New online magazine NatureChange.org tells Northern Michigan stories about conservation and climate change, including this one about difficult choices facing the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore following the August 2, 2015 super storm.
Retirement is an interpretive experience. For one guy it might mean a pastured life. For another, there’s the Tom Van Zoeren School of Retirement: Not! A former ranger with the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (SBDNL), Van Zoeren’s post-professional life is a blueprint of engaged, purposeful work.
“The Park has got to figure out how to address the dead fall hazard,” declared Glen Lake Fire Department chief John Dodson after the October Glen Arbor Emergency Services meeting. The “Park” he refers to is the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (SBDNL). All that dead wood, he says, “is fuel building up. Our fire department does not have the staff to maintain a wildfire the size of Alligator Hill.”
If you want to solve Glen Arbor’s affordable housing problem, some say look no further than Empire. Here, the Sun speaks to several prominent village citizens who have varied responses to the issue of affordable housing. All, however, agree on one thing: they love Empire.
Amidst the pain, it’s important to remember this lesson: the Aug. 2 megastorm — though it may have been the storm of the century — is one of several cataclysmic events that have changed this land we call Sleeping Bear since the glaciers receded and left behind the great lake and the rolling dunes and forests. And after each event, the land and its animals adapted and tended ahead. Alligator Hill will do the same.
Skyrocketing land prices and high taxes have priced Glen Arbor out of the market for most service workers and working professionals like teachers and emergency medical workers. Over the past five years, we’ve lost countless professionals who have moved to other areas. But it’s not hopeless, say some.
Largely forgotten amidst our Aug. 2 storm coverage, July 2015 set a record for monthly visits to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, with 438,291. That’s 7,000 more than July 2014. June was also a big month for visitors, as the Park welcomed only 800 fewer people than in June 2012, which was the “summer on steroids” following the “Most Beautiful Place in America” coronation.
In case you missed the Glen Lake Association’s post-storm workshop on Aug. 29, you can watch the following video of the workshop. Also, listed below are some highlights and suggested guidelines, compiled by watershed biologist Rob Karner, for your review and consideration.
What trees, plants and animals will repopulate the area of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore that was decimated by the Aug. 2 megastorm — particularly Alligator Hill? We asked that question of the National Lakeshore’s chief of natural resources, Kevin Skerl.
According to the National Weather Service (NWS) website, conditions on Aug. 2 were ripe for something big to happen. “Northern Michigan experienced a complex severe weather setup,” it reports, “which began with a warm front lifting northward from southern Michigan toward the Straits of Mackinac and into the eastern Upper Peninsula.”