American Trail Running Association recently conducted a trail work survey of runners to better understand and measure their attitudes towards and involvement in trail maintenance, trail building and trail advocacy activities. With over 2500 survey respondents, it is exciting to see a high level of engagement from the community on this important subject.
Here are some of the top take-aways from the ATRA trail work survey:
95% of survey respondents did not know ATRA had qa national directory of over 130 organizations involved in trail work. You can find it here.
97% of survey respondents self-identified as trail runners. Almost exactly half of respondents had participated in some kind of organized trail maintenance, building, cleaning or advocacy.
For those trail runners who had not participated in organized trail work, they selected the following pre-written answers:
- 30% – I don’t have time.
- 18% – There are no groups near me that do trail work.
- 9% – I don’t feel like I have the skills required to do trail work.
- 3% – My local trail work group already has enough volunteers.
Based on this new information, ATRA is going to provide more resources for our trail running community and feature trail work programs that have proven successful in different parts of the country to help everyone #ConnectWithTheTrail.
This trail work survey article first appeared as a press release from the ATRA. The full article can be found here along with additional stats including how often people participate in trail work.
