Using A Community Tourism Development Model To Explore Equestrian Trail Tourism Potential In Virginia

As the tourism industry grows so does the demand by tourists for specialized travel alternatives. One niche market that is growing but has received very little attention in the tourism literature is equestrian tourism. Increased demand makes the development and planning of equestrian tourism critical to minimize conflict among stakeholders, and provide necessary infrastructure for patrons. The purpose of this study was to assess equestrian trail riders' perceptions and attitudes about the viability of and need for equestrian trail tourism development in their community. An online survey was conducted with members of the Virginia Horse Council. According to the findings, not only was equestrian trail tourism viewed as a viable industry for the county, current resource users voiced their support for expanding the market, which would result in retention and growth among related businesses and facilities. Trail riders felt that the greatest needs in developing equestrian tourism lay in the areas of marketing, support from officials, educating local officials about the economic importance of the horse industry, organization within the horse community, and developing additional trails. Results from this study will be useful in a general sense for rural tourism planners within and outside of the community wishing to increase equestrian trail tourism

Towards the Creation of a Horse Park in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: A Feasibility Study

This study finds that the development of a Massachusetts Model horse park represents a significant economic opportunity for the Commonwealth. Capital costs are not expected to exceed $150 million. The annual economic impact is expected to approach$99 million and lead to the creation of more than 950 jobs throughout Massachusetts. Economic activity resulting from the facility’s development would also generate an additional $5 million in state and local tax revenues per year

Study of small-scale farms in the United States: characteristics and practices relevant to animal disease prevention and control, A

2013 Fall.Includes bibliographical references.To view the abstract, please see the full text of the document

An Evidence-Based Approach to Community Planning and Design for Children in Care

This report outlines an evidence-based approach to planning and designing a community for children in care as well as local at-risk populations using the Golconda Civilian Conservation Center (GCCC) and the neighboring San Damiano Site as a test case. We conducted interviews, design games, and community meetings to generate a set of programmatic elements and outcomes desired by stakeholders. This public input was cross-referenced with literature and best practices before it was translated into a preliminary master plan for the Community. Our research suggests that the Teacher-Family Model (TFM) where "Teaching Parents" live in group homes with six to eight children at a time is appropriate for children younger than eight at the San Damiano site. On the other hand, for the GCCC site, we recommend serving children between eight and fourteen using institutional care with evidence-based-treatments (EBT), which refer to structured interventions based on empirically-proven theories around factors disrupting adaptive functioning. Children can also elect into one of the two care programs based on personal preferences should their parental relationships influence their level of comfort with one or the other model. Finally, we normalize special education and rehabilitation by integrating them with education and recreation. This synthetic approach to programming is supported by evidence-based community planning and designing for children in care in the proposed Unity Model composed of a series of triads: 1) The play triad of education, rehabilitation, and recreation; 2) the performance triad of sleep,diet, and fitness; 3) the home-fit triad of child, caretakers, and environment; 4) the talent acquisition triad of qualification, cost, and personality; and 5) the community engagement triad of transparency, opportunity, and economy. Through leveraging existing programs and resources for rehabilitation, recreation, and education, the future phases of this project have the potential to provide job training and employment opportunities to local vulnerable populations, including female veterans and women suffering from homelessness due to post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) or domestic violence

Site Evaluation Study for a Horse Park in Massachusetts

This assignment required CED to work with an Advisory Board – consisting of Association members, equestrian center operators, equine studies managers, and equestrian merchants – to create a vision of the park and center, to determine its markers of success and to undertake an economic feasibility study that would show potential financial returns to the Commonwealth

Animal Assisted Environmental Education Program Design: The Environmental Learning Farm

Research has shown that by including animals in therapeutic and educational experiences progress can be made in improving the quality of our education and the quality of our lives. This project focused on filling a gap seen in Minnesota’s environmental education programs. There are many environmental learning centers in Minnesota and many different animal assisted therapy programs focusing on physical, mental and emotional health, but there is not a program that is dedicated to bringing our domesticated animals into the curriculum in environmental education. The Environmental Learning Farm is an theoretical and experimental project that could bridge the gap that exists in environmental education in Minnesota. It can give the opportunities for the agriculture community to open its doors to the public to learn about what farmers do and why they do it, what keeps them from making more environmentally friendly choices in their agriculture practices, and what would they need in order to change their practices. The program designed specifically for this project is called Horses, Humans and Health. The objective of Horses, Humans and Health is to open the community to the idea that our domesticated animals can have positive and negative impacts on our environment, and how we as humans that control their environment can improve it not only for our animals but ourselves and the rest of the species that occupy the area. It also provides experiences for the participants to learn more about horses’ health and behaviors, learn how to communicate with another species and understand the significance behind the bond of horses and humans. The program has the goal of not only teaching humans about horses, but also about natural curiosity, animals-human connections, compassion for the entire environment, and confidence in affecting change. The goal of the Environmental Learning Farm is to provide opportunities for the local community to understand that environmental science and education can take place anywhere on earth and not just in a nature preserve or a forested area with little human influence. The Environmental Learning Farm is a business plan to bridge a gap of agriculture practices and environmental education

Policy implementation as a wicked problem: A study of the horse-world

The British Horse Industry Confederation and Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs’ (2005) Strategy for the Horse Industry in England and Wales (Strategy) expresses an ambitious vision to transform the traditional horse-world into a horse industry by 2015. The Horse Strategy calls for all equestrians to become stakeholders, responsible for implementing its central aims of increasing grassroots participation and encouraging engagement with the Horse Strategy. Since 2005, little is known about stakeholders’ experiences of the implementation process or what degree of progress has been made towards creating the horse industry. Given the complex number of groups involved each with their own sets of interests and motives to engage with the horse-world, it is expected that implementation of the Horse Strategy forms a complex wicked problem that is unforeseen and poorly treated. This thesis explores regional representatives, local authority council policy officers and grassroots equestrians’ experiences of implementing the Horse Strategy. A qualitative analysis of 59 (male and female) semi-structured interviews, diaries (33 adults and 27 children) and profiles, participant and nonparticipant observation, and documentary analysis of equine-related policies and articles is carried out. Sport England’s (2004) Framework for Sport was used to gain an understanding of what factors influence an individual’s choice to participate in equestrianism, and the CLEAR Framework diagnostic tool (Lowndes et al., 2006) was adopted to assess equestrians’ engagement with the Strategy. Interrelated factors were found to influence an individual’s choice to participate in grassroots equestrianism and these synergistically built on each other to increase participation. The notion of a ‘hook’ or bond with a horse emerged as the most influential factor. However, each group showed considerable competing vested interests that led to fragmentation of the horse-world, giving rise to implementation barriers, deficits, and inertia. Even if a shared language can be established around the icon of the horse to increase participation, problems remain in addressing resourcing, cost, and infrastructure constraints. An overarching complex wicked policy problem emerged as the vested interests among different equestrian groups served to constrain and hinder the policy implementation process. This thesis concludes by providing recommendations to the BHIC and Defra, policy officers, regional representatives and grassroots proprietors to increase participation and encourage engagement with policy at local-level

Increasing rabies data availability: the example of a One Health research project in Chad, Côte d'Ivoire and Mali

Rabies is a fatal but preventable disease that remains notoriously underreported. Weak data availability hampers advocacy, constitutes a barrier to resource allocation and inhibits effective prevention and control. To gain better insight into the global rabies burden and human vaccine demand several studies were funded through the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) learning agenda. With the help of this funding, Swiss TPH and local in country partner organizations implemented a One Health research project in Chad, Cote d'Ivoire and Mali to collect data at household, public health facility and veterinary level. This paper describes the implementation of this research project and evaluates its success on amount of information gained, achieved capacity building, impact on knowledge creation and influence on national and international policies. The project was based on the One Health concept and guided by the principles of transboundary research partnerships formulated by the Swiss Academy of Sciences. Data was collected on bite incidents and health seeking from over 24'000 households, on access to treatment of over 8'800 bite cases registered in public health facilities and on the status of over 1'800 rabies suspect animals. Selected country specific datasets have contributed to more than 10 scientific articles so far. On the international level, the multi-level data collection provided a unique set of indicators to inform, along with results from other studies, new WHO rabies immunization recommendations and a vaccine investment case scenario to prevent human rabies. New rabies burden estimates based on the data gathered are published for Mali and will be modelled for the whole West and Central African region. On the national level, the project facilitated communication between animal health and human health workers catalyzing creation of local and national committees and formulation of national action plans for Mali and Cote D'Ivoire. Major challenges arose from lack of data collection and documentation experience of human health and veterinary workers and weak infrastructural capacities of the veterinary and human health systems of the project countries. Through adherence to the principles of transboundary research partnerships, project team members acquired valuable research and networking skills despite language barriers, enabling them to play key roles in the future agenda towards national, regional and global canine rabies elimination. Project external collaborations with local public institutions was facilitated through long-term local partnerships. Both factors enabled success in project implementation and outcomes by identifying and mitigating risks in advance, resolving challenges amiably and enabling mutual knowledge creation as a fructuous ground for sustained commitment. Lack of immediate follow-up funding did not allow to maintain activities beyond the project timeframe. However, the national and international policy changes triggered, as well as the strengthened local disease control and research capacities provides sustainable basis for the elimination of dog transmitted human rabies

Cornell Veterinary Medicine, Fall 2006

Cornell Veterinary Medicine, Fall 2006Topics of articles in this issue of Cornell Veterinary Medicine include: Joining Forces in Conservation and Medicine: The Wildlife Conservation Society and Cornell; Biodiversity Conservation in Zambia: Food security looks like the answer; Leadership in Clinical Programs: Patient care, education, and scientific innovation; Students of Excellence and Diversity; Construction Update: Research Facility Takes Shape; Search Begins for New Dean: Orderly Transition of Leadership; News Briefs; Gifts to the College; Endnote: Announcing a New $80 million Animal Health Diagnostic Center at Cornell (Donald F. Smith); Events

Delivering 14-19 reforms in rural areas : final report

Based upon this report, we encourage rural 14-19 Partnerships to: establish the post of 14-19 Transport and Access Coordinator using centrally provided support; use the information in Chapter 3, the typology, and the case studies in this report to help devise local solutions; use the planning checklist in Chapter 4 to review current activity and plan future activity; use the local authority level map to help with planning; use the employer analysis tool to access information about the local employer base take part in the Rural Pairing Scheme using centrally provided support; make use of the Department’s 14-19 Rural Advisor (via your local authority 14-19 coordinator); and continue to innovate and work with one another to share good practice and help improve the chances of all young people