[at-l] The A.T.Conservancy

[jbullar1 at twcny.rr.com (Jim Bullard)]

At 08:09 AM 12/2/2004 -0500, Bror8588@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 12/1/04 12:21:54 Eastern Standard Time, Snodrog5@aol.com
>writes:
>
> > The January-February issue of the Appalachian Trailway News will report on
> > this in detail, but I wanted you to hear first, before it gets into the
> > news,
> > that your Board of Managers did decide at its fall meeting to change the
> > name of
> > our organization from Appalachian Trail Conference to Appalachian Trail
> > Conservancy.
>
>So there will be an alignment with The Nature Conservancy?  The ATC will no
>longer Confer?  The name change will allow the ATC to snag some checks 
>made out
>to that other conservancy?  The Board made this decision on their own without
>asking the Membership?  Uh, what is truth?
>
>Skylander

The proposal to change ATC's name has been discussed in ATN over the span 
of several issues, both in articles about the reorganization effort and in 
letters to the editor. It was my impression (I didn't make an actual tally) 
that the 'no change' letters outnumbered the 'change the name' letters but 
the only vote was in the Board of Directors. I wrote ATC expressing my view 
that no change was necessary but that if they were intent on doing so the 
name they ended up choosing was preferable since it reflects one (though 
only one) important role of the ATC and retains the acronym.

It is my understanding that it is believed that the new name will somehow 
attract more paying members to ATC by clarifying what the group does. Those 
who believe that ATC should concern itself solely with conservation will 
approve of the change. ATC does have a problem in that only a fraction of 
those who belong to regional trail groups (MATC, PATC, etc.) under ATC's 
purview are also members of ATC and only minuscule number of AT users 
belong to ATC. I was surprised to find that ADK (the Adirondack Mountain 
Club) has as many or more members than ATC. We (ADK) have a different 
arrangement however. ADK's chapters are actual sub-organizations of ADK 
while the AT regional clubs are organized independently of (and in some 
cases preceded) ATC. ATC however has actual responsibility for the AT while 
ADK is merely a volunteer organization with no direct oversight responsibility.