NATIONAL TRAILS TRAINING PARTNERSHIP TRAIL SAFE! Online trail safety training videos From the National Park Service
want to share it with American Trails readers. Originally offered to Ice Age Trail volunteers, Trail Safe! has gained in popularity and is now available for other trail organizations to share with their staff and volunteers. Just what is Trail Safe!, and how did it come about? For too many years, the National Park Service (NPS) has experienced an extremely poor employee and volunteer safe- ty record— in fact, one of the worst accident and injury rates of among more than 130 Federal agencies. Between the years 2005 and 2010, more than 3,800 employees and volunteers of the NPS were injured on the job to the extent of missing at least one day of work.
T In 2008, the NPS developed a different type of safety
training program called “NPS Operational Leadership.” Operational Leadership is not the typical safety program most of us expect. It doesn’t focus on things such as proper handling of specific tools. Instead, it focuses on the human factor of safety. Situational awareness, stress and perfor- mance, and effective leadership are just a few of the topics explored.
In other words, Operational Leadership adds a behavior- al component to existing safety policies and procedures. Completion of Operational Leadership training is mandatory for all NPS employees, and the course involves two full days of classroom learning facilitated by certified instructors. Dan Watson, Volunteer Coordinator for the Ice Age National Scenic Trail, is one of the certified facilitators for NPS Operational Leadership. In addition to facilitating this training for NPS employees at various national parks, Dan wanted to find a way to offer these materials for his more than 2,000 trail volunteers. Sixteen-hour classroom sessions were not logistically possible. Out of this challenge, Trail Safe! was born. Trail Safe! is a series of eight video lessons that cover all
of the core learning objectives found in NPS Operational Leadership, and can be viewed on any device with internet access without scheduling nightmares or costly travel for everyone to attend. While the Trail Safe! series does reference
For classes, conferences, and training opportunities, see the online calendar at
www.TrailsTraining.net
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he Ice Age National Scenic Trail staff and volunteers have developed a safety training video series, and they
the National Park Service, the learning points apply equally to any agency or organization.
Each of the vid- eos is hosted by Dan and run in various lengths from 18 to 40 minutes. The entire series can be watched in about three hours. To see what Trail Safe! is all about, go to the training page on the Ice Age National Scenic Trail’s website at www.
nps.gov/iatr/trail-safe.htm. If you like what you see, Dan Watson is able to provide an electronic “starter kit” to inter- ested agencies and trail organizations to make them self-suf- ficient in sharing Trail Safe! with their local audiences. In brief, the starter kit provides template language that others can customize and post to their websites which will direct users to link to all Trail Safe! lessons on the Ice Age Trail website. Upon completion, users will then report their training completion to the host organization via email in order to receive appropriate job aids (also part of the starter kit) featured in Trail Safe!
For additional information, or to request a Trail Safe! starter kit, contact Dan Watson by phone at (608) 441-5610 or by email at
daniel_watson@nps.gov.
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