Park considers public input on eve of new Management Plan

The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (the local branch of the National Park Service) will hold three public meetings this week, May 1-3, to solicit public input about the three “Preferred Alternatives” suggested in a recent newsletter, toward developing a new General Management Plan that would guide the Park for decades to come.
The photo looks west across the Glen Lakes toward the Dune Climb and Lake Michigan. Photo by Don Miller.

The public meetings will be held on Tuesday, May 1 from 6-8:30 p.m. at Platte River Elementary School (11434 Main St.) in nearby Honor, MI; Wednesday, May 2 from 6-8:30 at the Glen Arbor Township Hall; and Thursday, May 3 from 5:30-8 at the Traverse Area District Library (610 Woodmere Ave.) in Traverse City.
“The upcoming public meetings allow for (comments in the venue of a public meeting), and afford an additional opportunity for the public to talk directly to the planning team,” Park Superintendent Dusty Shultz said in a recent press release. “It’s very important to me that we continue to stay as transparent as possible and provide whatever clarification the public needs during the planning process.”
The National Lakeshore last attempted to choose a General Management Plan in 2002, but the Preferred Alternative favored by the Park proved unpopular with the northern Michigan public — since it called for closing virtually all dune and trail access outside of the Dune Climb itself, and would have shifted overall focus away from human recreation and toward wilderness preservation — that it was eventually scrapped. (You can read a guest editorial by a Park insider published in the Glen Arbor Sun on July 18, 2002, calling for the public to reject that Alternative).
The Park is currently following the 1981 Wilderness Recommendation to determine what areas of the Lakeshore should be accessible to the public, and to what measure, and what areas should be set aside as wilderness. Yet the Park admits these 1981 guidelines are out of date and need to be amended.
Of the three Preferred Alternatives to be presented this week, Alternative A calls for approximately 3,000 extra acres of the Park to be classified as wilderness, mostly in the Sleeping Bear Plateau west of the Dune Climb and Glen Haven; Alternative B calls for eliminating the wilderness designation everywhere except North Manitou Island, and highlights recreational opportunities; and Alternative C calls for “concentrating visitor use in selected areas” while promoting “more natural, primitive conditions” elsewhere in the Park.
The National Lakeshore has set an unofficial deadline for public comments of May 14, though the new Preferred Alternative won’t be finalized before 2008. If you’re unable to attend any of this week’s public meetings, you can view the alternatives and comment on the Park’s website.