4th European Conference on Trails and Paths

The regional agency Forestas—which in Sardinia manages and coordinates the development of the Trail Network and the regional register SardegnaSentieri ("digital trail cadastre")—is also participating in the fourth European Conference on Trails and Footpaths, which this year is hosted in Italy.

Organized by the European Mountaineering Association (EUMA) and the European Ramblers' Association (ERA), in close collaboration with the Italian Alpine Club (CAI), the conference brings together key European players—institutions, sector experts, outdoor professionals—to explore innovative strategies in the management and protection of trails and network of paths.

The 2025 edition focuses on trail management in the digital age, with particular attention to how digital tools can enhance user experience, ensure and support sustainable use practices, and help address the growing challenge of overtourism on Europe's most popular routes.

The conference also represents an important opportunity for discussion, aiming to lay the groundwork and develop a shared vision of what "trail" means today, thereby encouraging the alignment of standards and better recognition at the European level.

The agenda of the conference, the Forestas role in the national scene

It is a moment of discussion and coordination among all public organizations at the European level that manage the networks of Trails and Paths. This year, contributions are specifically expected from national and regional managers from: Italy, France, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, Cyprus, among others.

Among subjects of discussion:

• Sustainable and inclusive use of trails and paths
• Platforms for digital track management (national unification and, with a view to the future, European, encompassing trail cadastres, route catalogs, and path registries)
• Participatory processes, safety through real-time route updates, crowdsourcing, management of over-use and anthropogenic load
• Communities, open data, IT interoperability, and digital systems for route management, also for the purpose of tourism promotion (digital maps and sheets for trails and paths)
• Regional-level hiking backbones and paths, national backbones, European backbones
• Towards a common language at a European level: regulations, legal issues (such as rights of way and other legal problems), the management of paths and trails in Italy
• The role of Open Street Map as a single collector (local, national, European) for "massive" geographic information related to hiking trails and paths, and, conversely, the need for "official" regional or national "registries" - managed by government agencies that validate and catalog the tracks, also for the correct management of "legal" cases, among which the "right of way on private property" is becoming critical...
• The validation of data related to signage. The reliability of "trail markers" and the maintenance of the tracks...
• The economic exploitation of data generated by users and government agencies, for the correct management of the resulting tourist flows, which are increasingly showing their economic potential..."

On these latter points, Sardinia also plays a leading role in the national scene: together with Trentino, Piedmont, and Lombardy, our region has in fact been included among the first to compete for the digitalization of the trails, managed at a national level by the Ministry and the Italian Alpine Club (CAI).