The Clemson Experimental Forest (CEF) is 17,482 acres in size. It has approximately 45 miles of maintained roads and over 100 miles of designated trails. The goals for the CEF are aimed at education, research and demonstration missions in the multiple-use management of forest systems. These goals are in alignment with all of the legislative policy on the management of the federal forest and rangelands of the nation. Furthermore they clearly serve the primary mandates for all land grant universities: education, research, and extension.

While the CEF is managed as a research forest, 93% of the acreage accommodates recreation as a secondary use. Until the 1990s, most recreational use was in the form of sport hunting and fishing. However, in the last decade, recreational trail use exploded into the dominant use.

Recreational horseback riding on the Forest dates back several decades, but it remained at a low and benign level until the 1990s. Mountain bike riding on the Forest began in the 1980s, but was a minor use until the 1990s. Current preliminary data suggests that there may be 25 to 30 thousand person-hours of use of the trail system annually. Mountain bikes tend to dominate the usage of the northern portion of the Forest, while horseback riding dominates the trails of the southern portion. However, approximately 95% of all trail mileage is in a shared-use mode.

We have had to begin managing the trail system because of: 1) huge increases in use, 2) user demands for more trail mileage, 3) increasing user-value conflicts, 4) trail degradation, 5) increasing occurrence of unauthorized trails, and 6) the potential for recreational use to adversely impact the primary uses of the Forest. We developed a collaborative adaptive management approach to the issue by forming a team of planners composed of trail users, people with recreational interests other than trails, managers, and scientists. This presentation will briefly outline the planning process and how the plan is being implemented.