New Champlain Area Trails director assumes leadership

Trails nonprofit marks first leadership change since its founding in 2009

By Tim Rowland

For the first time since it was founded in 2009, Champlain Area Trails will have a new executive director, as former Elizabethtown Social Center Director Arin Burdo takes the helm from CATS co-founder Chris Maron, who retired at the end of 2024.

Hailing more from an administration than a conservation background, Burdo, a native of Elizabethtown, said she nevertheless grew up on trails even as they were more an article of conveyance than recreation.

“I grew up in a little cabin in the woods that had trails right outside my door that went in one direction to my best friend’s house, and then in another direction to my aunt and uncle’s, and to the residential street where most of the kids in town lived,” she said. “I was in the woods all the time when I was young, not really knowing that I was developing a love for the woods. That was just my backyard.”

That foundation in the outdoors continued as Burdo attended the University of Montana with her now-husband Steve Burdo, and took advantage of vast recreational opportunities offered in the Bitterroot Valley and the great national parks of Glacier, Yellowstone and the Tetons.

On returning to the Adirondacks, Burdo worked at what’s now Mountain Lake Services, and, after taking time to homeschool her children, has spent the past 15 years at the Elizabethtown Social Center, which offers programming to local residents and youth.

Founded as a community gathering spot in the 1930s, the center was laboring under 80-year-old governance and operations policies, Burdo said, which were overhauled when the pandemic interrupted public programming.

Big life changes

The move to Champlain Area Trails (CATS) is both a career change and a life change, as the last of the Burdos’ four children graduated and the hubbub of a full house, career and a full plate of volunteering faced transition to an empty and quieter nest.

“I love spending time with my kids, and I loved it when they had their friends over,” she said. “We were the house with the basement that had pizza stocked in the freezer, because I loved having them all under my roof. So I knew I had to prepare, prepare myself for that day.”

CATS seemed a natural fit in that respect. Having started with just 10 miles of trails, the Westport-based nonprofit now has more than 100, extending through the eastern portions of Essex and Clinton counties primarily, but not exclusively, in the Champlain Valley.

Trails for all ages

Unlike the trails in the mountains further west, CATS trails are gentler, reflecting both the topography and the preference of an older hiking constituency.

Amber Adamson, development and communications director for CATS, said hikers reflect the demographics of Essex County, where the median age is almost 50. “Our volunteers are all retired folks,” she said, and good old paper trail maps fly out the door with each new printing.

With her background in youth services, Burdo says she hopes to inspire more young people to appreciate the outdoors in a region where many parents hold down multiple jobs and do not have time to pursue recreational opportunities.

“In my role at the Social Center, I had become very aware of local kids really not utilizing all the amazing opportunities we have for outdoor recreation,” Burdo said. She also believes it’s important to be inclusive of the interests of people who were born and raised in the area, so that trails and conservation groups are not seen as elitist.

Key projects, programs

Along with building and maintaining trails, CATS, also a certified land trust, offers programming such as organized hikes, cross country ski lessons, birding and plant education and its signature event, the Grand Hike, which this year takes place on May 10. 

Burdo said CATS will continue with current projects begun under Maron, including a trail project at Mt. Inez, purchase of the Twin Valleys recreational complex from the SUNY-Plattsburgh Auxiliary, recertifying its land-trust status and an initiative to make temporary trail easements permanent.

She said she’s appreciative of the work Maron did over the past 16 years, taking CATS from “a one man show” to a solidly staffed organization with thousands of trail-users and supporters. With Maron’s retirement, the challenge becomes converting a founder’s innate knowledge into a more structured environment. “He’s done a remarkable job and has built a successful organization, so now it’s time to move forward with some solid administration, with some governance updates,” Burdo said.

Being a nonprofit in a world of government uncertainty will also be a potential challenge. CATS is not dependent on federal funding, but as grants are cut, Burdo says she fears that private donors will be called on to contribute to more government-dependent organizations at the expense of smaller nonprofits. 

“Somebody who’s supporting CATS might all of a sudden see another need that they feel is greater,” she said. “I wish there was cause for some optimism, but it looks like it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

But nature heals all wounds.

With all the pressures of funding, administration and the world in general, a trails organization isn’t a bad place to be. 

Top photo: Pictured is new Executive Director Arin Bardo. Photo by Tim Rowland