Wildlife Trail Ambassadors
Become a Wildlife Trail Ambassador
Become a Wildlife Trail Ambassador!
Couldn’t make it to our training? You can join as a volunteer at any time. It only takes three easy steps:
- Watch the training video below
- Contact Erinn, Progams Director, at erinn@vvmta.org
- Sign up for your Wildlife Trail Ambassador shift!
Learn more about how you can help protect wildlife and our trails. We need your help to educate trail users on why these closures are so important and to inform them where they can recreate responsibly during the winter and spring season.
About the Wildlife Trail Ambassador Program
In the Spring of 2018, the VVMTA and its Adopt A Trail program launched the Wildlife Trail Ambassador program. The VVMTA recognized the need to be the leaders in proactively approaching the education and communication surrounding seasonal trail closures to protect wildlife and our trails. With this, the Wildlife Trail Ambassador program was launched. The Ambassadors’ duties include:
- Enforce seasonal trail closures by actively being positioned at trailheads
- Education to trail users about the reasons for seasonal trail closures
- Education to trail users about local flora and fauna
Education and communication spreading Leave No Trace Principles - Actively engage local businesses and hotels to help spread the word to our Valley’s visitors
The Wildlife Trail Ambassador program began to focus on spring seasonal wildlife closures to protect the mule deer and elk calving seasons. Upon the great success in the Spring, the program expanded to cover our winter seasonal closures to ensure elk and deer were not disturbed in their important winter habitat.
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The Impact of the Wildlife Trail Ambassador Program
The 2021/2022 stats show a true need for this program:
- 135 – Total hours of volunteer time
- 108 – Total volunteer Shifts
- 406 – People encountered at seasonally closed trails
- 5530 – Total people contacted
- 28 – Individual Volunteers
Interested in getting involved? Please contact Erinn, at erinn@vvmta.org
We have been collecting data with strategically placed game cameras on seasonally closed trails. The goal of these cameras are to:
- Violations: understand how many people are violating these closures, what type of user they are, and patterns of use
- Wildlife: capture photos of wildlife in the area during the closure season
The table below tells the story of how impactful this program has become over the years. In 2017, the program did not exist, community outreach did not occur, signage and gates were basically non-existent. This data only shows the North Trail but the same data and story exists at other closed trails including Son of Middle Creek, Everkrisp, and more.
The data draws the conclusion and connects the dots that:
- The more volunteer hours that occur along with education, outreach, and improved signage & gates >
- The less violations >
- = Potentially improving the health of wildlife populations
| Trail | Year | Volunteer Shifts | Volunteer Hours | Violations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Trail | 2017 | 0 | 0 | 212 |
| North Trail | 2019 | 78 | 138 | 148 |
| North Trail | 2021 | 327 | 387 | 41 |
| North Trail | 2022 | 108 | 135 | 23 |
WILDLIFE TRAIL AMBASSADOR REGISTRATION
*Before signing up, you must have taken the Ambassador training. Please contact Erinn at erinn@vvmta.org for more info and watch our training videos on our Youtube channel here.
