Douglas firs and other trees cut down last month to block a trail built by locals in Forest Knolls shocked a man when he discovered it was the handiwork of Marin’s Open Space District. Tree barricades are standard practice for closing trails and are more effective—as well as more expensive—than using brush, the district says. It instituted a policy in 2011 of closing unauthorized trails built after a district-wide trail assessment completed that year. Albert DeSilver, a Woodacre poet who served as the county’s first poet laureate in 2008, said he first thought vandals had closed the trail, which he estimated was about a half-mile long. Then he saw a sign posted by the district. Last week, he took his objections to the district’s board of directors. “It’s just absurd, the level of destruction that the Open Space District would go to, to block people from accessing their open space,” he told the Light. “This is not a big, major, destructive trail.” It wasn’t the first time the trail had been blocked. The district says it first used trees to close it in 2012, but it was opened back up early this year. Mr. DeSilver said he had never seen a blockade built with such large trees, and that it seemed an extreme response to a “sweet little trail built by local people.” Was it really worth all the money, considering that the trail takes about nine minutes to walk start to finish, he wondered? Matt Sagues, a natural resource planner for the district, said it’s critical to shut down all unauthorized trails, to discourage them. In the past six months, it has blocked 2.5 miles of such trails in areas like Roy’s Redwoods and the Gary Giacomini Preserve. He said the Forest Knolls trail, when first built, was poorly constructed and caused erosion. “The important thing about this closure is that we weren’t closing a footpath. This was a major effort to build a trail for bike use,” he said. He also said the trail threatens the endangered Mount Tam Manzanita. Douglas firs, he added, the tree used for the closure, have encroached on its habitat—the result of longtime fire suppression, he said in an email. The district, which requested $25,000 for the upcoming fiscal year to close illegal trails, has owned this area since 2012. Mr. DeSilver said, eventually, residents will be walking the path again: “It never works. The locals will be out there clearing that trail.” If residents want, Mr. Sagues said, they could ask the district itself to build a trail. The district is starting to hold public meetings to solicit requests in each of its six regions. The meeting for region two, which comprises preserves in the San Geronimo Valley, will likely be held sometime this summer, he said.