A 30-day comment period for a trail development plan for Scotts Bluff National Monument has, with an open house public presentation of the plan set for next Tuesday, July 30th, at the Farm And Ranch Museum.
Scotts Bluff National Monument Superintendent Ken Mabery says the plan includes innovative new trail concepts and options to connect trails on the monument with the Monument Valley Pathways system.
All comments received during the period that closes August 30th…either from the open house on the 30th or submitted in writing will be analyzed and taken into account before a final decision is reached around the first of September.
If the plan is approved, Mabery says the next step would be to find money to start implementing it and developing its trails…adding that the monument will be seeking grants and other non-federal funds over the next several years.
The genesis of the plan was a team 9 of 5th-year Landscape Architecture students from UNL, who hiked the monument and took public comments last September and October on possible new trails and upgrades to existing trails at the monument.
The students then developed a package of alternatives that was submitted to National Parks Service environmental protection specialist James Lange at the agency’s Midwest Regional Office in Omaha.
Lange analyzed the alternatives, developed an Environmental Assessment of the possible impacts of the different options, and applied NPS policy and analysis of potential environmental and cultural resource impacts to create the plan being released next week.
UNL Landscape Architecture professor Bret Betnar says the opportunity for his students to put what they’d learned in class into a real-life field situation was “a challenging and wonderful learning experience,.
Betnar says each student found his or her own specialty interest in the project, then worked together so that those interests complemented each other in a way that it all came together seamlessly.
The Open House on the 30th at the Farm and Ranch Museum runs from 4-to-7:00 p-m with short PowerPoint orientation presentations at 5:00 and 6:00. Members of the development team will be on hand for discussions and question and answers between 4:30 pm to 7:00 pm