the use got out of hand. He began finding new flagged trails where there weren't any before. Whole trees and limbs were cut and dragged into the woods. A half-mile of trail about 12 feet wide was treated with herbicide, he said. Seventeen new campfire rings were found on the property.

Coombs said there were beer bottles and litter on the mountaintops. He consulted with the state and posted the property against trespassers in June. The state announced the closure in a press release Thursday.

"We just had to get a handle on what was going on," Coombs said. "We were forced into this. This is nothing that we wanted to do."

Garrison, who did not return messages left by phone and e-mail yesterday, has also been notified that he is not permitted on the property, said Chris Gamache, chief of the state Trails Bureau.

Garrison has a website called trailbandit.org and a history of rogue trailblazing. He has mapped St. John of the Virgin Islands and talked in a December 2007 interview with Backpacker magazine about how he used a machete and sometimes herbicide to clear trails in a national park there. When the interviewer asked about his next project, Garrison responded with the Ossipees.

"I was in my plane this past spring and saw a beautiful, open granite ridge begging to be hiked," he said in the magazine. "A little research with old maps told me there was an old, lost trail there called the Banana Trail. I plan on clearing it."

The map published this year includes a Banana Trail.

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090829/FRONTPAGE/908290349/1001/RSS01

[Chemisse]

1. It is sad that a beautiful piece of property is now off limits

Thanks to this asshole going in and raping the land for his own odd pleasures.

[BroccoliTowel]

2. well what the hell

what the hell do you expect? How else are they supposed to maintain trails? What's the point of nature parks is we can';t enjoy them? A little glyphosate never hurt anyone.