An upgrade for Sleeping Bear

May 18, 2008

Park officials are talking about breaking new trails for nature lovers at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
A recently proposed management plan envisions a bay-to-bay backpacking trail, roughly 30 miles long. The path would stretch from Platte River Pointe to Good Harbor Bay and provide hikers with a series of overnight campgrounds, complete with campfire rings and primitive toilets. Kayakers would be able to paddle into shoreline and make a short hike to the campsites.
The management plan also envisions a roughly 50-mile bike path that would run on the lakeside of M-109 and M-22, the main roads that run through the national park. Bicycling on these roads is already popular, but can also be treacherous in some places because the pavement’s rough or lacks a shoulder.
Citizens endorsed these ideas when asked what they’d like to see in the park’s new general management plan. They’re not yet backed with federal money, but zoning for them is considered a first step toward reality.
“The bike path would be separate from the road and expensive—millions to build, but we’ll zone to allow for it and work with other groups to find the funding,” said the park’s Assistant Superintendent Tom Ulrich.
“The hiking trail would be way cheaper, and not nearly as complex, but would require its own investment and we’d have to seek funding. I can’t give you a timetable except to say it would likely be built within the next several years.”
The two roads in Leelanau County have already been designated as part of the Leelanau Scenic Heritage Route, which has received a $250,000 grant for planning and design.
These two ideas are included in a management plan recently proposed by the national park, which includes 71,291 acres, North and South Manitou Islands, and 35 miles of stunning shoreline.
The park has been operating under a management plan created nearly 30 years ago. Since then, the boundaries were expanded and park officials have taken a much stronger interest in preserving historic sites.
“The new plan makes a positive statement that it’s our intent to preserve all of our natural and cultural resources,” Ulrich said. “Like the bike path, it doesn’t guarantee the funding will come, but it’s our intent and the plan makes it incumbent upon the managers to seek funding to do that. It falls in the same category as all the other great and wonderful things we want to do.”
This is the second time that park officials have offered up an updated management plan for public comment. Their first attempt ended in failure in 2002 when citizens howled over the possibility of losing road access to popular beaches. To avoid a replay of controversy, park officials met often with key groups over the last couple of years and aggressively sought public comment. They also resolved the road issue by removing the county roads’ rights-of-way from the park’s “wilderness areas.” That decision left no question that county government—not the park service—controlled the roads. Neither Leelanau nor Benzie County has given any indication of wanting to close roads within park boundaries, Ulrich said.

CHALLENGES
The proposed management plan is packaged in a 300-page book, which was published last month and includes fascinating details of the park’s challenges. It describes, for example, a die-off of 3,900 birds since 2006, including 240 common loons. The reason: quagga mussels and round gobies have enhanced native algae and Type E botulism that’s killing the birds.
The centerpiece of the management plan is what’s called a “preferred alternative,” which represents a general consensus by a wide range of people. There are also three other alternatives, which offer slight modifications and a different balance of areas forever protected as wilderness.
If the new plan is approved as expected by early next year, the following changes will occur over the next several years:
-The Valley View campground will be removed. On the plus side, new designated campgrounds will be built on the bay-to-bay trail and on North Manitou Island.
-Visitors will enjoy improved parking at Esch Road beach and possibly Platte River Point, two of the park’s most popular beaches. A new parking lot will get people closer to the beach and help prevent trampled vegetation.
-Boat access to Crystal River will be upgraded.
-The Glen Lake picnic area will be improved.
-Day boat trips to the North Manitou Island will be considered (only overnight stays are possible now).
-Motorized boats will be banned on Bass Lake and North Bar Lake in Leelanau County. They don’t get much boat traffic now, and the lakes are zoned for natural conditions.
-Access for non-motorized boats will be improved at some inland lakes.
-A loop hiking trail and small parking area at Bow Lakes will be built.
-Bike trails will be considered in the MacFarlane woods, south of Glen Lake.

The park will also step up monitoring of resources that are a little too “well loved.” Park officials will watch to see if a specific natural resource—such as a riverbank—is getting too much foot traffic, causing it to erode. They’ll also watch if overcrowding is bothering visitors. If a certain threshold is crossed, park officials will devise an action plan that might include trying to educate people on how to treat the resource (not walking on the river bank, for example) or encouraging them to go elsewhere in the park or visit during a different season. If such measures fail, the park may go so far as to limit the number of visitors at a given time or even rope off the damaged areas.

WILDERNESS AREA
The management plan includes a wilderness study that recommends that certain areas in the park be included in the national wilderness preservation system.
What does that mean to park visitors?
Not a whole lot, except they can rest assured that 32,200 acres would never be developed. That’s because the park has already protected the vast majority of this acreage as wilderness since 1981.
Hunters and hikers will be free to go anywhere in the wilderness areas, just as they can now.
The effort to put together a new plan, gather public comment, and to ultimately propose it to Congress comes with a hefty price tag—more than $750,000. The good news is that this last plan only took three years—it usually takes five years, Ulrich said.

DOG WHINING
Ulrich took the opportunity to note changes at the park, which are important but separate from the new management plan.
By far, the most controversial has been a recent policy change on taking pets to the beach. People are still allowed to take their leashed animals to most all beaches, except for the Platte Pointe beach where piping plovers nest and North Bar beach, which is too crowded for pets.
Park officials changed its policy in an attempt to make two distinct groups happy—those who love taking their dog to the beach and those who prefer a dog-free experience.
“Now at nearly every beach access, you’ll see a sign. In one direction, dogs will be allowed, and in the other direction, they won’t. And now a walk down the beach will no longer take you in and out of pet zones in a short distance. … There is no other issue that people are as passionate about as dogs on beaches, and each side thinks only they are passionate. But both sides are getting fired up and are writing to us,” Ulrich said.
Another change of recent years: nearly all private homes purchased by the park more than a decade ago have been removed and the natural environment restored. That means you can hike for miles down from the Good Harbor Bay beach in both directions, and not worry that you’re bothering private property owners.
It’s legal anyway to walk a beach in front of a private home along the water’s edge, but not legal to spread out your blanket and stay put. Now, with only a handful of beach homes privately owned, it’s really not an issue, Ulrich said.

To make comments on the proposed management plan, please go to www.nps.gov/slbe/. The deadline for comment is June 13, 2008.