Those of you who are members and supporters of the ATC understand the A.T. is an extraordinary place. From the initial publication of Benton MacKaye’s visionary article in 1921, it only took 16 years to complete a blazed Trail from Georgia to Maine. The audacity of that effort, followed by the passage of the 1968 National Trails System Act and decades of committed maintenance from tens of thousands of volunteers, is something that many of us who have climbed to the top of Franconia Ridge or Max Patch and trod along the pastures of the Cumberland and Shenandoah valleys have experienced first-hand.

Advocacy has been an integral aspect of our work since ATC’s inception — it’s in our DNA. Advancing Benton MacKaye’s original vision for a “Realm united by a Trail,” coordinating the maintaining clubs, enlisting hundreds of volunteers to construct the Trail, advancing the National Trails System Act in Congress (which took about 20 years), and connecting the Trail parcel by parcel and preserving what we call the Wild East Landscape are all expressions of the imperative to advocate for the Trail. Today, the ATC wants to ensure the hard work, commitment, and dedication of those who came before us is sustained so that millions of people every year can continue to enjoy the Trail.

It is increasingly apparent how crucial it is to advance relationships with new partnerships to conserve the A.T. Landscape and communities. In the days before the bedrock environmental and conservation legislation that exist today, the A.T. was at the mercy of development, but development that moved at a slower pace. The local relationships between clubs, maintainers, ATC members, and decision makers provided an opportunity to engage and redirect or, when possible, arrest improper development. Working together to protect the A.T. as much as possible — even when we don’t agree with the development that is proposed — continues to be part of the cooperative management system. We are one community, and we work together to make sure, at the end of the day, the Trail is preserved.

In 2019, Brendan Mysliwiec joined the ATC as its first director of federal policy and legislation. He liaises directly with Congressional and agency staff, communicating the amazing work staff and volunteers of the ATC and Trail maintaining clubs do to protect the incredible value of the A.T. His work has been focused on the full funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, protecting the ability of states to include local laws and address local concerns in federal infrastructure permitting, and advancing legislation that will increase funding to the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service (and by extension to the ATC and all the Trail clubs). Brendan also works to support the work of the U.S. House Caucus on the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, founded by A.T. champions Don Beyer (VA) and Phil Roe (TN). The mission of this bipartisan Caucus is to unite interested members of the U.S. House of Representatives in working together for the sustained protection and conservation of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail. Members of the Caucus recognize that the A.T. is significant in its entire connectedness with a compelling need for federal, state, and local stakeholders to work together on relevant policies and appropriate funding. The Caucus has doubled in size since the beginning of the 116th Congress last year. We hope Trail enthusiasts across the country will ask their Representatives to join the A.T. Caucus today.

While the ATC will continue to energetically seek diverse partnerships to advance constructive policy decisions and fight bad legislation, all of our policywork and advocacy radiates from our core question: is this good for the Appalachian National Scenic Trail? Whatever our work, and whatever our decision, we will always focus on how the Trail and its landscape are or could be impacted. The ATC aims to ensure that outdoor recreation, wildlife habitat, and local resources are conserved beyond the protected corridor in partnership with local communities. One of our top priorities is to increase the pace of conservation around the narrow Trail corridor. While the entirety of the lands surrounding the A.T. treadway are owned for the most part by conservation-minded agencies and entities, not all of what we see from the mountain peaks or as we weave through the hollows is safe from development, encroachment, or harm.

For example, many ATC staff hours have been spent the last few years to understand the impacts of new, large-diameter pipelines being developed to move fracked natural gas from Marcellus Shale plays west of the Trail, across the Trail to major distribution lines and ports along the East Coast. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) oversees the development of these new pipelines. Since several pipelines are proposed to cross the A.T., the ATC has reviewed these projects against our trail management guidance and offered comments. In doing so, we also recognized that FERC makes decisions about these proposals under antiquated and inadequate policy direction. The ATC will continue to work with Congressional staff to highlight these problems and vigorously support legislation like the Pipeline Fairness and Transparency Act (led by Senators Kaine and Warner and Representatives Griffith and Riggleman). We have submitted comments on FERC’s pipeline siting policy to the commission as well and alerted multiple Congressional committees about the aspects of the current policy that negatively impact the A.T.

Related to pipeline-siting, the ATC also submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court defending the cooperative management system and explaining the development of the A.T. in a recent lawsuit that called into question the division of responsibilities painstakingly negotiated by the ATC, Trail clubs, and the federal and state governments over the past 100 years. While the ATC has strong objections to the current process for evaluating, permitting, and licensing pipelines — for reasons relating to the conservation of public lands, individual property rights, market need, and the growing impacts of climate change — our role in that lawsuit was not to take a position on whether the pipeline was needed. Rather, it was about making sure that the ATC, the clubs, and all of our support retain an active and substantial role in the Trail that, but for our members’ and supporters’ involvement, wouldn’t exist at all.

There are a slew of other advocacy priorities. We also recognize that in order to guarantee the next generation of volunteer maintainers, Trail crew members, and Trail advocates are prepared to grab a saw or head to Capitol Hill, we need to ensure that volunteer programs receive robust support through the A.T. Park Office’s annual budgets and the Forest Service’s certification system. Volunteers are at the core of the A.T.’s management. The ATC pushes for administrative fixes and advances new legislation to ensure volunteers can focus on the Trail rather than navigating burdensome bureaucratic work or regulations and requirements.

Every one of the volunteers on the A.T. advocates by sharing their experience, setting out with one of our skilled Trail crews, and letting their elected officials know why the Trail is important and how we should be working together to preserve it. Very few units of the National Park Service are bolstered by the dedication and sweat equity of so many committed and activated individuals. A.T. volunteers, approaching 100 years of relevance and expertise, are truly an inspiring model of civic engagement. Volunteers and hikers are among the most important advocates for the Trail and the ATC wants to ensure that the hard work, commitment, and dedication of those who came before us is sustained so that the Trail continues to inspire another century of volunteers, visitors, and visionaries.

I am incredibly fortunate to work with an amazing team that is comfortable in the woods and can just as easily get suited up for a visit to Congress to speak from their hearts about what the Trail needs. ATC senior regional director Andrew Downs sums it up best when he says, “There are a lot of organizations that are focused on many other things and that do excellent work protecting the environment, but there’s only one organization in the whole world that’s dedicated solely to the Appalachian Trail. And we have to make sure that our decision process reflects that level of focus, because if it’s not ATC that speaks for the Trail and only the Trail, then no one else will.”