“Like the Appalachian Trail but with More Stoplights”
Chesapeake Conservation Partnership members often have conversations about making the connection between urban areas and landscape conservation. After all, many of the watershed’s 18 million citizens live in the metro areas of Norfolk, Richmond, Washington DC, Baltimore and Harrisburg. And we have a goal of “providing people access to parks and trail networks within walking and biking distance of their homes and communities.”
There are dozens of exciting homegrown efforts to make the urban-landscape connection, not the least of them being the grand-daddy 184 mile Chesapeake & Ohio Canal tow-path connecting urban Washington to many other parks and communities.
But here’s a fascinating article from Outside magazine about a new trend of “through-hiking” in urban areas out west – one more way of connecting urban populations with the values of recreation and nearby protected areas. Read more.
