WILDERNESS, DUNES RESTRICTED IN PARK’S PREFERRED ALTERNATIVE

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun Editor
No, the National Park Service will not close the dune climb.
But the areas of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore open to the public will likely undergo major changes in late 2003, when the final version of the NPS General Management Plan is published. The National Park recently held three public meetings in Northern Michigan to discuss the GMP after issuing its fourth public newsletter. In it, the Park throws weight behind what it calls the “preliminary preferred”, the fourth alternative in a group whose other choices ranged from “no action” to restricting virtually all visitor access, and even closing the beloved dune climb.

The Preliminary Preferred is nowhere near as radical a plan as the second alternative, which would to an extreme “focus on the maintenance, restoration and protection of the components and processes of the Lakeshore’s pre-European settlement ecosystem”. Yet the Preliminary Preferred would still close off large tracts of dunes around the dune climb proper, as well as around Pyramid Point, North Bar Lake and the Manitou Islands. It would also lead to road closures, such as Esch Road south of Empire and the dirt roads branching off of County Road 669 in the Good Harbor Picnic Area, because the NP would deem these areas wilderness.
“We looked at the purposes of the park, and examined the legislation in coming to the conclusion that we have a dual mission — preserving, and educating the visitors,” said Mike Duwe, an NPS environmental specialist in charge of presenting the General Management Plan to the public. “People love scenic views and vistas. At the same time, in order for native species to sustain themselves, they need rather large tracts of undisturbed land.”
The four alternatives — the first of which considers “no action” necessary and the third of which would “recognize the evolution of the landscape and its human settlement over the passage of time” — form the bulk of the fourth GMP newsletter, a massive document of text and maps that seems vague to the reader, and nearly requires a microscope and an expert at one’s side to make sense of it.
The Park held three open houses, from July 9-11, in Empire, Traverse City and Benzonia, at which the public rejected the Preliminary Preferred almost unanimously. More than 150 concerned citizens showed up at the Empire meeting and forced the Park to change a planned written-comment-only format into a sometimes raucous question-and-answer session. The determined crowd even convinced National Park Superintendent Dusty Schultz to extend the deadline for public comments until Labor Day, a far cry from the original July 26 cutoff. Comments can be e-mailed to slbe_gmp@nps.gov.
Complaints in Empire (the only meeting held before Glen Arbor Sun press time) were loud and forceful. “Do I have to carry my grandchild three miles from M-22 to see the sunset and then carry him back again in the dark because of road closures?” one asked. “Limiting access to local beaches would have a disastrous impact on Empire. Our beach would become overwhelmed. It’s already at a breaking point,” voiced another.
At every opportunity the Park reassured an angry public that the GMP is still only in a preliminary phase, and that their comments will be considered. “We are not married to any proposals,” Schultz said. “I can promise you that already our thinking is changing.”
Wilderness areas
The public is not able to influence the definition of the wilderness proposal that will spell road closures, however. And that’s a major democratic deficit, believes Park employee Bill Herd. Areas like Esch Road and Good Harbor may be closed based on the National Park’s definition of wilderness, spelled out in a 21 year old proposal that should have gone to Congress for approval in 1983. The wilderness proposal was not even accepted by the Department of the Interior, the governing body of the National Park.
“It is obsolete because the Environmental Impact Statement, on which it is based, is outdated,” writes a former National Park employee in an editorial piece submitted to the Glen Arbor Sun. (see page 7). “New alternatives and public hearings are required before it can be reintroduced.”
A wilderness verdict on County Road 669, off of M-22 north of Glen Arbor, would leave the road itself open but close off Good Harbor Picnic Area roads on both sides, to “maintain rustic character,” Duwe says. The Park would eventually install barrier posts or landscape timbers to thwart trespassers. Similarly, Esch Road would be closed and converted into a hiking trail to Otter Creek Beach.
Duwe adds, however, that the Preliminary Preferred would not close off any Lake Michigan beaches. Getting there just might be a little tougher.
Dunes
Mike Duwe is busy quelling rumors that the National Park will close the dune climb. That was only in alternative 2, not in the one the Park is backing.
“The preliminary preferred includes upgrading the parking area and keeping the dune climb, but somehow restricting use on the sides and at the top. Of the hundreds of thousands that climb the dunes, the numbers that continue towards the lake are very small.”
But the amount of usage, and whether or not the public will miss the dunes as a result, is the subject of strife within the local Park service.
“We don’t have any idea how many people use those dunes because in 30 years we haven’t collected any numbers,” says Bill Herd, who is concerned that closing off what he estimates as 98 percent of the dunes in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore will violate one of the park’s dual missions: educating visitors by giving them access.
Much of North Manitou Island, the dunes beyond Pyramid Point, the inland side of North Bar Lake, the Empire Bluffs and the vast rolling deserts beyond the dune climb are at stake.
Worse, the move to close the dunes is based on assumptions, and not concrete scientific evidence, suggests Herd.
“No one has ever researched the human impact on the dunes here,” he said. “All this is simply based on the idea that more people cause more erosion. But the native plants we’re trying to encourage live in an actively eroding environment. Furthermore, the amount of vegetation on the dunes has actually been increasing.”
Herd added that park rangers have traditionally avoided taking visitors on interpretive hikes where they might contribute to erosion or hurt the natural environment, but that the sand dunes are not among them.
Also unknown is the amount of money the Park would lose from fee revenues as a result of these proposed access restrictions. Entrance fees cost $7 per week, $15 per year or $50 for access to national parks anywhere in the United States. The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore currently rakes in around one million dollars annually in entrance fees.
Neither the amount of lost fees nor the environmental impact of the preliminary preferred have been examined yet because, as Schultz said, “we wanted to first solicit comments from the public.”