IUCN Motion 004: Trails and Conservation

IUCN. Created  in 1948, IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature,  is now the world’s largest and most diverse environmental  network, harnessing the knowledge, resources and reach of its more than 1,400 Member organizations and seven Commissions composed of 17,000 expert individuals. This diversity and  expertise makes IUCN the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it.

The Congress. Every four years IUCN holds the World Conservation Congress, a major event that includes a forum and an exhibition, as well as an assembly in which IUCN Members 

vote to approve motions which, once adopted,  become Resolutions and Recommendations,  and therefore the body of IUCN’s general policy.

The Trails and conservation motion has been submitted for consideration at the IUCN World Conservation Congress to be held in October 2025 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. 

The proponent. InterEnvironment Institute is the proponent of the Trails and conservation motion. The Institute has been a Member of IUCN since 1980 (click here for details) and has served as the secretariat for an IUCN Commission, a specialist group of another Commission, and various IUCN projects. 

Nine other IUCN Members are cosponsors of the motion.  

[Above: 300 km of long-distance trails run through the Country Parks of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China. The parks cover almost 40 percent of Hong Kong's 1,100 sq km of otherwise developed territory, which has a population of 7.5 million.] 

Rationale

Trails can be powerful tools for protecting biodiversity, but have received little attention from IUCN. The purpose of this motion, Trails and conservation, is to formally acknowledge the importance of trails and ecological trail corridors as conservation tools and set out next steps for providing guidance on them.

Origins

This effort started in the Urban Conservation Strategies Specialist Group of IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas. Looking for effective and innovative models of conservation in metropolitan areas, leaders of the group came across several kinds of trails and included them in its flagship publication, Urban protected areas: Profiles and best practice guidelines (2014). They pointed out that for urban people such trails can be strong psychological, as well as physical, connectors to the natural world.

Trails and Conservation Working Group

The next step was setting up the Trails and Conservation Working Group, in 2019. Its terms of reference are “To promote a holistic vision of long-distance trails, not only as recreational infrastructure but as conservation tools that link urban, rural and wild; shape new conservationists; and serve as connectors to places representing cultural, spiritual, aesthetic and moral values.” In addition, it is tasked with examining “connections between such trails and animals and plants, e.g., in terms of wildlife corridors, human-wildlife conflict, invasive species and zoonotic disease.” The working group’s remit now extends to trails generally, not only long-distance ones. 

Leadership

The Trails and Conservation Working Group is led by Pedro da Cunha e Menezes, a Brazilian career Diplomat who is currently seconded to Brazil’s Environment Ministry and directs its Department of Protected Areas. His responsibilities include the Brazilian Network of Long-distance Trails. In a previous assignment, he developed a popular 200-km trail connecting mountainous protected areas surrounding Rio de Janeiro. Other members of the steering committee are experts from Hong Kong, Portugal, South Africa and the United States. 

CONTACT

Ted Trzyna, InterEnvironment Institute, tedtrzyna [at] gmail.com

Pedro da Cunha e Menezes, Brasilia, Brazil, cunhaemenezes [at] gmail.com

GO TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE TO DOWNLOAD A PDF OF THE FINAL VERSION OF MOTION 004 AS SUBMITTED TO THE IUCN MOTIONS GROUP.

Otter Trail, South Africa. Opened  in 1868, the Otter Trail is entirely within Garden Route National Park.  A coastal trail, it has many steep ups and downs along its 40 km route. Reservations are required to make the hike, which takes five days, staying in huts for four nights.

Rota Vincentina, Portugal. This  is a network of over 1,000 km of hiking and mountain biking trails in southwestern Portugal. One long-distance trail runs along the  Atlantic Ocean coast; another follows a historic, mainly inland route.  Along the way are farms, towns, and villages, as well as open country.

Trilha Transcarioca, Brazil. Completed  in 2017, the Transcarioca stretches for 200 km through several mountainous protected areas around Rio de Janeiro that are within a World Heritage Site called the Carioca Landscapes between the Mountain and the Sea. (Carioca is an adjective in Brazilian Portuguese that refers to anything related to Rio de Janeiro.)