All of that sounds great, Mark. One thing you could do to get a jump start on your advocacy campaign is to start making your own list of trails you think the community cannot afford to lose. Prioritize that list as best you can. The unorganized advocacy groups simply say they want all the trails as-is, without any compromise. That puts the forest service in a tough spot. If you go into this looking prepared and flexible, they'll be more receptive and you'll have more wins than losses.
It's the give and take nature of this type of advocacy that is important. Recently Jason Williams came to the mountain bike community to let us know an unauthorized trail needed to be removed from the forest. It was a fantastic trail, but when Jason asked us to destroy it, we did by the following weekend with his assistance. The MTB community lost a trail, but gained serious points with the PNF.
I would maybe suggest starting to rally a few more voices like your own. You might need to form a well organized front so the PNF has a point of contact they can reach out to.
The good news is most of this stuff is pretty easy, fun and feels good. Instead of sitting through fruitless public meetings, you can get in the woods with the PNF guys and have a positive impact. It also galvanizes the community, shows your collective passion and puts the public lands in the public hands.
I can see right where you're going with this. A few years ago I was just a concerned mountain biker wanting more trails. That was hundreds of hours of trail advocacy ago. I fell into it *** backwards, but I'm very glad I did.
